To My Former Friends, It’s Been Nice Knowing You
On parental loss and acceptance
It was fun while it lasted.
I used to see you all the time.
After daycare, in the schoolyard, at parent-teacher nights. Playdates on the weekends and birthday parties. You knew me and I knew you. Our kids knew each other as well. Very well. That’s how we became friends.
And now they’re all grown up. They don’t need us to coordinate their social schedules anymore. They have their own ways of communicating (even though you reluctantly gave them a smartphone).
And it’s not just because of COVID-19.
Oh, no.
That’s an easy excuse, isn’t it?
Sure — we’re not hanging out at the schoolyard waiting for our kids because, you know, physical distancing, but things had changed long before the pandemic came.
We had drifted apart because we were no longer in charge of our growing kids’ social schedules.
They slowly grew up, as all kids do, without us noticing. Like many things in life, the changes were incremental until one day we realized that they could do a few things on their own.
