Heartbreak

Heartbreak comes in many forms.  For us, it came when I found our 13 year old son curled up on the floor of his empty room in our empty house.  We were doing our last walk through the house before leaving for good, and he locked himself in his room and said he wasn't leaving!  He wouldn't let me hold him, and nothing I said made any difference to him.  As a parent we expect to be able to fix our children's problems, but this was beyond me - a very helpless feeling.  All I could do was tell him that he had a right to feel that way and and sympathize with him - I couldn't change the situation at all.  So we called his father and they had a "man to man" talk - then our son slowly and resolutely walked through every room of the house, around the yard, around the church, and then quietly got into the car.  He grew up a little that day; there was nothing Mom or Dad could do to help him - he had to cope by himself and he did.  Fifteen minutes into the trip he was already joking about his "meltdown", and he has coped with the move amazingly well ever since. We are so proud of him, and we will never forget his despair and how he rose above it.