We spent today in Sydney, where Chris needed to be for work today, and caught up with his brother, cousin, and soon to be cousin-in-law. While at dinner, Chris’s youngest cousin, who is the youngest of three girls in her family based in Melbourne, is expressing worry about her mother once the last child, her middle sister, leaves to move out to a home she purchased in another suburb of Melbourne. The oldest daughter has been living in Sydney with her now fiancé and are planning to move back next week to Melbourne, and this cousin is about to start her medical residency in a New South Wales city close to the Blue Mountains. The middle daughter has lived at home up until now and is moving out. Granted, two out of the three daughters are still living in the Melbourne area, while this cousin is living in New South Wales, which isn’t far at all by flight from Melbourne, yet she’s freaking out about how her mother will cope with all daughters being out of the house.
“Mum will be lost once B moves out,” Deb says. “When B went abroad for a few weeks a couple of years ago, Mum called me constantly, and I kept saying, ‘why are you calling me?’”
I’m wondering why this is a big deal; two out of three girls will still in Melbourne while one is in a state next door. Yes, all the girls will be out of the house for the first time, but that is inevitable with healthy, functioning adults, and it’s actually late considering the last one moving out is 27 years old. Empty nest syndrome is a common feeling, hence the name, but we move on with our lives. It’s not an unhealthy situation at all, and we should be happy when our adult children move on with their lives and stop being dependent on parents. In this dinner group, we have Chris’s brother, who moved to the other side of the world to live in Toronto for three years and is now in Sydney; Chris has been away on the East Coast of the U.S. for ten years now; I live 3,000 miles away across the country from my parents, who only have one living child left.
“But two out of three of you will still be in Melbourne, so it’s not like they’re that far from your parents,” I said. I could not believe she was freaking out about her mother coping when she’d still have two out of three of her children within short driving distance.
“I just don’t know how Mum will deal,” Deb insisted, ignoring my comment.
“Well, how do you think my parents felt about me moving here to Sydney? I’m an only child!” James responded, finally trying to burst Deb’s closed minded thinking.
It’s all relative. We all have our own problems and our own situations. But we feel them the most when they are our own situations, not the person next to us.