Kind, thoughtful friends have been checking in. Some have already lived through a sudden empty nest; others are bracing for theirs and can picture the ache from a distance. Here’s what they don’t quite get: I did it twice, in the course of one week.
Two goodbyes back to back is a different animal than one. And the second one is the one nobody warns you about.
The second goodbye surprised me more than the first
Late in August, I drove my eldest daughter up to Baltimore. By Wednesday she was moved in. Thursday was supposed to be my breather, and I think I got about ten minutes of it. Friday I did the whole thing over again for her sister, forty-some miles down the highway in Washington, DC. Convocation on Saturday, one more drive between the two campuses, and by late Sunday the house had us in it and nobody else.
You steel yourself for the first goodbye. You survive it. And there’s a stretch of interstate in between where you almost convince yourself the hard part is behind you. Then you’re carrying boxes up another staircase, into another room that doesn’t smell like her yet, and walking back out to a car with too much space in it.
Knowing what’s coming doesn’t soften the second one. It only slows it down. Most parents get a gap between departures — a year, four years — enough time to find their footing before the next one goes. Mine was a Thursday.
I walk past two empty rooms instead of one
I spent at least a year, if not eighteen, bracing for the ache of them both leaving at the same time. Nothing prepares you for the specific flood of the first weeks afterward.
The house feels completely different. It’s the absence of overlapping conversations. The quiet where borrowed clothes used to be fought over in two directions. I miss one daughter sitting next to me for our favorite shows, the other at the dining table with all her schoolwork sprawled out, wanting my help planning her day or studying for a test.
I walk past two empty rooms instead of one. I’m proud of both of them, and I’m grieving a version of our home that had two more people in it. And I’m relieved the applications and the tours and the late-night conversations are blessedly over. Pride and grief don’t take turns, I’ve learned. They just sit next to each other.
Nobody tells you that raising twins means one goodbye, said twice
My work is pastoral — I served a long stretch as a hospital chaplain before this. Both callings amount to the same thing: keeping company with people in the middle of changes nobody thinks to bring a casserole for. Not emergencies. Just the quiet reorganizing of a life, which everyone expects you to manage while still showing up to work on Monday.
When this journey started, I wished someone could walk through it with me. I listened to podcasts, read posts from other empty-nest bloggers, and all of it helped. But an explanation of the empty nest wasn’t what I was missing. I was already inside one. What I wanted was something that understood where I was in it.
So I started keeping a record. Nothing meant for anyone but me — a few lines most evenings, writing down how the day actually went instead of the version I’d braced myself for.
The ordinary afternoons are where I wanted company
The second week and the second month are not the same country. Early on you’re still finding hair ties in the car console. A month later, the phone has stopped ringing with people checking on you, and the silence in the house has stopped being an event. It’s just the weather now. By November the dog still parks himself by the front door around four. I’m still buying for four and cooking for two. None of it is dramatic enough for anyone to write about.
Those ordinary afternoons were where I wanted company. Not the milestones. The unremarkable Tuesday.
Eventually the notebook stopped being private and became a book: Empty Nest: A Daily Companion — ninety days of short reflections — entries for the dates that ambush you, the first holiday without them, a birthday spent apart, the second departure after they come home for winter — and a blank page next to each one. It was the thing I’d gone looking for and failed to find, so I ended up writing it myself. I’m also working on an app with the same name, for the days I don’t want to be alone in my own head.
Some days the house is just quiet. Other days it’s quiet in a way that feels, unexpectedly, like room to breathe — for me, and maybe for them too, now that they finally have to.
The Glow Ritual
Set a 5-minute evening timer. Write down how the day actually went — not the version you braced for, and not the version you’d post online. One line is enough. The empty nest is mostly made of ordinary afternoons, and they deserve a witness.
A note from Johnson: The house is quieter now, and I’m not sure I mind it yet. I’m just glad someone told me the second goodbye would be the hard one, so I’d be gentler with myself when it hit.
Glow is a habit, not a product.