I finished my last shift at the group home on Sunday. I went out and bought everything I could think of that the boys liked for breakfast, and then I cooked up a storm and set it all out for them. I wanted to leave before they woke up - to hightail it out the front door and not have to walk through that awful ending, but I didn't. I made myself stay, and I sat with them while they ate, took some pictures and hugged them all good-bye.
One of the boys kept coming upstairs the last night I worked, kept saying a word or two, and then would go back down again. I could hear him waiting on the landing, but I didn't say anything. Finally, he came up again and said, "Since you're going in the morning, I might as well give you a hug now." He was all nervous and awkward and pulled away from my hug before I was done. I love that kid. I love that he gave me that.
I cried all the way home when I went, loud and ragged, not for the missing I will do, but because I was leaving them like everyone else had done and like so many will again; because their lives are so full of leaving that they don't even expect a reason for it anymore; because they have been so shaped by being left that they have so little left to leave; and because those almost-grown boys seem so small to me, so in need of a momma to tuck them in and be that waiting place to crash and fall against, but they will never have that, and they will never know that safety.
I drove away and the gravel crunched beneath my tires. There was only the sound of the birds calling, the squirrels chattering and the slap, slap of a ball being shot with a hockey stick against the garage door, like any boy might do on any warm Sunday in June.
I don't expect I will ever be back.
