A Mum for 26 years - I miss the old times I thought would never end.

My eldest is 26. I have three darlings. When they were about 19, after they'd finished high school, we paid for them each to take a separate trip overseas, to see a bit of the world. That was the first time they had been away for an extended period and oh, I felt it. I really felt it. I was so happy when they came home!
Then when they were older, they left home. That began to happen three or four years ago, a gradual leaving. Since then the eldest has come back to live with us for a year. I love it yet don't love it, because while I adore having her around, there's some friction between us because we are not the same people we were when she was a child - she's an adult, and as two adults we sometimes argue, though the love is deep and strong on both sides.
She will be leaving at the end of the year because my husband and I believe it is best for her to leave. She has no partner, and we feel she is becoming too dependent on us, that she will remain in many ways a 'child' if she stays with us, and not see a need to bond with a partner until it's too late.
Today I went into her room and felt so utterly grateful, looking at all her lovely things, her photos and ornaments, her books and her stuff strewn untidily all over the place. It brought back beautiful memories of the decades all the children were at home, and everything seemed so right. My world seemed to be as it should be, the five of us together under one roof, me taking care of them, the routine of school and weekends...
Aren't the Simpsons lucky? Bart and Lisa and Maggie will never grow up... but then again, that would be a nightmare, if you really think about it!
My middle child has never cleaned out her room and I went in there and looked at that, too, and felt that I could never clean it out. I loved seeing all her things, the things she does not need, and keep saying she will come and get one day. I felt like preserving the room as is, forever.
The third child's room has been cleaned out. My youngest. My baby. I never wanted to change it, but I did, because she is the sensitive one who, when one of her friends suicided in high school, became a drug addict to cope, and she would not admit to the pain, would not admit to the drugs, would not see a counsellor, would not talk to anyone about it, attempted suicide herself and nearly succeeded, and we tried everything we could think of to turn things around for her, and in the end we thought that if we ceased supporting a drug lifestyle by having her under her roof, then she would want to change, so she went to live with my sister and we cleaned out her room.
In a way I am glad her things are no longer there because she went through hell and we did too, and that room as it used to be would remind me of that hell. She is almost okay now, at the age of 22. Almost okay. Not okay.
And my middle child has had a chronic illness all her life, and she is currently having a flare-up.
So what with my constant worry about my youngest, and all my efforts to get her off the drugs, and my intermittent pain on behalf of the middle one who sometimes needs hospitalisation when she gets really bad, and my realisation that menopause means that life has taken away so many precious gifts it had given to me and which I took for granted - fertility, beauty, libido - and the feeling of unbearable LOSS I have when I recall those Wonder Days of being a young family, I am deeply, deeply distressed.
This from me, who used to pity my sister in law, several years older than me, who was utterly devastated when her four kids left home and really went to pieces. "I'll never be like that" I said to myself. I have heaps of things to do, I have dreams, I will never be at a loss for activities to fill my time. And it is true, I always have a list of things to occupy myself.
I work for myself, at home. I have friends. I have a lovely garden I enjoy tending. But I have Empty Nest Syndrome and I have it badly.
I know in my head that I ought to throw myself into my work and social life, to fill the gaping, aching pit in my heart. I know in my head that it is irrational to grieve like this. But my heart says otherwise. My heart says, I have lost. I have lost...
What is precious has gone, gone forever, and I am bereft.