Counting Down

We are a few weeks from graduation. I am scrambling to get things finished before I leave for the South. FIL is home from the hospital and firmly entrenched in his hospital bed in the back bedroom. I feel a wee bit like a spinning top, but things are slowly getting finished...except my packing.

Last weekend Girl attended the Jr/Sr Formal. She was lovely. Simply lovely. I couldn't take my eyes off of her.

I wondered, and still do, how she got from this:

to this:

This little girl of mine has been so helpful with FIL. Yesterday, for instance, while both Beloved and I were at work, she cared for FIL. Still more than that, she sat up there in that little room, watched movies with him, read to him, and kept him entertained.

This morning FIL gushed about her, and he's not a gusher. Ever.

One month from now my little girl will graduate. If things workout, she'll be gone most of the summer working as a counselor at the same camp Boy works at.

Her mother is counting down the days with mixed emotions.

There are days that I feel so unprepared for the future. It's a future that leaves our second bedroom without a teenager. It will feel like I'm losing my left hand. All that bunk about Beloved and I hangin' out and doin' our own thing...yeah...none of that will happen because we will be the caregivers of FIL forever.

And that sounds so dang mean.

I wouldn't take these moments from Girl, not a bit of it, but I hate this dreadful feeling that is growing in my heart. My nest is one step closer to empty and I don't want it to be.

Stamps foot. Clenches fists. Throws fit.

I suppose there's really nothing to be done, except to let her become the awesome woman she is. How did this happen? Tell me!