The Last Game: What Nobody Tells You About Watching Your Kids Grow Up

My daughter told me she might be done with travel volleyball. I was sitting in the stands in Virginia when it hit me — I wasn’t ready for the last.

A few weeks ago, my daughter came to me and said she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep playing travel volleyball.

I wasn’t prepared for how hard that hit me.

Not because I thought she was going to play in college. Not because volleyball was going to define her future. But because in that moment, I realized I was staring down the possibility of a last — and I hadn’t seen it coming. You never do. That’s the thing about lasts. They rarely announce themselves. They just arrive, quietly, disguised as an ordinary Tuesday.

So here I am, sitting in the stands at a tournament in Virginia, watching what might be her last travel tournament. Every set. Every spike. Every moment coming at me fast, and me trying to hold onto all of it at once, knowing I might be watching the end of something I’m not ready to let go of.

I’ve been here before. My oldest son Holden is graduated from college now, working, building his own life — and doing great. But I still miss those days. The lacrosse games. His friends coming over, filling up the house with noise and laughter and snacks disappearing from the pantry. There was a whole world that existed inside those years that I didn’t fully appreciate until it was gone.

My mom said something to me once that I’ve never forgotten. She told me that when I graduated and left home, she didn’t just lose me. She lost all my boys. All my friends who had been in and out of her house for years — eating her food, watching her TV, making her laugh. When I left, they all left. And those were lasts too, for her. Lasts she hadn’t planned for either.

Your parents are grieving something beautiful right now

If you’re a junior or a senior reading this — or even a sophomore or freshman who thinks this is all still a long way off — I want you to hear something that you may not fully understand yet.

Your parents are keeping track of lasts in a way you probably aren’t. The last school play. The last away game. The last time your friends pile into the living room on a Friday night. They’re watching all of it with a quiet kind of grief that they’re trying not to show you — because they don’t want to make it about themselves. But it is about them too, a little. And that’s okay.

So be easy on them right now. When they get emotional at something that seems small to you — a regular season game, a random Thursday dinner, dropping you off at practice — it’s because they can see the finish line approaching in a way you can’t yet. They’ve done this before, even if you haven’t. And they know how fast it goes.

A text that says “I love you.” Sitting with them for a few extra minutes before you go out. Letting them come to one more game even when you think it’s not a big deal. These things cost you almost nothing. To them, they’re everything.

Don’t get so lost in the lasts that you miss what’s still here

And now, to the parents sitting in the stands right now, or driving home from the last orchestra concert, or watching your senior walk across a stage in a few weeks — I want to say this as gently and as honestly as I can:

Don’t let the grief of the ending steal the joy of what’s still in front of you.

I know that’s easier said than done. I’m sitting in Virginia writing this with a lump in my throat, so I’m not pretending this is simple. But there is a difference between feeling the weight of a season ending and being so consumed by it that you miss the last few moments as they’re actually happening. The game is still going on. Your daughter is still on that court. Be there. Fully there.

Change is hard. It has always been hard for me. My instinct is to ruminate, to hold on, to put it all down on paper so I don’t lose it. But what I’ve learned — slowly, imperfectly — is that the way through is presence, not preservation. You can’t freeze it. But you can be in it.

Four things for the families in the final stretch

The tournament in Virginia is still going. Emily is still on that court. And I am going to put this down now and just watch.

Because that’s all any of us can do, really. Watch. Be present. Take it in. And try — even when it’s hard — to be grateful for every last one.

Carpe diem.