We did it.  We got through the hard part of saying goodbye to you yesterday.  I wanted to keep holding you, but I couldn’t.  I eventually had to do the hardest thing I have ever had to do to date as a mother – say goodbye to my adult son venturing out into this scary world.  I had to leave you with just a backpack full of stuff for nine months.  I had to leave you sleeping in a tent on the ground with spiders. 

How is this possible?  A year ago, we had absolutely no idea what you were going to be doing after high school.  You were just enjoying your senior year with friends and being a kid.  Fast forward to a year later, and I am standing in a parking lot, sobbing, holding you close so that I could take in every last moment with you of your smell, your voice, your hug.  We left you as a young man of 18 with this next chapter ahead of you.  So many unknowns.  As we drove off, I was wondering what had we just done?  How did we get to this point?  Why had I not hugged you more in these last few months?  Why had we not had more conversations about important things?  How did 18 years fly by in what felt like a minute? 

From the parking-lot moment on I was just plain numb.  We drove to the airport with tear-stained faces.  Your father, sister and I crying tears that stung so badly and hearts broken for our son and brother who has meant so much to this family now gone.  A part of the Furtado Four left behind at a training camp in Georgia.  As our plane took off, I cried once more realizing that you would be over 2,000 miles away from us for the next six weeks, but even many more thousands of miles away once you fly to other countries to do God’s work. 



I dreaded coming home.  We climbed into our minivan at the airport realizing the last time I had been in it the four of us were together excited for our trip to Georgia and the fun things we had planned before leaving you at Adventures in Missions.  I felt sick knowing I would have to enter our home without you there, your things all around us.  Reminders that you were not there and we would have to figure out how to live here in this space without your presence.  And, it was worse than I had anticipated.  I saw your car in the garage and your Converse shoes on the floor.  I saw your keys hanging on the hook in the laundry room and crumbled.  I went to your room and laid on your bed and sobbed.  I looked around your space that you created.  The things you hung on your walls.  The desk and dresser you painted from blue to gray.  The way you had a blanket laid nicely over the foot of your bed and I wept like I have never wept before.  I saw a Dr. Pepper in the fridge, your favorite, and bawled.  I actually wailed with a vengeance and let it all out.  The grief of releasing my son.  Of letting him go out on his own.  The realization that our family would never look the same again, and that I had to spend the next nine months of holidays, birthdays and milestones without you and with limited contact with you, not sure that I would be able to endure the pain.

Grief is such a strange thing.  You are fine one moment, but then a complete wreck the next.  The roller coaster of emotions.  The memories come flooding back.  The pain so intense it brings you to your knees.  I had no idea it would be this hard.  No one prepared me.  People said it would be hard, but this hard???  I guess the epiphany of how much you love your children arrives at this moment – when they are gone. 

I have been in my pajamas all day wandering the house not sure of what to do.  Knowing I had to unpack from our trip, but when I began unpacking our snack bag, I realized they were all snacks that you had picked at the store and again I was a sobbing mess.  I wish I could go back to the start of our trip when we were just having fun and exploring instead of facing the real reason we were there and that was to launch you off.  Our Walking Dead tour, swimming in the pool, exploring the Georgia Aquarium and Coca-Cola Museum, visiting with family was all just a mask of the pain that lay ahead.  Of the tough goodbyes on the horizon.  The impending doom of goodbye. 

Your father and I laid in bed together holding one another and crying.  Your sister slept in your bed and cried herself to sleep.  We are THIS sad because we love you THAT much.  We are walking around in a fog, not able to process much other than just plain pain.  It is 1:46 in the afternoon and Dad is still in bed.  He is having a difficult time, too.  I went out to the garage and sat in your car for a good long while.  It gave me some peace to sit in the car that has been yours for the last couple of years.  I found some receipts in the glove box, a stick of deodorant, and trash in the cute little garbage can you were so excited to buy.  As weird as it sounds, I didn’t empty the trash.  It is a part of you and I can’t seem to get rid of it.  How strange.  I laughed at the “Sex Wax” car fresheners you have hanging from the mirror remembering our disagreement about why you shouldn’t hang something in your car with the word “sex” on it, especially going to a Christian school, but you loved the scent and wanted to use it, so you cut the word “sex” out of it and hung it up.  Now that you have graduated and are 18, you bought a new one and this time you didn’t cut the word out.  I will probably take it down if I ever drive your car.  I will not, however, remove the steering wheel cover that you love and I like, but dad doesn’t and removes whenever he drives it.  Oh, the petty, silly little things that we had disagreements over.  How I wish I could go back and change some of those discussions.  They really didn’t matter and yet left us feeling so yucky inside.  Hindsight.  You don’t realize until you have the opportunity to look back.  So much regret when you realize the things that are truly important and the things that clearly aren’t.

As I left your car and went to walk into the house, I stopped and stared at your shoe box full of shoes.  Why do these shoes make me crumble when I see them?  They are shoes you selected.  They are shoes that still carry your scent.  And, yes, oddly enough, I stood there sniffing them trying to smell any bit of you that I could.  The Converse just smelled like rubber, but I wish I could have smelled your feet.  The weird things grief makes you do.  I would so often avoid your shoes because of how odorous they were.  Now, I can’t get enough.  For some reason, your smell that lingers gives me a solace that I need right now.  I need even the smallest piece of you.  Perhaps a piece to make me whole again as I feel utterly broken in this moment. 

I drank my coffee this morning from the mug you painted a few years ago with an N on it.  I almost ate your favorite corned beef hash, but didn’t even have the energy to make it.  I am doing whatever I can to saturate myself with you.  I need you.  Part of me wishes you would just come home and not complete the race.  How selfish of me is that?   This is Day 1 and I am already wanting you home.  I am thinking of our sweet reunion on May 23rd and I can’t wait for it.  However, that is a long way off and I come to the realization that that isn’t for another nine months and I spiral out of control again into a heap of tears.  How am I going to do this for nine whole months?  I am scared I won’t recover from this.  That I won’t be able to last and have a nervous breakdown.  I want to see you and know that you are okay.  I want to know what you are thinking and how I can help you through this.  Are you scared, lonely, and wondering if you are wishing you had gone to California Baptist University instead?  Do you miss us at all?  Are you clinging to God the way I am clinging to Him now trying to process all of these feelings and doubting that my strength is enough to fight this torture of emotion?  Are you praying and crying out to God for direction?  Do you know that your family is here pining for you and longing for you?  Do you know how much you are loved and missed?  I can’t tell you any of this, which is why I am writing this down so that one day you will know what your mother went through during this season of transition for the both of us.  What the mother of a missionary experiences and feels.  To be full of so much pride and joy and excitement, but also full of sadness, grief, and pain all at once. 

We will get through this because we have Him.  He will carry us through.  He will give us the strength.  He will comfort us when we are missing you so much our hearts actually hurt.  I will pray to Him for you and for us.  I will intercede on your behalf as you venture out to the mission field.  I will be on my knees pleading on your behalf for safety and protection.  I miss you, Son.  I love you fully and completely and unconditionally.  Do your work, but come home to us.  Come home to me.  This mother needs her son.  I need to see you.  I need to hug you.  I need to know you are okay, but just come home.