Four days of fun and mayhem conclude with hugs and kisses and “bye-bye’s” and I turn so I don't have to see the car pull out of the drive. My daughter, son-in-law, and youngest grandson have to go home six long hours away.

I have coping skills that get me past the hard part of saying farewell and returning to my relatively well-ordered life. First, I honor and make allowances for the sad and give it the right of way as it runs its course through my heart and gently leaks out of my eyes. And then I take a deep breath and begin the process of reclaiming the house.

There’s work to be done, though it really isn’t work if it’s a labor of love is it? After all how difficult is it to strip sheets and wash towels? That certainly isn’t the hard part of good-bye. Picking up toys and putting them away isn’t the least bit taxing. In the few seconds it takes to wipe off precious little fingerprints from glass tables and doors it’s as though they never had been there. Nothing hard about reaching under chairs and sofas to ferret out balls, cars and Lego’s either.

Nope, those things definitely do not make up the hard part.

Even cleaning up the kitchen, eating the last fish-shaped cheese is pretty easy. In fact, the mundane tasks of cleaning up after total emersion in the manic life that revolves around a highly charged two and half year old is somewhat therapeutic and becomes the much needed transition period I need to process the previous chaos and file it into well-sorted memories. So, the hardest part is neither the saying good-bye nor the cleaning-up.

No, the hard part is the silence.