summers end

The end of summer typically hits me the first week of August. Right after my sister's birthday I start to wind down and feel 'summers end' at my fingertips. The anxiety is as certain as the waves that crash the shore of my favorite beach.

It's almost classic that I overwhelm myself, measure my summer in terms of what I did, where I will be next year, and yearn to stay.

This year the end of summer is no different to the way I feel. Although I had the longest summer of my life, it went by equally as fast.

However, it felt different because I no longer leave with the inability to return all year. I am now closer to home and can stop in for holidays.

I utilized this, and for once, I was present on Labor Day unlike my brother and sister who were too far away at school to join the family. The dynamic shifted.

It is something I am still getting used to, but I am grateful for.

I made that conscious decision when I chose to live in Boston for the next (at least) 3 years. While I do love being near home, it doesn't feel eldest daughter of me.

As much as I hate leaving, sometimes it was easier being the one who left.

I had my 'summers end' mourning period three weeks later than normal and watched my friends and family return to their lives at school, in different cities, or just back to schedule.

While I am now moved in and in the depths of law school, I am still adjusting to eldest daugthering close to home and it took me a while to get into a routine. Law school starting was my new measure of 'summers end'.

The change of it all has had me queasy, which is expected to happen since I typically fear change and the end of summer in every aspect.

I believe I fear the end of summer because I so deeply enjoy the 'now'.

I love the ages my siblings and I are at. My little brother is still little, but next summer he will be going on his second year of high school. My other brother will be admitted to college and all my brothers friends voices will continue to lower as they all grow taller than me. My sister will be nearing her senior year of college. I will be going into my second year of law school. We will most likely have a new puppy in the house.

It is full of unknowns, question marks, new things, and potentially exciting opportunities that frighten me to death. I feel an overwhelming pressure to soak up everything I have around me each 'summers end'.

Bittersweet only begins to explain watching your siblings grow into themselves.

It is another bittersweet feeling to take a step back and look at all I have accomplished. I graduated college, I am in law school, I moved into my first post-grad apartment! Wow, it's bittersweet.

I catch myself fighting my own adulthood and hope that I can return to the place with the people I love most. "Just one more summer" would solve everything so that's what I tell myself over and over again. I fight 'summers end' because in summer everything is still young and together.

Although, this summer taught me that there is nothing as hard as the permanence of grief -- and how adulthood will unfortunately be filled with it.

It has been just over a month since a piece of my heart and soul went to dog heaven. I still cry over his unexpected death and wonder if I will ever get over it.

I remember the past couple weeks before he passed - when we didn't even know he was sick - I would look at him and just think of how weird it would be the day he left us. How awkward it would be to walk one dog, the sadness we would feel to not have him on his bed, or to come home after a long day and not be greeted at the door by his bark and sweet face.

I would look at him, ever since he turned ten in July, and just not want to imagine a world where he wasn't a FaceTime call or trip home away.

That was another reason I was so excited to live close to home again, because I would have been able to see him much more during the school years.

Everything around me is a reminder of him and the fact that death is so permanent. I never stop thinking about him, how he is doing, and if he is okay.

As a law student, I am on my laptop a hundred times a day. Mickey had been my laptop password since 2017 when I got my first laptop days before my freshman year of high school.

I was sat at my kitchen table, had to set a laptop password I wouldn't forget, looked at Mickey - and never changed it. I thought it would be a good reminder during the school day when I would miss him.

It still serves as a good reminder, just a different one.

Back then I could hardly bear eight hours of a school day without him, never mind the rest of my life on Earth.

Maybe I am holding onto this summer so strongly because I am closer to home and still miss it, but also because summer 2025 will be the last summer that Mickey was here for. It was essentially the last summer of my childhood. I mean, isn't that what happens when your childhood dog dies, you're just old now.

Another sad 'summers end', the true end of Mickey and I's walks to the pond, runs at the end of our street, and sitting on the porch sunbathing together.

I won't get another summer like the one I just had, and then I remind myself, that each summer looks differently than the one before. I never had a summer like this past summer - they are all slightly different and each year everyone is older.

It is not inherently a bad thing. We are supposed to evolve, and share different summers, with new or less friends, more change, different jobs; there's no sense in fighting it.

I just dislike the pressure behind the benchmark of measurement I have created around 'summers end'.

I never liked New Years Day - the holiday or the day itself. My personal year or phase of life was determined by my 'summers end'. How old I was, my siblings and dogs were, what age I was entering in school and where I predicted I would be the following summer. Always hoping it was back with my family at my favorite place.

I know that life moves on, summers come and go, and no matter how hard I try to stay, it won't work. Each summer looks slightly different, and that's just part of life and the permanence of change.

We are meant to experience a summers end. A benchmark of growth until we can reassess the next 'summers end'.

I won't forget this past summer, and truthfully, it is one of the most meaningful ones I've ever had. As I still quote stories from summer 2021, 2023 or 2016, 2019 - I know this summer will always be one to look back on. Another year measured by beautiful summer stories to tell, without as much pressure attached to the ending of it (I'm working on that).

Overall, this 'summers end' made me realize how I truly measure my year in terms of summer, and that no matter how each 'summers end' looks, the change is both a loss and a beginning. No matter how painful change can be, it is a beautiful measurement of growth to look back on.

Eldest daughter and yearner of the year,

Jane