To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and
possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no
one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all
entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket––
safe, dark, motionless, airless––it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is
damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and
perturbations of love is Hell.
—C. S. Lewis

Emily’s father died suddenly, tragically, of a heart attack at the age of 54. The family was devastated. At a particularly low point my favorite mother-in-law understandably lamented, “It seems like we shouldn’t love too much if it hurts this much when they leave us.” Deep, deep loves lead to deep, deep pain. Warm, loving, joyful marriages and home life lead to grievous loss when those marriages and families break up, which inevitably they must. Our months of preparation came to an end on August 11, as we waved goodbye to Sally at the University of Georgia. The idea of Sally as a “Bulldog” has not come easily to the Johnson household. Native born and deeply rooted Georgians find our outlook to be a mystery. Let’s just say that a vast cultural distance lies between Los Angeles (Terry) and Miami (Emily), and Georgia red and black. “How ‘bout them dawgs” doesn’t, can’t, won’t roll off the tongue of this California boy. Sally was admitted to UGA, no mean feat these days. She accepted admission in April. The day after she confirmed her enrollment we pulled up to the light at Abercorn and White Bluff next to a red pick–up with twin UGA flags flapping in the wind, and a huge black letter “G” in the back window, with the lettering, “Go Dawgs.” I’ll say no more.

We found the campus to be beautiful, the staff wonderfully pleasant and southern, and the students sharp. Sally’s dormitory, Brumby Hall, is all girls, sparing us the absurdity of a “co-ed” dorm, among the worst of the ideas to come out of the 1960’s. She has an attractively decorated room, wonderful roommate, and is signed up to take Dr. Henry F. Schaeffer’s Freshman Seminar (Schaeffer, you may remember, is a PCA ruling elder and a multiple Nobel Prize nominee, and a friend of the family.) As Emily and I waved goodbye, the three of us cried, repeating the traumatic scene of the last two years with the boys. We’re just not very good at this. Why are we such wimps? Why is this so sad? After all, she’s only four hours down the road.

I’ve tried to analyze this. I think there are a number of reasons. One has to do with separation from your child. As I looked at Sally throughout the day of her move into the dorm, I could see reflections of her face as a little girl: the twinkle in her eye, her pouty checks, her “sassy” personality. Sally was a determined little girl from the very beginning. She was particularly eager to keep up with her big brothers. Consequently she never complained, lest someone suggest she was too little for a given activity or “just a girl.” On the family’s lone visit to Disney World Sam whined and cried the whole time, demanding to be carried. Sally: ne’er a word. In fact, Sally was known to express her future hopes with the aspiration, “When I grow up and bees a boy . . .” Somehow she got the idea that the girl phase was temporary. Sally didn’t play one second of her SPAL 8th grade championship volleyball game. She warmed the bench. When she got home she burst into tears saying, “I’m the only Johnson who’s not athletic.” But by her junior year she was starting on her high school’s varsity volleyball team, and by her senior year was named honorable mention all-region. Determined, sassy, funny; each child is unique. A part of our heart leaves with her.

We weep also for her siblings. Abby and Ben don’t know life without Sally. Every night of their lives Sally and Abby have closed their eyes with the other across the room and awakened with the same. Since they were little girls they have chattered away into the night. Ben wants to know who is going to make us laugh now that Sally is gone. One of our church members, who was the youngest in a family of multiple siblings, ran and hid when her third sibling left for college. We also are saddened because with the departure of each child it becomes clearer that a central task of life is drawing nigh. The commitment to marry ordinarily is a commitment to rear a family together. Childrearing has been the primary job that Emily and I have tackled. Its joys and sorrows, its excitement and exhaustion, its challenges and rewards have been our main occupation. We look back on vanishing years with irrepressible melancholy: our holidays, our vacations, our family devotions; the cribs and playpens and highchairs and car seats; the pampers and onesies and Peter Pan collars; meal–time, bath–time, story–time, bed–time, mommy and daddy collapse in exhaustion time. I was their hero then. Drew, Sam and Sally thought I played for the Braves (it was the church softball team). How they loved their mommy! This phase, the child–rearing phase, only comes around once. I know that Emily and I will love the next phase. We’ll have the freedom to travel, to do what we want when we want. But how can one not shed tears as this precious time passes, never to be repeated?

On the other side of the country, my mother is very weepy. Fifty–eight years is a long time. She made the transition from her father’s house to her husband’s in March of 1951. That central reality of her life, life with Gerald, did not change until June 18, 2009. She will adjust. But she will continue to weep for some time to come. She is enduring the “perturbations of love.” When we marry and have children we are exposing ourselves to the dangers of love: hearts wrung and broken, sad departures, and grievous separations. Sadness comes in direct proportion to the heights of love’s joys. It is the price we pay. The only greater price would be a loveless life, to not be in a position to pay the price of love at all.