Cox News Service

When Bill and Cathy Johnson threw a going away party for their college-bound daughter this summer, it felt more like a wake than a celebration.

"It hit me in a very unusual and unexpected way," says Cathy, 54, of Sandy Springs, Ga. "I thought it would be happy, but my emotions were raw. It's a very emotional time because you realize there's no going back from here. And I'm going to miss her terribly."

The Johnsons' youngest child, Addie, 18, is flying the coop, leaving her anxious parents home alone in an eerily quiet empty nest. She's enrolled at the University of Colorado, 1,228 miles away.

The Johnsons aren't alone. This season, as children leave home for college, thousands of Atlantans and millions of Americans are struggling to adapt to newly empty nests. For some the transition is easy; for many others it's a time of sudden crying jags, lumps in the throat, insomnia, short tempers, lethargy, confusion, quavering voices and anxiety so extreme that the mere sight of a single smelly basketball shoe in a cleaned-out empty closet can set off a really stinky marital squabble, even among happy couples.

Long-time family counselors Claudia and David Arp, authors of "Fighting for Your Empty Nest Marriage (Jossey-Bass, $24.99), say divorce rates spike about 15 percent when couples reach the empty nest years. It's the second most perilous period for marriages, following only the notorious seven-year-itch period following nuptials.

"It's a time when everything changes," she says. "You lose your identity. A lot of empty nesters start losing their emotional connectedness. You've been so busy with your kids that, all of a sudden, you have time to talk but not much to say. It's very scary."

Adds Johnne Armentrout, a family counselor and professor at Wake Forest University: "You suddenly realize your influence on your children is greatly diminished when they leave home, and you're wondering, 'Have I done all I should? Have I been the kind of parent I wanted to be? Are they going to be safe, happy, successful?'

"It's harder on the boomer generation because we've had the luxury of becoming more involved. Now we know we're losing control, and that's frightening. And for people in shaky marriages, there's nothing left to hold them together."

But most will survive and even thrive more than ever before, says psychologist Howard Markman, an expert on marriage at the University of Denver. "According to studies, this is the happiest stage of many couples' lives if they are able to get through it."

For many couples, the immediate task is to get over the angst, fears and tears they're experiencing.

"We have a wonderful marriage, and my husband and I are best friends, but we're still taking this very rough," says Page Morgan, a 44-year-old east Cobb real estate agent whose "baby," Andrew, is now a freshman at the University of Mississippi.

"We're contemplating how on earth we will continue without children. It is a major change in our life. I've had some weepy times since graduation in May. We're a close family, and it's like we're breaking up and nobody's mad at one another."

Adds husband Ed: "You're having a chunk taken out of your heart that is irreplacable. The wound heals, but you still have a void, and it'll heal up. But for now, the wound is there."

Wounds were obvious last weekend at the University of Georgia, when thousands of freshmen checked into their dorms. Some parents dabbed at their eyes. Hugs held until embarrassed teens could pry themselves away.

"You can leave now, mom," said Jeremy Brook, 18, as his mother Sue, her voice quivering, kept herself too busy to cry.

"Just a little bit longer Jere," she replied, forcing a smile. "We've got to get your room straight."

"Let's go, Sue," said his grim-faced dad, Maury, of east Cobb. "It's time."

Parents whose kids haven't left yet, like Jay and Barbara Halpern of Sandy Springs, say they've been feeling the time running out for weeks.

"You realize part of your life is over with," said Barbara, whose daughter Katie, is headed next week to Indiana University. "I'm very sad. You know you've done everything you can and now they are on their own. It'll never be the same. That part of your life is over."

Finality - the end of an era and a stage in life - seems to be a universal theme.

Emma Gilbert, 50ish, of east Cobb, is sending her son Charles to Howard University in Washington but claims "my mind is content." Then she adds. "This is almost like losing your child. It's going to be totally different. It'll be hard to get used to not hearing the stereo or TV or the tapping of his fingers on the computer at 1 a.m. I don't think the sting will ever go away."

Not all parents are as willing to reveal their pain, and some insist they're looking forward to being able to live a life devoid of youth activities and harping on whether homework's done.

"I feel I have prepared for this," says Debbie Levin, 47, of Sandy Springs, whose daughter Wendy is now a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. "I don't have to stay up till 1 a.m. anymore. I'll finally get to spend some time with my husband."

Then, almost as an afterthought, she admits there is a down side.

"But I am scared to death. They'll have total freedom. Stay up all night. Those are the things that make me want to cry."

Experts like Markman say this kind of gut-wrenching confusion is common. Parents feel proud their kids are finally spreading their wings, but sad to see them go and worried about how well they'll fare.

Ed Morgan, father of Ole Miss-bound Andrew, says he's "anxious to see the product of our handiwork, how we've done."

Such major transitions occur in every country, but seem to cause more parental trauma in America, says anthropologist Michael Dean Murphy of the University of Alabama, an expert on primative and modern societies.

"American culture puts an extraordinary heavy load on the nuclear family," he says. "I know a lot of people whose social world revolves around spouse and kids and maybe a few friends from work. Take a couple of kids out of that mix and you have deducted a big chunk of someone's socialability. People in other socities don't put so many emotional eggs in one basket.

"But," he adds, "to miss your kids is an index of how much you like interacting with them, and that cannot be all bad."

Dr. Betty Polston, a California-based clinical psychologist and co-author of "Loving Midlife Marriage: A Guide to Keeping Romance Alive from the Empty Nest Through Retirement," (John Wiley, $14.95) has lived through the empty nest period and insists the best times come after the kids leave.

"Right now, people feel like their soul is missing," she says. "You're in an ending at first, a nowhere zone, where you're just floating around, wondering what's next. But then there's a new beginning."

Copyright 2001 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.