My daughter graduated from Grade Six yesterday

On the weekend, during my time alone at the beach, I saw a father playing with his daughter. I realized that I have passed that point three times now. I am no longer the boy who played endlessly in the water with his father. I am no longer the father of a red-head girl who played in the McNabb wading pool with her Dad. And I am in the waning days of that time with a blond girl who has crested five feet in height.

Yesterday my youngest graduated from grade school. I remember thinking grumpily weeks ago that they seem to graduate from just about everything now – even graduation from kindergarten seems to require a prom dress, I thought to myself cynically.

But as my daughter walked down the aisle between the seats dressed in her Sunday finest, leaving this school she has been at for so long, my eyes watered, and my heart stirred with sudden feeling. I have felt these movements of the heart at every threshold, every doorway, from the time she was a blue baby, newly arrived. And for every door that closes, even this one, a new one opens. I am losing my little girl, but the years in which this young woman comes into her own have not even really begun.

As they showed the PowerPoint slide that showed the children as they looked on their first day of school and how they look now, I was grateful it was dark. As they played Sarah McLachlan's “I will Remember You,” and my daughter's then and now picture displayed, tears streamed down my face. Nothing ends without a beginning.

Still, the loss of anything is a sadness nonetheless. I think of the words of St. Augustine, who said, “Of all this I found myself suddenly deprived, and it was a comfort to me to weep...”