In a little over an hour, I will be sitting on a hill watching my second daughter, Miranda, graduate from college. She is only seventeen but has excelled in the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA. It is a time of great joy, yet it is complicated joy.

When she was much younger, her mother and I divorced. It was a painful time for me. Later, I met Kim, whose mother was dying of cancer. As I tried to make sense of things, I took an online college class in grief counseling. It was an interesting experience for me. I had dropped out of college two decades earlier, and this was long before online education had become as prevalent as it is today.

One of the things I learned about was “complicated grief”. There are times that we grieve someone or something that we have unresolved issues about. We grieve things that we may feel disenfranchised from, that others might think we have no right to grieve about. There are many things that can complicate our grief, but we grieve nonetheless.

So, today, I celebrate Miranda’s graduation with complicated joy. I did not get to give her all the things I would have liked to as a father. I did not manage to hold my family together, although I did manage to help create a new, more complicated family structure for her. I did not get to contribute as much financially to her education as I would have liked. I did not get as much time to talk with her about the struggles and successes of her education.

Yet, in spite of my failings, she has excelled, and I have every reason to believe she will continue to excel. There is a great relief in realizing that our children can excel in spite of our own shortcomings. It is an important part of them gaining their own independence and sense of self worth. Yet it is also hard to see them fly the nest.

So, today, I’ll hold back tears of joy, and perhaps a little sadness, as my second daughter heads boldly out of college deeper into the wonderful adventure of her life.

Congratulations, Miranda.