Filling the Empty Nest

Sept. 1, 2025

As a home grows quiet, couples can draw closer to God and each other through prayer and gestures of love

By Brian Caulfield

Sept. 1, 2025

My wife and I are adapting to a new stage in of life: semi-empty nesters. One son has “grown and flown,” as a popular parental-advice website puts it, and our younger son is halfway through college. For most of the year, we live with two empty bedrooms, a host of memories and the faint echo of our sons’ voices at the dinner table. Moving along an uncharted path, we are learning to reclaim our original identity as husband and wife.

After we dropped off our younger boy at college two years ago, I said to my wife, “I know we’ll always love one another, but now we’ll see if we still like one another.” A shared laugh was followed by an awkward silence as we realized that my words were truer than intended. On the long drive home, we tested out our empty-nester status by talking about matters unrelated to our sons. At the first rest stop, however, we were back to wondering whether our firstborn was happy at work and whether our younger son would make friends on campus.

In our wedding vows, we promised to accept and nurture the children God would send us, and just as marriage forever changed us, so have the births of our children. I am forever a father, and my wife is forever a mother, though we, too, mature as our children grow and set out on their own.

Although no experts, my wife and I have learned a few lessons. As a new group of parents joins the empty-nester club this fall, we offer a few words of advice for navigating this new stage of life:

Pray together. A shared Catholic faith is a great consolation, knowing that amid life’s changes God’s love and guidance remain constant. A rosary before bedtime has been a wonderful way for my wife and me to daily offer up our joys and frustrations.

Pray for your children. They may be physically remote, but prayer draws them deeper into your heart. Offer your Sunday Mass and Communion for them, trusting God to provide the graces they need.

Remember affection. Renew the small acts of love — a hug, a kiss, holding hands. With fewer daily demands, we have rediscovered time to look into each other’s eyes and even talk about our future together. And then, of course, we talk about our boys.

*****

BRIAN CAULFIELD is vice postulator of the cause for canonization of Blessed Michael McGivney and past grand knight of Holy Family Council 8882 in New Haven, Conn.

Supper at Emmaus (oil on canvas) by Rembrandt (1606-1669) (Photo Josse / Bridgeman Images)

Filling the Empty Nest

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