A Rare "Medium"

My typical Friday night modus operandi is to get home from work as quickly as possible, shuck off my work clothes, change into jeans and a sweatshirt and do some serious vegging. The pinnacle of the evening is at 9 p.m., when I sink onto the sofa with an enormous bowl of popcorn and watch "Medium."
For you non-watchers, the show is based on the life of true-life psychic and crime solver Allison DuBois. I am not a crime show fan, but this show blends a (usually gory/creepy) crime Allison must solve with her home life, where she is married and the mom of three daughters. Her husband is a patient, good-humored honey of a man, and her daughters are written as real girls, not stereotypical TV kids.
Last night was the season finale. It was unusual in that most of the action took place while Allison slept. I won't regale you with the whole plot, just the part that hit home with me. Allison's oldest daughter, Ariel, was thrilled to receive an acceptance letter from Dartmouth College - a long way away from Arizona, where the DuBois family lives. Allison panicked, and immediately began trying to plot ways to keep Ariel from leaving.
Joe refused to scheme along. "It's her life. It's her future," he reminded his distraught wife.
That night Allison dreamed that she died, and that she appeared to Ariel, enlisting her to serve as the family caretaker under her mother's guidance. She also pressed Ariel into taking Allison's job as a crime solver for the district attorney's office.
As you can imagine, things didn't go well. Ariel struggled to balance living her mother's life with living her own life as a young adult. She ended up foregoing Dartmouth to live at home and attend community college.
At last Ariel, torn between her desire to please her mother and her longing to lead the simple life of a college co-ed, erupts. Go away, she tells her mother. "Go to your grave, and I'll visit you on Mother's Day and Christmas." She pulls a bottle of liquor out of her nightstand drawer and downs several shots, relaxing as the alcohol dims her awareness of her mother's smothering spirit.
It ends well, of course. Allison awakens, thrilled to be among the living, to have another chance. To be able to look her oldest daughter in the eye and encourage her to claim her bright new future. They both laugh and cry, promising to keep in touch with phone calls, texts and e-mails.
It's so hard to let go of your children. When they're little time seems to pass so slowly, weighed down as it is with the constant attentiveness and sheer physical labor that raising small children demands. But when you've finally done it, raised self-sufficient young adults ready to fly the nest, it all seems to have passed in the time it takes to sing a lullaby.
I understand Allison's desire to hold on to her daughter. With one child still under my roof and the other two living only a few minutes' drive away, I still miss them sometimes. I miss being central in their lives. It was exhausting and sometimes exasperating, but sometimes I'd give anything to do it all again. I just have to settle for being grateful for the opportunity to have done it at all.