My second and youngest son, Ian, went to high school for the last time Friday and graduates at 17 today. With that ends a long chapter of his life, his mother’s and mine. Thousands of young adults and parents across El Paso and around the country will go through the same rite this month.

Friday morning, Ian agreed, a little reluctantly, to meet me in front of Coronado High so I could take a photo of him before he went in. It's a nice picture that will go with the one I snapped the day a very little boy with a bright, red lunch box walked into Peace Lutheran Church’s pre-k school for the first time.

Then, as on Friday, I drove away fighting back tears without fully understanding why. But on both occasions, I knew things would be different from that day on, and that was at once joyous and heart-wrenching.

Last days are like that.

I remember driving Ian to school for what I knew would be the last time before he got his first car last year. Three years earlier, I said something to both of them about it when his brother, Chris, got an old, $1,200 car and couldn’t wait to start driving himself to school.

So ended the mad mornings of breakfasts together and rushing out, taking one to Coronado and the other to Franklin High (that’s another story), joking and squabbling over assignments, grades, music, uncombed hair, no jackets, lost jackets, mean teachers and lunch money that would be ill spent on junk food, burgers, fries, pizza and Coke.

Nobody eats at school! We did. Yeah, that was then!

That sweet ritual ended abruptly, though it was repeated a few times when Chris' car broke down or ran into something. Mornings became easier, less stressful and more solitary.

Then, came the next question: “When are you going to get a job?”

It, too, is one of those rites of passage. And when the oldest finally landed an ice cream shop job and started earning money for gas and entertainment, that was great. Who could complain?

But his hours were awful. There were suddenly fewer nights, dinners and lazy weekends together. Quick camping trips and vacations became a problem. Our time together was growing short, and I knew it.

Then came college, that long ride across the state together and the longer drive back to El Paso without Chris.

Ian has gone the coffee house employment route, and it too has meant long hours at work, counseling about the inevitable testing by a nasty boss and hopes, recently realized, for a better new one.

In a couple of months, we'll be taking a drive across Texas together, and I’ll come back alone.

For parents, letting go and last days are so much a part of two decades of childrearing and so common to all of us that you might say it’s hardly worth writing about, or reading. But we come to know through this process -- common to all, yet unique to each -- that it is a profound experience that can go well or tragically from one child to the next.

It also happens to be one hell of a ride, full of joy and pain, and the most important one most of us will take on this earth.

I still remember the sage advice I and two other fathers received from Alicia Castro, principal of the former Olga Kohlberg Pre-K and Kindergarten School on Doniphan: Spend all the time you can with them now, because in no time, they'll be gone. Trite but true.

My biggest complaint about my boys' final years of secondary education -- aside from the wasted days of mind-numbing rehearsals for TAKS and other such tests -- is the fact that they took a combined five years of Spanish and emerged unable to carry on a simple conversation or even ask for a fork in a restaurant.

Now, thinking about it, my biggest complaint is the thing for which I probably should be most grateful. I mean, if that's my major gripe after all these years, I'd have to call it a blessing.

David Crowder is a reporter for Newspaper Tree.