ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (AP) — The past couple of weeks have been busy for Libby Jones. The Savannah High School graduate’s days have been spent packing for college, buying last-minute items like an iron, making sure her student loans are in place and spending quality time with her friends who aren’t making the trip to the University of Missouri in Columbia with her.

She’s also been trying to spend quality time with her parents, who aren’t looking forward to the time when they have to say goodbye. It’s a right of passage that every parent dreads: packing up their babies and sending them off to college.

“I’m going to try really hard not to cry,” says Tammie Jones.

Tammie and her husband, Darrell, will soon drive Libby, their third and final daughter to leave home, to Columbia.

A mother who had her children young and never worked outside her home, Jones is uncertain how she’ll feel once she doesn’t have the day-to-day activities of her daughter to keep her busy.

“Come this fall, it will be lonesome,” she says. “No more football, no more cheerleading. But we’re trying to pick a few things we’d like to do.”

They’re starting with a trip to Branson with a group of friends. The Joneses are going straight from Columbia to Branson, so they don’t have to face an empty house right away.

Sam and Sue Abarr are facing a similar situation. They’re sending twins Austin and Ashley to college this fall. This is the first time the Abarrs have had children leave home, and it will be the last; the twins are their only children.

“It’s kind of bittersweet,” Sue Abarr says. “You’re excited for them, but having two at once is kind of hard.

“I guess I always knew this day would come, so you kind of, in the back of your mind, keep it there that this is what you raised them for, but it’s hard.”

Austin has been busy working this summer, and daughter Ashley has been in Africa as a student U.N. ambassador for the past six weeks, which has helped the Abarrs ease into life without children in the house.

“It’s going to be hard, though, having them both go at once, but all parents of twins have this dilemma to go through,” Sue Abarr says.

“When they’re gone the house is so quiet.”

Like Jones, Abarr is finding that the impending departure of her children has made her think more about what she wants to do with her life.

“It made me think a lot. Now they’re going on and doing their life, what do I want to do now? I’ve just recently retired, so it’s made think, what do I want to do now?” she says. “I’m debating if I want to go back to school or just stay at home. I haven’t made up my mind.”

But while the parents are contemplating life without the constant presence of their children, and dreading the goodbyes, their children aren’t having as hard of a time.

“I think they’ll be suffering a lot more than I will,” says Austin Abarr, who will be attending Kansas State. His sister is heading to Wellesley College outside Boston.

Libby Jones has actively tried to downplay her excitement when talking about college, so she doesn’t hurt her parents’ feelings.

“I don’t ever want to sound too excited,” she says, “because I don’t want them to think I don’t like to hang out with them.”

Both Jones and Abarr say they’re happy their children are excited to go off to college, because it means they’ve done their jobs as parents, preparing their kids to go off into the real world. But that doesn’t make it much easier to let them go.

“You know they’re going to good places and you’re excited for them,” Abarr says, “but you’re kind of selfish because you want to keep them around forever.”

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