Our Passages
I just had an email from a cousin I haven't connected with in about 30 years, I think. Well, I have 26 first cousins, and sometimes we just don't darn well get together.
Anyway, she wrote to tell me that her father, my uncle by marriage, had just died. I was sorry to hear that. He was a nice man. I also thought that his death makes a clean sweep of that generation of my own father's family.
I realized as I was reading her letter that my own father died exactly a decade ago today. I'm still not certain how I feel about that. I was telling a close friend a short time ago that on the wall of my office is a picture. In the picture are my parents, my paternal grandparents, my dad's two sisters, his brother-in-law (the one who just died), his aunt and uncle, and my great-grandmother. Oh, and me. I am an utterly adorable little blonde-haired boy, and I realized that I knew all those people, and I knew them well, and now I am the only one this side of the lawn. I don't know if I find that chilling, but I certainly find it is a pause-for-thought moment. The pause being -- wow! That was fast!
Sunrise-sunset, swiftly flow the years. One season following the other; filled with happiness and tears.
I recall a friend telling me a few years ago, after his father had died, that an aunt came to him at the service and said, "Well, Harry. Now you're the older generation." Wait, he thought. I don't want to be the older generation. I'm not ready yet. I want my father to still be there to handle that end of things. I'm still trying to find myself.
Do we ever 'find ourselves'? Did my father ever find himself? I don't think he did. His wife (hey, that would be my mother, wouldn't it?) preceded him to the trip to the lower floor four years previously, and that knocked a lot of wind out of him. After that he mainly watched TV and played solitaire. I went to see him a few times. He didn't have a lot to say. I don't think he really died find himself.
I don't mean to be callous when I suggest I don't know how I feel about my father's death. But, really, I don't. We weren't exactly close. We weren't a real loving family. I've often wondered what that is like.
All I know is that in trying to 'find myself' I resolved at the time of my father's death to become the most loving person I possibly could. And I have. And it works. And it's quite wonderful.
Say, maybe he really did teach me something after all.
posted by Ian Lidster at
4:27 PM
3 Comments:
Ian, you've been listening in on my conversations. I'm sure of it now.
With the death of my mother 7 years ago, we cousins became the "old people." And we know it ... we're starting to go ... one at a time.
Two so far ... one morealmost went last month, and will certainly not be hanging around long.
Ian, I don't think we "find ourselves" ... we just find deeper places within ourselves for the questions to hide in. Any new realization is only fodder for a renewed stream of new "Why's?"
And the really sad thing is ... time doesn't care. It inexorably races forward in spite of our trying to ignore the dizzying vertigo of the days and weeks whooshing past.
Touching base with cousins you haven't seen in 30 years dredges up the questions of what happened to the things we'd planned to do with our lives the last time we'd been in touch ... and we're amazed at how we just never had the time ...
It’s too glorious a day for you to feel sad, Mr. L.
Life is short and it sounds to me as if you have not only learned to make the best of it, but to fully enjoy it. Sometimes when we look back on our lives all we see are ghosts. We can’t bring them back and we can’t change anything.
I have learned to sit through really, long, boring meetings wearing my glasses with the eyes painted on. Gawd.
My dear Josie: Thank you for sharing your thoughts. They are always poignant, and invariably funny, with your painted on eyes.
And, Moof, always like it when you touch base, and you have well-considered thoughts and concepts to pass on, much as you do in your own blog. Thank you.
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