Today is a beautiful day. It's sunny and it rained last night, so the air is fresh and everything is green and lush. I can hear the frogs from the nearby creek both night and day, and their chorus of joy makes me grateful to be alive and complaining about aging. So much of my family and my husband's are gone. We are the matriarch and patriarch, and it still seems like a bad joke. I assumed I'd have stronger opinions as I got older, but not so. There seems to be very little that is black and white - just a lot of gray areas like a broken TV. When one of our kids asks us for advice, my impulse is still to turn around to see who they're talking to. My parents were adamant that they knew what my brother and I should be doing, the choices we should make. It was like being sucked towards the eye of a volcano, and it was hard to pull away, and hold our own. I think I did a lot of dishonest pretending to be in agreement rather than go though arguments that never went anywhere. I quickly would lose my sense of self and feel self critical from their point of view. My mother died at 61, so I don't think she made any real transition to uncertainty, but my father, the few months after she died before he himself died (he was 65), was loosening up. He got curious, and seemed to want to see how the world looked from my point of view. Inching away from rigidity toward more acceptance and just settling for loving me, instead of attempting to direct my life. I often wonder what would have happened had he lived a bit longer. What talks we might have had.
Though that may be romanticizing the whole parent/child relationship. I don't think any of our kids is ready to share much of themselves with us. It may be natural, a protection against emeshment, or they haven't reached the age when they see us as ordinary human beings and get curious. I'm curious about them but don't want to pry, as my parents felt perfectly righteous in doing. What a delicate balance it all is!
It makes one me wonder about leaving a letter to each of the kids, tucked in our safe deposit box, saying all the things I want them to know I understand about them, and their lives with us, and wishing them well. I haven't done it yet though. That would be quite a letter, and I can't get over the thought that it would have to be perfect, and I don't yet know what that perfect is.
But when my parents died, I so much wished I had letters or some writing from them. There was nothing. They had cleaned out every card, letter, personal item. To see their signatures even, I had to look on their driver's licenses, passports and tax returns. I miss their handwriting. I wonder why they saved nothing we wrote them. It can't really be interpreted, as there are simply no clues. But they were never sentimental, either one of them. My mom had a bureau drawer full of a hodgepodge of photos, some baby rings and a pair of baby shoes. There were a couple of elementary school report cards of my brother's. That was it. They didn't save cards from their four grandchildren, or their siblings, or their parents. If I hadn't had an uncle who gave me his old photos of him and my dad and their family, I'd have no photographic evidence of their existence.
Maybe that's best. But as you get older you realize there are all these choices. And each decision is open to endless interpretation after you're gone.
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