I set this up a year ago with the intentions of writing more “long form” rather than “less than 200 word paragraphs so I don’t get TL;DR responses on Facebook”.
If you follow me on FB, you know that fourteen months ago my Dad died. Six weeks ago my Mom died. I survived ass cancer (for now, it’s a five year plan…).
So.
I buried my Mom about a month ago. Along with burying her, I buried a lot of baggage I had with my Dad for keeping her alive against her explicit advance directives in her will. Because of his cowardice (and yes, love) he subjected her (and consequently us who had to care for her) to three years of pain. The concept and discussion of whether it was “necessary/unneccesary”, spiritual, or somehow salvific is another whole thing for later.
On July 7, the anniversary of my Dad’s death, we thought she was on her way out. “Dad is calling her” we thought…. But she rallied, I think, to give him the “finger” one last time. Two weeks later she passed, on her own time. The same way she did everything in their marriage.
I have a lot of things to work out now. The Wifey and I have taken care of three parents for 1/3 of our marriage. Working things out is not a linear process, it is more like “connect the dots”: a random line from here to there, close to the beginning, then toward the end, then back to the middle. And eventually, when you connect enough dots a bigger picture emerges.
I have no idea what the big picture looks like. For now this blog will be explicating the dots and trying to connect them. In the process I hope to connect to my readers. There’s a lot of people out there who are faced with frail, aging parents and the looming responsibility of caring for them… perhaps in the face of distressing and even horrific pasts.
In the end, perhaps I’ll have something worthy of hammering out a manuscript. Or not. Either way, I, like all of us, need to hammer out my relationship with my parents… and seeing that through, perhaps even to be present to watch them die, is something none of us can avoid.
And I will not avoid the brutality of the anvil of familial love here.