What road? AKA As usual I spend too much time worrying AKA Hug your kids
I drove the up the road to
Deep River twice in 5 days last week, both times to go to funeral alternatives
(one memorial and one visitation) and I have, once again, started to count my
blessings.
The first funeral I remember
attending was my paternal grandfather’s. He died well into his 90’s. For quite
some time his favourite weekend activity had been to visit his gravestone,
pre-engraved with everything except the date of his death. He was a deeply
religious man and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he had gone straight
to heaven. It was merely the final step in the cycle of life. The family, and
community, gathered, and mourned. But it was not a time of terrible sadness.
Over the past few decades,
however, the funerals I attend seem to make less and less sense. Well, not the
funerals themselves, of course, but the endings of the lives that they
celebrate.
(When my children’s father
died, after a prolonged and painful battle, his Catholic family tried to
console me by explaining that he was in a better place now and that his death
was part of a bigger plan, one that we were not supposed to understand. Our
oldest son had not even graduated from high school. I, certain that he was
merely incredibly unlucky to have lost the cancer lottery and that no plan that
left my children fatherless was one I wanted to have anything to do with, switched
from agnostic to atheist.) (In direct contrast, I note, to my mother, who found
God when my father died.) (But I digress.)
I have come to accept that I
am of an age that those of my parents' generation are dropping like flies. And
I have come to accept that I live in an age where cancer has no mercy at all.
As I attend more and more
funerals I worry that I don’t have the capacity for grief to properly mourn all
of those who pass.
The two most recent events were
each for men only one step removed from me - one a friend of my husband’s and
the other the husband of a friend – and they have left me, once again, reeling.
Both had been slightly older than me, but of my generation. Too young, in other words. There are stories
to go with each of their deaths, though those are not mine to tell and this is
certainly not the place to do so, and, of course, far far more importantly, many
more stories to go with each of their lives.
What is happening?
A friend, not an older
friend, a contemporary, tells me that she has started to read the obituaries in
the Globe and Mail regularly and almost always finds a listing for someone she
had some connection to.
How can this be?
I remember looking at my
hands a long time ago and seeing my mother’s in their place (flecked with age
spots) and looking in the mirror and seeing her face stare back at me (old and
tired and wrinkled) and these observations seemed reasonable, expected even. But
more recently when I look in the mirror it is my grandmother’s face I see
looking back at me (grey hair and jowls) and this I find shocking.
How much time do I have left?
I worry a lot. I worry that I
do not have enough money. I worry that I am not firmly connected to a
community. I worry about my kids. I do not currently worry about my health but
I worry that it will be a future worry.
I have started working part time,
teaching one semester and taking one semester off. ‘I can’t afford to do it,
financially’, I tell people, ‘but I also can’t afford not to, from a life-perspective’
(whatever that means). ‘I don’t have enough pension to live off of, never
will’, I explain to anyone who will listen, ‘but I want to travel now, before I
am too old. Because you never know.’
But despite what I say I
don’t actually think that I will ever be too old to travel.
I don’t actually think that I
will ever be old enough to die.
I feel like a little girl who
says she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up but knows that this is
silly, not because it would be silly to be a ballerina, but because she knows
that she is never going to grow up, she’s going to be a little girl forever.
I joke with my kids about
which of us (us being the three of them and me) will be a real adult first - a
responsible person with a job and a mortgage and a life plan – but it’s
actually not all that funny. I live in a rented house that I am going to give
up in a few months at which point I will literally be of no-fixed-address. I
don’t have a table, or a spare bed, or a real chair even. (I tell the truth. There
are collapsible canvas deck-chairs in my living room for when guests come by,
the type that almost everyone I know might have to take to the beach but
certainly would not have on their decks, or, god-forbid, in their living
rooms.) I don’t have a land line, or a TV, or internet, or even a cell phone
plan. (I tell the truth. I go to McDonalds and use the free wifi there, without
even buying a coffee.) I am most definitely not a real adult. I am not sure if
I am a terribly irresponsible Peter Pan teen or if I have merely jumped over all
those decades when you are supposed to be acquiring quality things; property
and paintings, furniture and friends, and, of course, let us not forget,
pensions, and am more like an eccentric octogenarian who no longer feels need
for money or things.
I read silly quotes online (I’ve
checked my bank balance and see that I will have enough money to live off of
for the rest of my life as long as I die in 48 hours) and these are sometimes a
wee bit close to home.
But…
But…
But…
I don’t worry, yet, about my
health.
I have, as I have said
before, nothing to complain about. Nothing. At all.
I am writing this lounging in
complete comfort on my couch (a cast-off given to me by a friend) and when I
glance up there is a picture window in front of me and through it a million
dollar view right out over the water. I am care-free, having prepared Mondays lessons
before I left school on Friday, guilt-free, having biked for over an hour this
morning, stress-free, having touched base with each of my kids during the
weekend, and happy, as my youngest son is due to arrive soon for supper and is
likely to stay for the summer. A pot of freshly made chicken chili is bubbling
away on the stove top and my bank account, despite a horrifying tax bill that
was sucked out of it last week, is not quite in the red, and my union rep
assures me that, though I might be bumped to yet another school next year, I am
guaranteed a job somewhere when I return from my ill-advised yet greatly
anticipated fall travels.
I have nothing to complain
about.
Nothing.
At all.
It is not that I am lacking
in empathy, just that from my (current, knock on wood) position of plenty,
emotions such as pain and grief are so alien as to be unfathomable.
I cannot imagine what I might
possibly say in the sympathy cards I picked up this morning, that are sitting
on the coffee table beside me waiting to be written, that would have any
meaning at all.
I know that, impossible as it
may seem, the tide will turn and sooner or later someone will write a sympathy
card addressed to me. Or to my kids. (No. That can’t be right.)
So, trite as it may sound, I
urge everyone to hug their children, spend time with their friends, and share
smiles with strangers. Because we don’t know, any of us, what road lies ahead.
