Today I am 53 years old. Birthdays have become a day to measure losses. I have outlived my mother by 5 years and my father by 1 year. 48 and 52 were too young to die. I wonder how things might have been different if they had lived longer. And Granny (Thelma), while she lived to be in her 70’s, it was a hard and difficult life. Her loss came only a couple of weeks after Mom. I was still reeling from my Mom’s death and so was not able to make it to her final days or her funeral. I regret not saying goodbye.
So many amazing memories of Granny. Playing rummy and her saying “Don’t you rummy dummy!”... her helping me dig up worms for fishing even though she HATED worms… biscuits and gravy (damn I miss those)... getting off the bus at her house when I wasn’t supposed to and then getting in the car (she knew how to drive but didn’t) and taking me home so I wouldn’t get in trouble… eating orange sherbert Push Up ice cream. And I remember laughing when her response to the question of ever finding another man and getting married again… “I wouldn’t have another man if he were dipped in gold”. So wise…
My mother was much wiser than I ever gave her credit for. I think this is something we all come to understand at some point. I wish she had lived long enough for me to tell her. I don’t think she would be surprised about the lifestyle I currently live and I know she would not be surprised at how things turned out. She always had a witchy side that saw into what people really are. I got her looks but I did not get her love and need for social interaction (or her witchy-ness) She was the kind of person who would need hours to go shopping because she would see so many people she knew and would have to stop and chat. And her laughter…. You could hear it and know it was her across an entire crowded store. She laughed a lot when I was young. She lived her life on the outside.I don’t think there was a lot of laughter in the months before she died. I was too caught up in my own world to see that then. There is so much wrapped up in her death. It was sudden for one. And it brought to light many things about people that caused me to see how, really, people are their basest instincts at heart. I lost faith in people’s “good intentions” then.
My father, he’s the reason I can survive out here. He was practical, mechanically inclined, logical and good with his hands. He was a much more loyal man than I ever gave him credit for. He forgave my mother for things that I do not have in me to forgive one for. I wonder if having cancer, looking his own mortality in the eye, had something to do with it or if he was just a better human than me? I know he had a temper and it ran hot but it also quickly cooled (got that from him too). I think my moral code for honesty came from him but where I say my truth, he kept silent more often than not. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for me. He lived his life on the inside. I miss him terribly still.
I was a shitty daughter and I regret not having the opportunity to make that right. And I regret choosing a life that took me so far away from them. A life that turned out to be an illusion. Wasted years building something that wasn’t even real. If I knew then what I know now… how different would life be now?
I have tried to live my life without regrets believing that the decisions I made were for a lifetime of love and that making the commitment to that, superseded all other choices and decisions. And I thought it was with someone who believed the same. The truth is that kind of love doesn’t really exist. That was a devastating lesson to learn and brought to light so many regrets I had pretended weren’t there.
I know this is not the upbeat blog that everyone prefers. Or one about the “estate” and it’s ever-present projects. But this is where I am as I put another year behind me. I don’t know where I’ll be in the next one, five, or ten years. What all the losses and the last two years have taught me is that, in the end, it’s really only a temporary existence. It’s filled with things that help us mark time. Some things make you smile, some make you cry, and some make you scream at the unsympathetic universe. We are all like those fucking tumleweeds… at the mercy of the wind.
And yet, we keep Movin’ On.
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