Flow State

Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary.

They won’t be celebrating because they are dead.

That sentence sounds harsher than it needs to, but it’s the truth. My mom died about six years ago and my dad followed about a year and a half later. Time keeps moving, even when the people who helped start it for you are gone.

When they passed, I have to admit I didn’t feel as much as I expected to. That probably sounds cold. It wasn’t that I didn’t love them. They were terrific parents. I had a great childhood. They supported me through college and well beyond. If there was a “Parents Hall of Fame,” they’d at least make the regional ballot.

But like most children, I had my issues with them. And when they died, life was complicated.

My mom’s death was sudden. She collapsed at choir practice and that was it. One moment singing, the next moment gone.

My dad’s passing was the opposite. He had a disease that slowly wasted him for years. By the end, he couldn’t really hold a conversation for the last two years or more of his life.

When my mom died, I became the primary person helping with my dad. My sibling lives out of town and was wonderful, but the day-to-day stuff fell mostly to me simply because I was nearby.

So I didn’t really grieve my mom. Fifty percent of that is just my personality—I’m not the most outwardly emotional guy. The other fifty percent was that I was busy dealing with my dad.

And when my dad died, I didn’t grieve much then either. He had been sick for over a decade, and by the end his death felt like the end of suffering. Honestly, since he hadn’t been able to talk for years, it sometimes felt like he had been gone long before the official date on the death certificate.

But time does strange things.

Now, years later, I find myself deeply affected by their absence.

Part of that is probably because I’m going through the stage of life where you worry about your own kids. Mine are all doing fine—better than fine, actually—but that doesn’t stop my brain from inventing scenarios at 2 a.m.

And lately I’ve realized I would give just about anything to sit down with my parents for an hour.

I’d ask them questions.

How did you deal with me when I was screwing things up?
Did you worry about me the way I worry about my kids?
How did you keep it together when you had no idea how things would turn out?

I’m a lot like my dad when it comes to worrying, anxiety, and a general desire to control outcomes that are, in reality, completely uncontrollable. His behavior used to drive me nuts when I was growing up.

Now I find I’m basically his twin.

That happens.

What makes it harder is that I see some of the same tendencies in one of my kids, and I would give anything for him not to be that way. It’s a miserable way to live—always scanning the horizon for problems that may never come.

A few months ago, when I was struggling a bit, I did something I never thought I’d do. I went to their graves.

Not for any mystical reason. I didn’t expect answers. I’m fairly certain cemeteries have terrible customer service when it comes to responding to questions.

But it was meditative.

They didn’t answer anything, of course. And I realized something while I was there: nobody ever will. Friends can tell me how they handled their kids, but nobody can tell me how my parents handled me.

That knowledge went with them.

Which leaves me with the only thing I can actually do: be mindful of the time I have with my own children.

My parents’ time with me ended sooner than I ever imagined. Mine with my kids will too.

So today, on their anniversary, I’ll probably call my sister like I usually do. In the past, I’d say, “Hey, thinking about Mom and Dad today,” even though if I’m being honest, I probably hadn’t been until that moment.

It was the polite thing to say.

This year it won’t be polite.

It will be true.

I think about them most days now.

And if they were still here, I’d probably spend that hour asking them questions… and then another hour thanking them for putting up with me.  I was a decent son, but I couldv’e been so much better.  You’re right, Mom, it wouldn’t kill me to call once in a while.

Now that I have kids of my own, I realize something important:

They deserved a medal and, sadly, I feel very guilty that I wasn’t a better son (again, I was fine, but now that my own kids treat me the way I treated them, I feel terrible.  If I made them feel like my kids make me feel?  Sheesh…although, that’s what kids finding their independence/way do and so maybe I don’t wish it was different…but really, would it kill them to call or text once in awhile?”