“Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to what they want to do.” — Kathleen Winsor (via Leslie Fandrich)
Recently I’ve had several friends lose parents and other elderly relatives close to them. It’s strange how these things often happen all at once, or so it always seems to me. Rule of threes? Rule of sixes? It changes.
Let me be clear: I don’t like people dying. (Go figure.) I don’t have the easy comfort of a faith that suggests we go to some better land, or we’re up in the clouds sporting angel wings and dancing with our childhood guinea pig, as awesome as that might be. Though let’s be clear: if there is a place that one can dance with guinea pigs, I would like to go there. It might even be as simple as a Flaming Lips concert with some shamanic hallucinogens.
However something has changed in me. For the first time, when I hear about the deaths of elderly relatives I’m not just thinking about my own parents, but I’m thinking about myself as that elderly parent one day. That’s a really strange shift.
But it’s also why hearing and reading so many thoughtful reflections about parents from their adult children has been so fascinating. Helpful, even.
I think it’s letting me figure out what kind of parent I want to be.
