I have a fabulous group of friends. We have
been there through every life phase. Engagement, marriage, baby
showers, births, baby namings, bris's, christenings, baptisms, birthday
parties, and are doing it all again for second children.
We
deliver meals when kids are born. Balloons and flowers when someone is
sick or had surgery. Everyone has their job and we know who orders
what. But a new phase has started and I'm not quite prepared for it.
Our parents have started dying.
I'm very, very lucky. Both my parents are still alive. Both my
husband's parents are still alive. Most of my friends parents are
still alive. But last week a close friend's mother did suddenly and
unexpectedly and the same group of friends who always mobilized had no
idea what to do. Did the family need food? No, they had plenty of
that.
We
found ourselves standing quietly in the back of a visitation service
whispering, what do we do? We knew how to do everything else. We
decided to offer to watch the kids in the family as often as possible
and simply just be there, because really, that's what we have always
done in the past and that is what has served us well.
It occured
to me as I was driving home I never really knew my grandparents, they
all had died by the time I was 7. My parents were my age or younger
when they lost their parents. In fact my dad was 15 when his father
died. It is simply incomprehensible that my parents could not be here
at some point. I mean, I know it will happen eventually. But it's
one of those far of things that always seems like it is never actually
going to happen until it does.
My parents recently took the
entire family on vacation and talked about doing again in a few years
and my mom said "well we all have to still be here." And I looked at
her and said, "are you going somewhere?" My parents are young, in
their early 60s. But so was my friend's mom.
Watching one of my
friends bury her mother while holding her newborn was one of the most
painful experiences. And knowing that really there was nothing we
could do, no matter how hard we tried, to make this better, was even
harder. I'm not ready for this phase. Not at all.
