Moving out, moving on
The phone calls still come.
The messages have stopped though.
It used to be I’d ignore the answering machine to my parents’ landline for a few days and suddenly there’d be ten or more messages. Mostly scams, bills, prescription notifications, and occasionally the one real message.
Like the one that asked my mom how she was doing, why she hadn’t heard from her in so long, and that they really need to talk again soon.
I hate delivering bad news. But I do it. Whether it’s responding to Christmas cards. Emails. Phone calls.
And then I delete the messages.
But more return.
The name my mother gave me
It’s my birthday. I’m thirty-five. Thirty-five years ago, my mom brought me into this world. This will be my first one without her.
I go pay her a visit.
Something’s new; her headstone is there.
My brother and I have actually been waiting for the headstone for some time, to the point where we thought about calling the local cemetery and being all “Can I speak to your manager?” about it.
But now that it’s actually there, I kind of wish that it wasn’t; it’s just one more symbol that my mom’s passing from this world is real.
Loose ends
I wonder if it’s biological thing, some kind of learned behavior, or something else altogether, but letting go seems like it’s the hardest thing to do. And life is basically about doing that, over and over.
I don’t have anything meaningful to say here. Nothing poignant, no advice, no grand observations.
I miss my mom. I miss helping her take care of my dad. I miss that being part of my identity. I didn’t just lose her. I lost what I was doing. There’s no other life to return to. Just a snap of a finger and everything’s suddenly different.
My feelings are valid, but they’re obviously tinted with nostalgia. Being a caregiver was meaningful but it also sucked, and right now I’m obviously ignoring all the bad parts I experienced.
But at least, I understood it.
What matters to me
My little nephew is cute, and I’m supposed to be here, watching him do cute, little nephew things, like play some version of basketball with nine other tiny kids where they just run back and forth to the same squares taped on the floor. I’m supposed to be here to support him.
Really, I’m paying attention to my older nephew. He’s standing in front of me, his head about as high as my waist now, reading a comic book. My hands gently grip his shoulders, my thumbs tapping into his shoulder blades. Something tells me to enjoy this moment, because he’s now as tall as my waist—he’s growing up.
The timing is oddly prescient.
The first of many such Christmas cards
Dear Scott and Mary Bailey,
Thank you very much for your Christmas card to my mom…
***
“Daniel?”
“Yeah?” I grumble, annoyed as my mom enters my room.
“I got a card,” she says, placing a Christmas card onto my desk. “Do you know who this is?”
I sigh. I’m not doing anything important—that’s not the point—it’s that I have to stop whatever stupid thing I’m doing to help my mom out, in this case, to look at the names signed at the bottom of a rather generic Christmas card with some generic greeting about ‘Jesus being the reason for the season’ and hoping that the recipient also feels ‘joy to the Earth.’
But there’s a couple extra sentences. Something about how ‘we haven’t seen you in a long time and we hope you are well.’
And then I see the names. It’s from the Bailey family.
Home is a place in time
I feel homesick.
Well, truth be told, I don’t actually know what I’m feeling. Homesick, is just the closest feeling that comes to mind.
So that’s what I say: I feel homesick. I want to go home.
But I am home. I’m not in the house I grew up in, but I am in the same town.
The town where the streets are largely the same. There’s the same Taco Bell, the one pizza spot, the small library. The Safeway moved across the street, but that hardly counts as change.
But the more time I spend in my hometown, the more I realize, it’s not even the same town. The demographics. The busyness. The downtown. They’re all very different.
So what do you mean, Dan? What do you mean, you want to go home?
Marrying up
I know what my dad would do without me, or at least, without me in the house. He’d be in some sort of an assisted-living center and I’d go visit him once or twice a week. I’d bring a book and sit with him for a few hours. Probably wear super powerful noise-cancelling headphones while he watches the news. Maybe take him to “Pandas” every once in a while.
But what would my dad do without my mom?
Being my dad’s caregiver is really only the latest in a string of choices my mom has made in their married life, choices that put someone else way above herself. My mom has always taken care of my dad, with the big things (she was the breadwinner of the two and ensured their financial stability) and with the little things (she did the cooking and the dishes). The one thing my dad contributed to the logistical part of their relationship was filing taxes. Not a small detail for sure, but not quite exactly pulling his weight either. I suppose he did drive my mom around at times, but given how my dad continued to drive like he was a New York yellow cab driver even when he left New York, I’m not sure that should really count.