Love and Longing

I am an orphan. My parents are dead. It doesn't matter if I was forty-seven when my mother died and I was fifty-three when my father died. I'm still an orphan. At least it feels that way.

My head is filled with memories. What scares me most is that I will forget them. I never told my parents thank you, you did a good job, and even though I said I would never raise my kids like they raised my brother and I, I did. My parents deserve all the credit because they created me and they instilled a moral compass even before anyone knew what a moral compass was. They let me fail, but when I started to fall down, they held me up. When I was stupid they told me I was stupid. And they always said "someday you will understand." It took me a long time to figure that out, but one day I looked at myself in the mirror, my eyes puffy and red from crying about one of my kids. The face in the mirror said "do you understand now?" and I nodded yes.

I have always told my kids that the hardest thing in the world to do is be a parent. It is harder than marriage, harder than losing a job, harder than almost anything I can think of. I have passed on the secret message of "someday you will understand" to the mothers of my grandchildren.

It's almost Thanksgiving time. I spent last Thanksgiving with my father. He won't be here this year. It will be hard. It was difficult in the years after my mother died, but I always had Dad. He didn't give me any secret message before he died. There were no words of wisdom, no words of how outstanding his life had been, but the last time we spoke before he died he said "I love you." Those were the last words he ever said to me.
There was no secret message because that was the message. It's nice to hear people say "I love you." That's all anybody really wants to hear. But when you become an orphan, like me, you treasure those words. They are yours and you do not share them. Not in the same way.

Maybe next year I'll let go of feeling like an orphan. Maybe it will take me longer. Love and Longing are strange companions. They pop up when you least expect them. I am a pretty private person. I share with only a few people. But Love and Longing I hide. If I start crying in the grocery store, I don't care. If I start crying reading greeting cards in CVS, I don't care. No one knows me. No one cares. The best place in the world to let Love and Longing out is in the car. I make believe I have a wireless devise and someone somewhere is talking to me. No one is. I can cry. I can sob. I can throw things around and hurt no one. And when I'm done, I put Love and Longing back inside and become 'normal'.

If I happen to lose one of my unsuitable companions somewhere else, then I'll know I am doing better. You see, it doesn't matter how old you are, when you lose someone close, it hurts. It hurts for a long time. The world goes on but you see it differently. You become aware of your own mortality. You get angry and sad and hurt, all at the same time. You may have a meltdown, but that's ok. Your head tells you one thing but your heart says something else. Love and Longing are born in these hearts. The best you can do is adjust. The second best thing is to keep Love safe and get rid of Longing. Love lifts you up, Longing holds you down. You don't have to let go of anything, no matter what other people say. It's your loss, your grief, your heart. And remember this: someday you will understand.