Meeting parents after a hiatus is an emotional roller-coaster for me. My paternal grandparents lived with their oldest son for as long as I remember, visiting their other kids on occasion. When my grand mother come to our home, it was an unremarkable event. She had a designated area where she liked her bed to be set up. It allowed her to be in the midst of activity and not alone in a bedroom.
This spot between the kitchen and the living room is where she could always be found for the couple of months she was with us. When she returned, her things got put away and the space looked barren for a few weeks until my eyes grew accustomed to the emptiness. These visits happened on a rather fixed schedule and we saw her other times of the year in her primary residence - there was nothing notable about her arrivals or departures.
At some point she passed away and that event was just as understated. The last time I heard my father reminiscence about her would be a couple of decades ago. I still think about her sometimes but my memories almost feel irrelevant as the extended family has long moved on. I am not sure what exactly I am clinging on to but it does bother me that she is not remembered more - maybe the irrelevance of people after their passing is more meaningful to me now than it was when I was younger.
My grandparents never became the center of gravity of anyone's existence but that has changed with my parents' generation it seems. It has to do with the shrinking size of the family. These parents have only one child, maybe two as opposed to eight or ten. I experience some of that same things my parents do when I see J after a while and can see that it is taxing for her. It would be nice to have the equivalent of my grand mother's perch between the kitchen and living room, in a figurative sense, to observe the flow of J's life. Maybe that's what my parents would like as well but just cannot have.
Comments