Life and Death and Rational Reasons for Moving to Miami
When we were in Miami for my father’s memorial service last summer, my brother decided to mention casually that he would like for me to be the legal guardian for his children if he and his wife died. Considering how the past year had gone, I couldn’t begrudge them this consideration, but my first question was, “Seriously?”
I was initially baffled. Then I considered the matter. All of their friends had their own kids to deal with, and probably couldn’t absorb the sudden addition of three more. Our god-cousins (or whatever you call your godparents’ kids) put up with the triplets because they were my brother’s kids, but had no love for children in general, and had made it clear years ago that they were having a great deal of fun with their child-free lifestyles and had no plans to ever give them up.
Dad’s sudden death at sixty-four had taken a great piss on the media-driven medical angle that apparently the baby-boomers were going to live forever, and extended visits from the grandparents had mostly served to remind them that they had already raised their kids, and they could stand about a weekend with the triplets before they wanted to strangle them all for a moment of peace and quiet.
Now widowed, still wanting kids, and with a great deal of disposable income, even I had to admit that - sadly - I was probably not the first choice, but more like the best option available. Having been through The Husband’s death and now The Father’s, my response was, “Well, of course. Sure. But motherfucker, you’d better have your will in order and a TON of life insurance. Because you have three effing kids to send to college, and my ass is retiring someday. Also, I refuse to take this on unless you tell me somewhere in your will where to find all of your online bill-paying passwords.”
We were doing this a bit jokingly (as you have to with grief, because the alternative is, like, fucking up the entire original Star Trek timeline) and he sort of shrugged and told me his wife wasn’t stupid and I wouldn’t have to worry about taking care of the kids financially. Their practical and emotional well-being would still fall to me, though, and it kind of landed on me then, even if I was their last resort. I wasn’t needed by other people the way I had been before. Those people were gone; my responsibilities were different.
I’m the unconnected one in the family now, the variable. I’m the spinster aunt, the caretaker. I don’t actually mind this as much as I mind being far away from it, which is why I’m moving to Miami. Much as I love my father for wanting to be a caretaker for the entire family, Jesus Christ is this a pain in the fucking ass when he suddenly kicked off and took all of his passwords with him.
It’s also a pain in the ass when my mother has no idea how to deal with new technology, because he always did it for her. She can’t even look it up on the internet (the way I dealt with cooking for myself after The Husband died), because aside from following directions on how to send an email, she has no real understanding of what the internet is and how it works, and why should she? She never needed it for school or for work like the rest of us; nobody ever taught her. I love my father for knowing that he was better than her at this and wanting to take care of it for her, but fuck and a half, she has NO IDEA how to attach something to an email or download the pictures off her camera.
Sure, my mother’s new take is for The Man of Honor and I to spawn a child (“he’s so smart and attractive”), and she and I may turn into Grey Gardens before this whole thing is over, but it’s also…fuck, I’m trying not to get choked up, but it will also be nice to not have to worry about my Mom alone in a situation in which I can’t help her. My friends in DC are okay - they have somebody or they have somewhere to go. I honestly think I’ll hate the shit out of Miami, but I also think that might be the only thing that might my Mom leave.
And I hope that when she does, she won’t be trapped behind Dad’s decisions and Dad’s structures and Dad’s norms. She made her first steps when she bought a gray car like she’d always wanted, instead of the black that my father always insisted on, for reasons I’ve never understood because black cars look filthy five seconds after leaving the car wash but whatever, it’s not my car.
But on huge life decisions she’s stuck, because she’s retired, so it’s not like she can go embark on a new career. She’d probably like to be closer to the grandkids if it didn’t rain in Portland 364 days a year, plus she has really good friends in Miami now, and then she feels guilty about being selfish.
I guess I just don’t want my Mom to be a staid old grandma, still in dead grandpa’s house, still in the life that he built for them together, and not the life that she now needs to want for herself. Well, I get where she’s coming from. While it’s objectively liberating to be in a position where the world is more or less your oyster, that’s somewhat complicated when you got there by way of being widowed, because:
1.) Yes, the world. Is my dead husband out there? No? Well, then fuck you.
2.) You did not just graduate from high school; you actually already had a life plan, and it has just been shitcanned. I have the luxury of going back to school because I always wanted to and I’m still young enough (barely), so I have literally no reason not to, at this point. If you’re like my mother and are retired, hate to travel, and have no burning desire for an advanced degree, seriously - what the fuck are you supposed to do with yourself?
3.) The idea of striking out in the world, getting one of those around the world tickets and just LIVING is what you and the guy who died dreamed about doing together, so you’ll spend the entire time thinking about that and feeling horrible and alone, and completely isolated because anyone you could talk to is not in the middle of a Malaysian jungle right now and probably asleep. Sounds lovely.
I don’t know, she is thrilled that I’m moving down to Miami, though both she and everyone I’ve talked to seemed to assume that I’ll be moving in with her, which: no. I’m thirty-four, for chrissakes. That’s about 50% of it. 25% is that she lives a good hour away from campus during rush hour and my main goal right now is to never have another goddamn hour-long commute ever again in my life.
Another 15% is that she is a Virgo and I have cats. She also has a 1200 square foot two-bedroom fully-furnished condo, so the other 10% is that I’m still trying to whittle a townhouse worth of two people’s shit down to a reasonable one-bedroom, so this would not work. My books alone would eat up my entire designated living space.
Maybe that’s how you find your way after something like this - force yourself to really figure out what you want, what you’re willing to part with and what you can’t bring yourself to give up. And then do it again and again until your life is what it should be: no longer entirely defined by a dead guy, but just informed and accentuated by it, in ways that fit into your current life.
And maybe this is what my mother needs - nothing drastic or major, just a slow redefinition of a place that was theirs into a place that’s hers. Nods to my dad, who made up so much of her life, but designed around her.
And maybe that’s why I don’t really want to move in with her. In all of her awesomeness, I know my Mom; it would be irresistible for her to slowly build her life around me without comment, to fit me into places my Dad used to fill without ever telling me (or probably even realizing it herself). I’m moving down to Miami because I want to be closer to her, but I’m also doing so for a lot of selfish reasons of my own that have nothing to do with her. If she chooses to stay in Miami, I want to at least give her the opportunity to do so for the same reasons.
I was initially baffled. Then I considered the matter. All of their friends had their own kids to deal with, and probably couldn’t absorb the sudden addition of three more. Our god-cousins (or whatever you call your godparents’ kids) put up with the triplets because they were my brother’s kids, but had no love for children in general, and had made it clear years ago that they were having a great deal of fun with their child-free lifestyles and had no plans to ever give them up.
Dad’s sudden death at sixty-four had taken a great piss on the media-driven medical angle that apparently the baby-boomers were going to live forever, and extended visits from the grandparents had mostly served to remind them that they had already raised their kids, and they could stand about a weekend with the triplets before they wanted to strangle them all for a moment of peace and quiet.
Now widowed, still wanting kids, and with a great deal of disposable income, even I had to admit that - sadly - I was probably not the first choice, but more like the best option available. Having been through The Husband’s death and now The Father’s, my response was, “Well, of course. Sure. But motherfucker, you’d better have your will in order and a TON of life insurance. Because you have three effing kids to send to college, and my ass is retiring someday. Also, I refuse to take this on unless you tell me somewhere in your will where to find all of your online bill-paying passwords.”
We were doing this a bit jokingly (as you have to with grief, because the alternative is, like, fucking up the entire original Star Trek timeline) and he sort of shrugged and told me his wife wasn’t stupid and I wouldn’t have to worry about taking care of the kids financially. Their practical and emotional well-being would still fall to me, though, and it kind of landed on me then, even if I was their last resort. I wasn’t needed by other people the way I had been before. Those people were gone; my responsibilities were different.
I’m the unconnected one in the family now, the variable. I’m the spinster aunt, the caretaker. I don’t actually mind this as much as I mind being far away from it, which is why I’m moving to Miami. Much as I love my father for wanting to be a caretaker for the entire family, Jesus Christ is this a pain in the fucking ass when he suddenly kicked off and took all of his passwords with him.
It’s also a pain in the ass when my mother has no idea how to deal with new technology, because he always did it for her. She can’t even look it up on the internet (the way I dealt with cooking for myself after The Husband died), because aside from following directions on how to send an email, she has no real understanding of what the internet is and how it works, and why should she? She never needed it for school or for work like the rest of us; nobody ever taught her. I love my father for knowing that he was better than her at this and wanting to take care of it for her, but fuck and a half, she has NO IDEA how to attach something to an email or download the pictures off her camera.
Sure, my mother’s new take is for The Man of Honor and I to spawn a child (“he’s so smart and attractive”), and she and I may turn into Grey Gardens before this whole thing is over, but it’s also…fuck, I’m trying not to get choked up, but it will also be nice to not have to worry about my Mom alone in a situation in which I can’t help her. My friends in DC are okay - they have somebody or they have somewhere to go. I honestly think I’ll hate the shit out of Miami, but I also think that might be the only thing that might my Mom leave.
And I hope that when she does, she won’t be trapped behind Dad’s decisions and Dad’s structures and Dad’s norms. She made her first steps when she bought a gray car like she’d always wanted, instead of the black that my father always insisted on, for reasons I’ve never understood because black cars look filthy five seconds after leaving the car wash but whatever, it’s not my car.
But on huge life decisions she’s stuck, because she’s retired, so it’s not like she can go embark on a new career. She’d probably like to be closer to the grandkids if it didn’t rain in Portland 364 days a year, plus she has really good friends in Miami now, and then she feels guilty about being selfish.
I guess I just don’t want my Mom to be a staid old grandma, still in dead grandpa’s house, still in the life that he built for them together, and not the life that she now needs to want for herself. Well, I get where she’s coming from. While it’s objectively liberating to be in a position where the world is more or less your oyster, that’s somewhat complicated when you got there by way of being widowed, because:
1.) Yes, the world. Is my dead husband out there? No? Well, then fuck you.
2.) You did not just graduate from high school; you actually already had a life plan, and it has just been shitcanned. I have the luxury of going back to school because I always wanted to and I’m still young enough (barely), so I have literally no reason not to, at this point. If you’re like my mother and are retired, hate to travel, and have no burning desire for an advanced degree, seriously - what the fuck are you supposed to do with yourself?
3.) The idea of striking out in the world, getting one of those around the world tickets and just LIVING is what you and the guy who died dreamed about doing together, so you’ll spend the entire time thinking about that and feeling horrible and alone, and completely isolated because anyone you could talk to is not in the middle of a Malaysian jungle right now and probably asleep. Sounds lovely.
I don’t know, she is thrilled that I’m moving down to Miami, though both she and everyone I’ve talked to seemed to assume that I’ll be moving in with her, which: no. I’m thirty-four, for chrissakes. That’s about 50% of it. 25% is that she lives a good hour away from campus during rush hour and my main goal right now is to never have another goddamn hour-long commute ever again in my life.
Another 15% is that she is a Virgo and I have cats. She also has a 1200 square foot two-bedroom fully-furnished condo, so the other 10% is that I’m still trying to whittle a townhouse worth of two people’s shit down to a reasonable one-bedroom, so this would not work. My books alone would eat up my entire designated living space.
Maybe that’s how you find your way after something like this - force yourself to really figure out what you want, what you’re willing to part with and what you can’t bring yourself to give up. And then do it again and again until your life is what it should be: no longer entirely defined by a dead guy, but just informed and accentuated by it, in ways that fit into your current life.
And maybe this is what my mother needs - nothing drastic or major, just a slow redefinition of a place that was theirs into a place that’s hers. Nods to my dad, who made up so much of her life, but designed around her.
And maybe that’s why I don’t really want to move in with her. In all of her awesomeness, I know my Mom; it would be irresistible for her to slowly build her life around me without comment, to fit me into places my Dad used to fill without ever telling me (or probably even realizing it herself). I’m moving down to Miami because I want to be closer to her, but I’m also doing so for a lot of selfish reasons of my own that have nothing to do with her. If she chooses to stay in Miami, I want to at least give her the opportunity to do so for the same reasons.