time flies
I just realized that my father-in-law has been gone for almost exactly ten years now, and my mother-in-law for almost exactly five.
I don't know why those numbers seem like milestones, but they do. Also, when I think about what my kids were like five and ten years ago, it seems like a whole lifetime ago that I last saw or heard Mom and Dad. I know a lot has gone on in *my* life since then. And they've missed out on all of it.
There's a beautiful photograph of the two of them in my home office. Occasionally, I notice it, and I can all but hear Dad's laugh (it was very distinctive) and Mom's voice. There's actually a recording of Dad that I can access pretty easily (he spoke at Dirk's and my wedding, and his speech is on the video), and there's one of Mom, but that's harder to get at (she left a message on our old tape-recorder answering machine, which is long gone but the tape remains because she's on it). Also, I have a few things lying around that Mom made (she was a crack seamstress, knitter, and needleworker).
Otherwise, I have only memories and the occasional communion that I experience at Samhain or when I look very closely at that photograph. It's odd to think of a life being ended and a long gap between when it stopped and now. When Dad died, it made me think of a train that keeps going forward, and Dad got off the train and waved at us as we stayed on and kept going, missing him and wishing he were still traveling with us.
Now I realize that that train is ten years further along the track, and five years further along from when Mom got off. I wonder about where they went after they left. I wonder about how much longer I have to journey. I marvel at where I've been since then, and how the kids have grown, and all that. And in a way, it's good and right that they got off the train when they did - but I miss them still.
I don't know why those numbers seem like milestones, but they do. Also, when I think about what my kids were like five and ten years ago, it seems like a whole lifetime ago that I last saw or heard Mom and Dad. I know a lot has gone on in *my* life since then. And they've missed out on all of it.
There's a beautiful photograph of the two of them in my home office. Occasionally, I notice it, and I can all but hear Dad's laugh (it was very distinctive) and Mom's voice. There's actually a recording of Dad that I can access pretty easily (he spoke at Dirk's and my wedding, and his speech is on the video), and there's one of Mom, but that's harder to get at (she left a message on our old tape-recorder answering machine, which is long gone but the tape remains because she's on it). Also, I have a few things lying around that Mom made (she was a crack seamstress, knitter, and needleworker).
Otherwise, I have only memories and the occasional communion that I experience at Samhain or when I look very closely at that photograph. It's odd to think of a life being ended and a long gap between when it stopped and now. When Dad died, it made me think of a train that keeps going forward, and Dad got off the train and waved at us as we stayed on and kept going, missing him and wishing he were still traveling with us.
Now I realize that that train is ten years further along the track, and five years further along from when Mom got off. I wonder about where they went after they left. I wonder about how much longer I have to journey. I marvel at where I've been since then, and how the kids have grown, and all that. And in a way, it's good and right that they got off the train when they did - but I miss them still.