I wouldn’t have expected this, but it turns out that sometimes, going through hard times can give you a new respect for your family.
One thing I know is that love brings fear – as Archie Fisher sings, “The more that you love, then the more there’s for losing.” In particular, every marriage ends, and probably everyone who’s ever been hapily partnered has the occasional painful realization that someday, one of you will have to go on alone. (Side note: one of my grandmothers told me she was disappointed and maybe a bit angry when my grandfather died – they lived by the ocean, and apparently they’d planned to just hold hands and walkout into the tide some day. For her at least, it was a serious plan.) Mom’s going through that now. Yesterday she bought a new bed for the apartment she’ll be moving into; neither of us said it, but I bet I wasn’t the only one thinking how weird it is that Dad’s not likely to ever sleep in it.
Another thing I know is that my mom is strong when it comes to big things. She can be fairly incompetent in small matters – when traveling with her, I got in the habit of just lightly nudging her in the right direction at street corners, because she’d always turn to go the wrong way. She gets nervous if you’re with her in a museum and she loses sight of you; she takes forever to find anything in her purse and then to get it put back away; she has to potter and fiddle around before she gets moving to go anywhere. She won’t drive on highways, and she’s gotten more and more nervous as she’s aged. She needs a lot of coaching to use anythign electronic. But put her in a really hard situation and she’s a tower of strength. She can always do anything that really needs to be done. (My brother worries about her falling apart after Dad is gone, but I don’t even think she’ll do that, at least not to any great extent. Her mother didn’t (until she had a heart issue a bit after my grandfather’s death), and Mom’s at the stage of life where she’s seen friends go through this several times. I suspect for her this is the sort of thing where you cry, and you just go on living your life, stopping to blow your nose when needed.)
A third thing is that my brother is reliable when it comes to important things. He never finished college, lived with our parents until he was thirty, and in general comes off as having the maturity of someone about twenty years younger than he actual is. (That would be early twenties, an age when many people hold responsible jobs, are good parents, and are in general adult – just still figuring out the details and goofing on them now and then. I’m not saying he’s a fuck-up. His wife says he’s a great husband, I know he’s a great father, and they just bought a house, so 20 years might be an overstatement.) He can also still be pretty annoying, often when he’s not even trying. But on important stuff he’s solid. I could have told you when he was 13 that he’d be a good parent, and I knew I’d never have to worry about him treating a girlfriend badly. In the present situation, he and his wife are always there when Mom and Dad need help, driving and visiting and whatever. I think Mom finds it comforting that she knows we’d both rather they spend all their (Mom and Dad’s) money on caring for themselves properly and don’t leave us anything, and that we’ll never squabble over their stuff or who gets what. (As noted, Brother and SIL have a new house, and so they’ll be getting some of the furniture Mom can’t take with her to the new apartment. SIL insisted Mom check to make sure I didn’t want the china hutch before they take it. I told them, I have two completely furnished houses – I’ll take photos, but I don’t want furniture!! Nice of her to want to check though. I think SIL has been a responsible adult since she was very young, and she’s also a kind one.)
Anyway, I’ve known those things for a long time – about Mom’s strength in adversity and Brother’s reliability when it counts – but there’s nothing like being where it all goes pear-shaped to highlight those characteristics.
(I don’t update all that often these days, so it’s probably hard to keep up. The hard cirumstance I’m referring to is that Dad’s dying of cancer and was moved to hospice last week.)