Over the weekend, I helped move two of my three youngest daughters into their own place. All parents who are fortunate enough to raise exceptional humans know the bittersweet aspects of saying goodbye as one’s children’s tenures at home come to an end. In consideration of my standing as a widow and mother in her fourth decade of professional catapulting of children, many have asked “How are you feeling about the girls moving out?” My closest friends fret a little. I’ve made my jokes and had some fun at their expense, but the truth of the matter is that once again I’ve worked myself out of a job, and of course I’m sad. I’m reminded of how I felt when my firstborn was to enter kindergarten: I’d done all the hard work of five years of parenting and saw this magical, beautiful little soul had grown up under my tutelage and nurture—and now I was to let her go? 🦋 Yes, of course we let them go. Later, after a lifetime of having us as parents, they’ll also have to let us go, as we let go of our own parents. It’s all practice for eventually letting go of our own lives, for we’re only “passing through,” as my sweetie used to say. So I embrace this new yet age-old event with a full, grateful heart and a few tears. ❤️ Come back often, daughters. Your home is always right here in my heart.
Yesterday while thrifting with my daughter, I came across a series of photos at a Goodwill store. One was on the top shelf, the next two shelves down and three feet away, and the last all the way at the end, nearly hidden behind a brass candle holder. Idly picking one up, I assumed the images were those that come with the new frames one sees at chain stores, even though children and beautiful young women are the norm for that sort of thing. “Maybe our world is embracing aging, and these old folks are elderly models,” I thought hopefully. // Lookimg more closely, I saw a photographer’s copyright imprint. Opening the back of one of the photos, I confirmed that they were actual photos—not mass-produced for frame packaging. // Grandma and Grandpa had died or been moved into nursing homes and whoever was in charge of their stuff had bagged it, boxed it, and donated it to Goodwill with these images intact. Grandma and Grandpa for sale, as it were. // So I arranged the evidence of these memories together and snapped a pic in homage to these two. // The Buddha taught that “of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.” Buddhist and Christian monks and nuns traditionally meditate on death, their own and that of others—its inevitability. Medieval Christian devouts wore tiny carved skulls on their rosaries to aid them in remembering that decline, death, and decay are inevitable. // Today, as your babies are born or you make plans for redeeming the future with your new love, or you make and revise education, moving, business or survival plans, think for a moment about all the people you’ve known who have already passed out of this life. Think about how your parents, if you still have them with you, have aged. Ponder yourself at age five and yesterday. Look at the changes, understand the relentless march toward death. Then ask yourself what we work for that is of value. What will be discarded and left on the shelf of a Goodwill store for a stranger to ponder? // I think that all we leave is legacies of our overall goodness and generosity, or our failures to live, to grow in love. We leave others with snapshots of ourselves—memories.
Reminds me of a Buddhist saying– paraphrased– don’t just do something, stand there!
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“Maslow’s five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for. Nothing has seized them, nothing has caught them, nothing has driven them spiritually mad and made them worth talking to. These are the bores.” -Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss