Death: The End Of Opportunity

 

Is there anything that you would like to accomplish but cannot seem to find the time to do it?  Is there any relationship that you need to reconcile? Our own death means the end of hopes, dreams, desires and possibilities.  The death of loved ones shuts the door on all of our unfulfilled intentions towards them.

As I age, I am increasingly mindful of this reality as it relates to the death of my parents. Looking back, I now realize that I was so busy dealing with my visual disability, raising a family and just trying to survive that I don’t believe I ever asked them about how my condition affected them personally.  They spent a great deal of money trying to provide me with training and an education in order to support myself, but I’m not certain that I ever took time to thank them.

When my mother passed away in February, 2005, my youngest sister and I began clearing a few things out of the attic and discovered three financial ledgers that had been kept by our maternal grandfather.  We began going through one volume that covered the time of the depression in the 1930’s.  Numerous questions arose but at that point, Mom was no longer there to provide any answers.

When my father died five years later, we completely emptied the attic.  A box of items belonging to my maternal grandmother was among the things we found.  In the box was a leather folding picture frame of a young sailor. I showed it to my youngest sister and said, “I wonder who this is”.

“I’ll bet that’s Oscar” she exclaimed.

“Oscar” I queried.  “Who in the heck is Oscar?”

She proceeded to tell me that he was a young man Mom was engaged to before she married Dad.  Well, as the saying goes, you could have knocked me over with a feather.  I had never heard about this guy before.  Apparently, that was a conversation reserved for girl talk between Mom and my two sisters.

And so, it has gone.  Time and again, I think of questions I would love to ask each of my parents, but those opportunities are gone forever.  I can only hope that my children and grandchildren are wiser than I have been and take time to ask their questions before I am no longer around to respond.

Due to the pandemic in the spring of 2020, I was required to suspend my massage practice for about seven weeks. One of the things I did to occupy my time was to write a brief memoire highlighting key events in my life.  I wanted to provide my sons and their families with a basic record of my journey.  So far, it has not sparked any inquiries from them.  Hopefully, it will help to fill in some of the gaps in the future.

I have been accused of being a workaholic.  If there is any truth in that, it is due to an abiding desire to fill my life with meaningful activities.  Frequently, when I am not engaged in physically doing something, I am reading, and it is generally a book that will increase my knowledge about a wide range of interests.

There is one opportunity that I have determined will not escape my full attention: I try never to end a visit, telephone call or email without telling my family members that I love them.  There may be numerous unanswered questions after I am gone, but whether or not I loved them will not be one of them.