Every family has their own way of expressing love. Some individuals feel like love is expressed through providing security. Others, through empathy, kindness, support and forgiveness. And there are a million more ways love exists…
My family never said I love you. We never gave each other hugs, or if we did it was an awkward side hug paired with an eye roll. If love was expressed in being a provider, this was only allowed in one direction — from the top down. Trying to offer support was met with immediate rejection, even when, unknowingly, that support was the most needed.
Here I am at 34, a parent to a child and a parent, clearly the funny looking salami in this sandwich generation I’ve heard so much about but failed to research properly at the local deli. And, I find my heart is overpouring with a thousand forms of love to give, but even that is not enough.
I find peace here, 3am, with a one month old, learning the art of breastfeeding with the grace of a tiny adorably ineffective monster. With love, I guide him, now at each feeding, through squeals and cries and hands flailing everywhere knocking off this strange plastic piece of crap called a nipple shield that works except doesn’t when said monster’s flailing repeatedly knocks it off of you when you’re trying desperately to soothe their hunger. And, eight times a day, around the clock, we repeat this process — screaming, flailing, feeding, barely, and, with never enough milk but all the energy transfered, an exhausted child falls asleep cradled in my arms in whatever position is comfortable to him but increasingly less comfortable to me. Moving a millimeter, once he’s settled, would trigger an epic outpouring of tears, so I stay still as long as possible, this warm creatures breath pressing rhythmically against my chest — tonight, the back of his head against my neck, small, strong arms draped around my shoulder, my own arm wrapped around his bottom securing his placement against my left side and ensuring I will not be able to sleep for the remainder of the night, let alone soothe the hunger in my own belly, now rumbling angrily. My husband is lost in his own deserved sleep, across the king-size bed, his pale gorilla feet sticking out of the bottom of blanket, and clearly in no shape to provide physical or moral support for hours.
But this, this uncomfortable, can’t-get-up-to-Eat-or-go-to-the-bathroom-Love, is what I live for. It’s a love that throughout my near 35 years on this earth I have had bottled up inside me with no welcome home for its overly. enthusiastic embrace. I never really wanted to be a savior, it seems, I’ve just wanted, in my own strange way, to be a mom.
But now as I try in my way to problem solve a thousand wounds, I feel nothing but salt scraping each open gash which once was fixable with a bandaid and a kiss but now requires major surgery and perhaps amputation. In my father’s passing, there is no time for mourning, for there are bills to be paid and taxes to be sorted — and given the state of such matters I wonder how families without a once finance-professional at the helm are faring, especially those facing a long battle with terminal illness, and that impossible calculation of how to spend down your retirement savings when every day might be your last, while your spouse may live for decades more.
My love here comes in the form of google spreadsheets and researching spousal social security benefits and reverse mortgages and interviewing CFPs and trying to make sense of budgets that make no sense. As much as I love looking at all of the issues and trying to solve them, my heart aches when I can’t find a desired solution and only next best options. It aches for the years of bad decisions, the stubbornness, the inability to openly talk about death and the well-merited mental health challenges which cloud otherwise sound judgement. The irony that my father spent his life a pension actuary, running sophisticated models of risk around retirement payouts from businesses and the investments required to finance these, is certainly not lost on me. There seems to be humor in this, but I’ve yet to find myself laughing.
It’s not that any of the issues at hand are unsolvable — for all the mistakes made there was still the foundation of wise planning from years ago, prior to diagnosis, when retirement was defined as years of carefree entertainment and travel and time with family, not barely being able to move through ones 60s, as one’s body slowly destroys itself despite aggressive treatments to pause its ravaging of cells and organs necessary for survival.
But plans were not completed and were sidestepped by an understandable choice to put off reality until forever — to leave us with no time to properly mourn this devastating loss, as we must go through boxes upon boxes of papers and attempt to finalize taxes undone and bills unpaid. This is life.
And as I look to the future I wonder how a house with decades upon decades of stuff can ever be emptied — and return to my own commitment to minimize my own collecting of stuff as stuff, even the nicest of it, is still no one’s treasure but your own. It’s easiest to part with such possessions prior to acquiring them.
So in all of this pain and uncertainty I try to identify and cling to the morals of the story. I find gratitude for all I have and especially all that I do not have that I could have. I am grateful, despite longing for a second bedroom and bathroom and a backyard of any size, that I’ve lived an adult life to date in under 800 square feet — and while it may be overflowing with possessions of varying levels of necessity, there isn’t much here and all my life here m could easily be sorted and disposed of in under a week if needed. This is immensely freeing. Maybe some artwork on the bare white apartment walls would bring more joy, and I certainly look forward to the day my bike isn’t taking up one corner of the living room, I’m glad to have grown up to appreciate — I wouldn’t call it minimalism — but instead petite hoarding. I can’t bare to part with earrings and socks and even shoes with the pairs missing, but nothing here is hard to toss if really needed outside of hard drives backing up years of memories.
As I look to the future, I see walls closing in rapidly, yet when they reach my flesh they pass through it with some resistance but do not squash my bones. I do not break or tear or crumble. I stand tall, hold my ground, and gasp for air thinking is this the end — is this the moment when I finally break? When I shatter to the point of irrevocable repair? But somehow with each passing wave of spiked walls attacking me from near and afar, at varying speeds, I grow stronger. I become more sturdy in my gait, less drawn to chaos, more attuned to my role in the world as arms to love and hold those who matter, and to never surrender to the punches life inevitably throws ones way. In mourning the loss of a past that’s gone for good, I stand here, rising, holding my breath, knowing the storm will never pass, and the floods will never quell, but I may, in my own way, learn to walk on water and with this immense love stored up inside me for years, be able to carry others to safety and remain hardened but otherwise unharmed.
life with interest 