I’ve just completed 1 full year with having only 1 parent. I always got along in different ways with each of them. You know when you call home and mom answers the phone so you talk to her a while and tell her the stories you’d tell your mom. Then she passes the phone to dad and you talk about dad things like golf, weather and food. I miss having those conversations. They were never really deep but they were important. It was how I stayed connected. Of course I visited a few times during the year but it was the phone calls that were the most frequent interaction.
I haven’t been playing much golf lately but when I do, I think about making that call and recapping the round. Maybe I had chipped in for birdie or maybe I just played horribly. Either way, it was how we related to each other.
The word CANCER comes up every day. Either you see it on TV via the pink soled shows of an NFL player or you hear it out loud from nearby conversations. Cancer wasn’t new to my family but I was too young to remember how awful it was when it took my grandfather.
My mother has been incredibly strong in the year after losing her husband. It’s quite impressive actually. She has always been the strong rock of our family and that includes her brothers and sisters and in-laws. We talk a lot on the phone now. It had been a gradual increase in phone calls starting back about 5 years ago. I look forward to her next visit to Austin and to having her cook some meals around the holidays.
If you’ve lost a loved one to cancer or similar disease, I hope that you’ve found a balance between sadness and peace.
