When you live far from "home," the place you grew up, the place all your extended and old-immediate family and childhood friends are, you get used to missing people. It's a gentle absence. You think of them regularly though you don't always have the time or fortitude to reach out in those moments. As you drive along in your car you might think, "Mickey would have said this," or "Pinky would love that," or "I wonder what [insert so many names here] is doing right now." While friends orbit in and out of the social media circles and you can stalk them somewhat from afar, family usually takes a more intrusive role in the mind.
I still hear my mom or dad's voice or responses to decisions they'll never know I made. I still think about events, parties or outings, in that weird way a sibling does as if my sibling could actually go or comment. I'm still reminded of my grandparents, and have found memories of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even those odd extended not-family-but-considered-family relatives at the strangest of times.
I'm used to not hearing from people on the regular. I'm used to having the weekend all to myself, perhaps selfishly assuming they're having fun, doing their thing, without me. It's been years since I've been regularly updated on family gatherings. And I am always comforted by the frozen image of them. The way I saw them last. The way I like to remember them most.
I don't have to deal directly with family spats. I don't have to be a part of them at all. It takes an extra effort in fact to make them include me in such daily bickering. I don't have to regularly acknowledge that people change because the constants become ever more obvious in the gaps.
And there is always, always the comforting sense that I will see them, they will be there, when I do return home again.
They're only a phone call or message away, really, and at Christmas I'll give them a big hug, we'll catch up, eat and cook together, exchange gifts, and the solidity of their presence will sustain me until the next visit.
But, time does move on, no matter what my memory tells me, and things do change.
People grow up.
People change.
People die.
This is not an observation that I make lightly. It is one that currently plagues me because I've recently lost someone very close to me, and have lost others in my time away. And, my distance both shields me from, and robs me of, my mourning.
There is no one here to wallow with in my quiet, gentle pain. There is no one to answer my sobs with their own, as if the shaking of two bodies and doubling of tears were some kind of ancient healing ritual. Just sudden moments when I remember the truth, and cry alone in the car for a moment until the light turns green, forcing me on. Because life here, never knew them after all. There's no restaurant where they didn't think the salsa was spicy enough. There's no park where their laughs rolled into the crisp fall leaves like a magic. No empty room that longs for them.
And my mind forever plays the trick on me it always does because their absence here is normal.
So, to me, they're forever there, only, out of reach.
Forever the way I saw them last.
The way I best like to remember.
Never really gone, but just a phone call away.
Waiting for me to come home.
image by Edgar Barany C, 2008
I still hear my mom or dad's voice or responses to decisions they'll never know I made. I still think about events, parties or outings, in that weird way a sibling does as if my sibling could actually go or comment. I'm still reminded of my grandparents, and have found memories of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even those odd extended not-family-but-considered-family relatives at the strangest of times.
I'm used to not hearing from people on the regular. I'm used to having the weekend all to myself, perhaps selfishly assuming they're having fun, doing their thing, without me. It's been years since I've been regularly updated on family gatherings. And I am always comforted by the frozen image of them. The way I saw them last. The way I like to remember them most.
I don't have to deal directly with family spats. I don't have to be a part of them at all. It takes an extra effort in fact to make them include me in such daily bickering. I don't have to regularly acknowledge that people change because the constants become ever more obvious in the gaps.
And there is always, always the comforting sense that I will see them, they will be there, when I do return home again.
They're only a phone call or message away, really, and at Christmas I'll give them a big hug, we'll catch up, eat and cook together, exchange gifts, and the solidity of their presence will sustain me until the next visit.
But, time does move on, no matter what my memory tells me, and things do change.
People grow up.
People change.
People die.
This is not an observation that I make lightly. It is one that currently plagues me because I've recently lost someone very close to me, and have lost others in my time away. And, my distance both shields me from, and robs me of, my mourning.
There is no one here to wallow with in my quiet, gentle pain. There is no one to answer my sobs with their own, as if the shaking of two bodies and doubling of tears were some kind of ancient healing ritual. Just sudden moments when I remember the truth, and cry alone in the car for a moment until the light turns green, forcing me on. Because life here, never knew them after all. There's no restaurant where they didn't think the salsa was spicy enough. There's no park where their laughs rolled into the crisp fall leaves like a magic. No empty room that longs for them.
And my mind forever plays the trick on me it always does because their absence here is normal.
So, to me, they're forever there, only, out of reach.
Forever the way I saw them last.
The way I best like to remember.
Never really gone, but just a phone call away.
Waiting for me to come home.
image by Edgar Barany C, 2008
Comments
Post a Comment