Learning the truth of the life we are living and the death that will come to us all.
It seems our family has been surrounded by death in this past couple of years. First, a niece in her 30s, then Wendy’s sister in her 70s, and my brother in his 80s. We have just now gone through 80-plus years of pictures, watches, hats, and stories about my brother most recently. He died on July 7th. It takes me back to the death of our parents, aunts, uncles, and many family members, especially the “older generation.”
In the normal scheme of things, now it is “our” turn to be the older generation. 77 is a great golf score, but it is also a date in time: On June 26th, 1949, at the Little Company of Mary Hospital, a baby boy joined the large extended family of Andersons’, Liljedahls’, and Nelsons’.
Seventy-seven years later, I am writing this blog to you. Most of those family members have died.
There is a particular kind of quiet that comes when the people who knew your beginning are no longer in the room. Their photographs remain. Their stories surface at the kitchen table. A hat, a watch, a familiar saying can carry more weight than it did before. Their lives have become part of the story by which we know ourselves. And now, without warning, we find that we are no longer merely the ones remembering the older generation; we have become it. Read More
