Strange

 

We were riding back from Blagnac Airport in Toulouse after watching my daughter go through security, a bit of my heart heading back to Boston. We had left Argelès a little after 3:00 to make sure she could make her plane at 9 a.m. After two years a covid-enforce separation, the three weeks had been my best Christmas gift.

It had been a magical holiday combined with moments of great sadness over my mother-in-law's death and worry about my brother-want-to-be. He'd been in a horrendous car accident. He will be in rehab for the next 8-9 months. Worry is combined with relief he's alive.

We've driven the autoroute between the two places often. In fact, at one point I'd lived in a suburb of Toulouse. As always I made it point to check out Carcassonne, a place often visited as we drove by.

Suddenly, I remembered some 40 years before I'd been on a plane going back to Boston from my father's funeral with my best friend Susan.

He had died a day after his 69th birthday and the day he had played his best round of golf. I was in the library when my Uncle Pat called. "Are you sitting down?" he asked. I said I was, although I wasn't but when he told me, I sank to the floor.

Before I could truly comprehend the news my other housemate Bill had airline tickets and a rental car arranged for me and Susan.

Because it was Christmas the funeral had to be postponed. Aunts, uncles, cousins arrived in droves. Neighbors acted as a catering service. It would have been a fantastic party except for the reason.

Strange! It seemed as if it were not decades before but now, a wave of sadness at his loss almost drowned me. It was if I had lost him just a few days before. As adults we had a great relationship. I'm sorry he never knew about the books I've had published. I'm sorry he can't play golf with my husband, whom he would have loved if he had been in my life while my dad was still alive. 

I'm grateful I don't have to tell him I left the U.S. and that I gave up my nationality. I know he would have supported me but with lots of head shakes. He would try and understand why I became Swiss and just plain confused why I also took Canadian nationality. He had been born in Nova Scotia making me eligible but had migrated to the U.S. and become American at 12. I doubt if he would have felt the same pride now as he did then.

My daughter once told me that missing him was a tribute. 

One of the hard parts of aging is losing people we love and those we like, of meals that can on longer be shared, of conversations no longer held. The tsunami of loss I felt was a reminder to treasure every moment of those who are still here.