Well, let's start off by admitting that the likelihood of me every having a real epilogue to anything is highly doubtful. I never seem to be able to close the book on anything, much less something of this sort of magnitude emotionally. Ok. So....
The truth is that while there feels to me a tremendous weight - a deep responsibility - to do my part to ensure that the memories of my parents and their lives live on I am now mostly struck with a deep sense of gratitude - no, marvel is a better word here - at just how well they did taking care of all of us. Far more than I appreciated at the time.
Look, I know so much of this is common commentary from people who have lost both parents, but my drive to be open and unhindered in my life (a promise I made to myself not so long ago when Dad passed, that I now see was entirely a remnant of both his and mom's influence - granted it, like so much, took FOREVER for me to see much less accept - on me) perhaps selfishly, compels me. (Why do I feel this rapidly turning into some sort of strange but wonderful Monty Python sketch? Anyway...)
Going back for what may be the last time to the house I grew up in I realized that my trepidation had nothing to do with going through everything there. Had nothing to do with the potential arguments over who gets what. Actually, the four of us spent most of our time actively trying to see how much stuff we could secretly stick into each other's piles without it being noticed. Mostly the issue for us all was "how am I going to get this into my own home without my wife being pissed at how much stuff there is?" Of course it's a bogus concern as all our wives love our parents and know that the bonds we all have are not just significant, but precious. The issue was something more subtle. But I will get to that in a bit...
So there we were. My three older brothers and I, for the first time (and quite likely the last as well) perhaps ever in the house together alone. Each room. Each drawer. Each closet. Each memory. Trying to sort it all out. Finding much that was expected and much that was surprising.
For example, I had no idea that my mom had been told from a young age by countless doctors that she would never be able to have children due to a number of reproductive related medical conditions. hmmmm.... And one of my older brothers never knew that she was totally freaked about my birthdate and one of my other older brother's birthdate as we were born in the same month and our dates are 2 days apart, the one in-between being the date their first child who died after only two days was born. Or that they had been considering the name Barry for that child. Bari if it had been a girl. Then of course there were the gag gifts that none of us had been aware of, given to our parents, by we don't know who, at various points, whose content I will not go into here. Some pretty risqué stuff. Very VERY blue, as they say.
The weekend was blissfully cathartic. Emotionally draining and up lifting. Funny. Dark. Hopeful. Happy. Sad. But above all else, joyous.
There is only so much you can take with you. But I feel we all were able to take some things that were no just of our childhoods but of our parents. Things that instantly take us back to a time when our family was whole. And yet, I see that we still are whole. I live too far away to see my brothers as often as I'd like, but yet I know we are close. There was a time when I prevented that, but it was the most significant wish of both my parents that the four of us be true friends. And we are. We are each very different and yet the same. I see myself as quite lucky to have them. To know I am lonely without mom and dad but not alone.
I plan to record myself opening up the boxes as they arrive from Ohio. Going through the items one by one for my own children. Explaining each's significant and history as best I can. LIke much of what I do, it's a good bit self indulgent, but at its heart is something more. This weekend it was clear how much that information and those stories will some day, perhaps, matter. For all of us, it was the places where we found none of us able to fully identify the details of an item that were the ones that were emotionally difficult. I may not be 100% successful, but I am going to at least make the attempt for my own boys. Someday it may matter. And even if it doesn't, it feels like the right thing to do.
I miss Mom and Dad terribly. There is a whole in me that will never be filled, but as I said in my eulogy for Dad (it's on here somewhere for those curious - go back the end of June 2013...) it's the spaces that make the line mean something. Without them there is no real line in the first place.
As I spent time at the house this weekend I also came to the realization of what my real trouble with this trip - this task - was. No matter how many years passed, no matter where I lived, that place was always my home. Always. And now it will no longer be. It can no longer be.
I still am working through this reality. Keeping it would be absurd for an number of reasons, but while time does not heal all wounds it does offer perspective and so my sincere hope is that the house will wind up in the hands of another young family. not unlike mine was so many years ago. The house is older. It needs some work. But it is a home. A wonderful, special, and sacred place. And now it is time for another family to create more memories and a life there.
I still mourn my parents and I am coming to terms with the fact that I likely always will. That's not a revelation of any kind - I suspect it's what many people do - but it has hit me stronger than I thought it would. And for that reason I know this is not really an epilogue, more just a stop along the way.
