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I have been contemplating, in these days of introspection, what it means to say good-bye to remaining family members as, one by one, they die.  This journal entry is an exploration of my heart, and may not be so entertaining.

In the last few years, I have buried most of my family.  My aunt's death from untreated cancer was long, arduous and a blessed relief.  Likewise my brother's from cancer, and my father's (with Alzheimer's Disease).  My husband's death from a heart attack was so sudden that the good-byes have had to be said post-mortem.  My mother has just entered a nursing home at 87, and so is beginning that journey from which there is no return.  I am alone with my decisions and my grief and my thoughts.  I have been the caregiver for all of these people, the last remaining member of my family able to handle decision-making.  I did not ask for this job.  I have handled it with varying degrees of grace, anger, frustration, and denial.  But I am doing it.  I will see it through to the end.

Some days I  think I cannot go a step further.  Other days I have glimmers of my old joie de vivre.  I laugh, I cry, I continue to work full-time, I get together (but not so much any more) with friends.  I try to call my son but he does not call me back; such a busy life for a husband and father of two.  So I am sad, too.  And this evening, sitting on my patio in the summer heat, watching hummingbirds at the feeder and cats stretch in the fading sun, I feel a moment of peace.  Tomorrow's crisis will be ... tomorrow's crisis.  Tonight, my aloneness is just that -- the solitude of choice and respite. 

Is it time, yet, for me to have some pleasure?  Is it time to move on with my life?  I am not doomed to constant good-byes, am I?  Or ... any more than any of us, if truth be known.  For human life is filled with pathos and pleasure, joy and sorrow, and we cannot escape any of it.  The trick, perhaps, is to pause, look up at the fading sun, and remember that it will, truly will, rise again in the morning.

And so will I.