changing of the guard

This week has been one of emotional heaviness for my family. My younger sister had a miscarriage. My uncle died. My mother in law had back surgery yesterday. My own mother is in the preparative stages of her own back surgery. All of the expected emotions are dancing a chaotic rhythm as the band seamlessly shifts from one tempo to the next – my footsteps struggling to keep time to the ever changing beat. But, as I step to the side of the dance floor and take up my preferred wallflower position, there is something deeper revealing itself to me.

Suddenly, the death and age related illnesses are affecting a different generation, the one occupied by my parents. There is a subtle shift of power taking place as they prepare for the eternal leg of the journey, we step into the matriarchal and patriarchal roles, and our children begin entering the age of power. I don’t like this feeling. It is not the ephemeral nature of life which strikes such a sad chord in me.

It seems we spend an inordinate amount of time in our youth striving for the age when we will be grown – to have the power over our own destinies. That power is short lived. Life comes full circle, and with age, we slowly lose those things for which we fought so hard. For some, the journey is graphically symbolized as the ability to drive, care for their homes, tend to their physical needs, and make decisions for their own future is slowly whittled away by degenerative disease. For others, the loss is sudden, unexpected, and profound.

In observing the world around me, I often note that faith seems strongest in young children and senior citizens. Perhaps it is easier to surrender control to an almighty being when the evidence is already so clear that we really never had the power at all. I do not mean that we have no say in this life of ours. There is just so much, always, that we cannot put reins around. Perhaps acknowledging that fact is easier when it is so clearly written in our lives.

We all know this life is fleeting. My prayer would be that I am able to recognize those times in my own life when change is coming and not sit with gritted teeth, grasping hard to reins now uselessly attached to a horseless cart.

On this day, as I leave my house to visit a hospital for one mother, gather in mourning and remembrance of a loved one gone, and take another mother to another preparatory appointment, may I mingle the caring and love of my children into a smaller frame of time. May I hold onto the present with them while preparing for the future. May I keep my eyes always on an even more distant future when all of the parts are again united - when eternity becomes now for us all.