WHY DO OUR PARENTS HAVE TO GROW OLD | PART 2 |

Currently fighting back tears at the breakfast table while my Dad is reading a book to my son on the sofa. My mother is currently playing catch in the living room with my other twin son. And I’m just sitting over here wondering why life moves as fast as it does. 

I understand we all have one life and it begins out of the womb and travels through many mountains of years, of different shades of color and many bumps and curves in the roads and it ends somewhere beautiful in the sky, back to where we originated from. At least that’s my perspective. 

But today, just like every other day that my parents leave Tennessee and make the long journey home to California, I’m sad. Of course I’m sad. I love them. I need them like a daughter needs her parents. And today I just want to ask God, why do my parents have to grow old?

Tear drop.

This is so me. I do this every time. 

Maybe it’s because I love them and they have filled my life up with so many beautiful memories and experiences and I want to keep that going. 

But they grow old. And I can’t stop that train.

Growing up wasn’t perfect by any means, but I’ll tell you with every inch of my breath, that it was wonderful. And from what I remember, it is not a childhood I want to forget. And today, I still feel like that child. 

Even though I’m grown up and in my forties, I still see the Dad who held me on his lap and hugged me tight telling me I could be anything I wanted to be. 

I still see him shirtless on the beach, flexing in front of all of us telling us he’s “a walking specimen of health”. 

I still see me singing right next to him while he played his keyboard and sang “Unforgettable” and I sang along side him in harmony in my white lace dress at my cousins wedding. 

I still see him as a grown man crying in front of his Dad’s casket the day we buried my grandfather. 

You see, I see it all and I see him growing and it takes my breath.

I want to freeze time. Now. 

And Mom, she’s rubbing my knee to make sure it doesn’t hurt (since it started hurting last week). 

She’s giving me jewelry as she always does, because she says “I can’t take it with me when I go.”

She brushes my hair and gives me cbd oil for my shoulders and rubs them until the ache goes away.

She tells me she’s so proud of the woman I’ve become.

And suddenly I flash back to 1981 and there we are in her waterbed taking a nap after pre-school. I’m in her arms, we’ve had cookies and milk and I’m safe. I’m with my Mom.

I know I’m no dummy and I understand the concept of life and death, but growing old with my parents is harder than I thought.

I understand, it’s also a gift.

A gift of time.

They are still here and are currently giggling on the sofa with my twin sons.

They are making a memory.

Making a memory my twin sons will remember.

A memory they will take home.

And a memory I will remember forever.

Well, it’s time to go now and take the boys to school and drop them off at the airport. 

And so I’ll wipe my tears and head on out.

But it won’t be easy.

But I suppose God made it that way and that’s the point.

To be here now and remember it forever.