Yesterday I awoke with this very same idea being as my wife and I live
here 'in the middle of nowhere' away from all the rest of our immediate
family; the threat of contacting and spreading Covid, a further
isolating experience, making things terribly worse especially during
holiday periods and birthdays.
The wife stays in contact with our
children, and grandchildren via Facebook/FaceTime, etc; occasional
texts, and emails but, the way I see it, most of it is small talk
with little substantive exchange of information, something I lament
because their aging mother's/grandmother's, once-illustrative life is
little known among them. I foresee regret on their parts for not asking
her about herself NOW; born in 1944, what was her childhood like?; who
were her her parents? Her siblings? What did she think of as a young
girl. Where did she go to school? What was it like to raise four
children all under the age of five? Learn the story of her life as only
she can tell it before its too late.
We get caught up in the
immediate in the headlong rush of our lives, and don't think to ask the
elders about theirs, thinking or not thinking that they'll always be
there until they're not; then later by chance or design, learn something
about them that was unknown, then painfully realize their woeful
failure to ask them when they had the opportunity.
"OH MY GOD! SVEN IS DEAD!" the new neighbor Jack Krag said, running from his car to the swing set in Sven's yard where Sven Guyson laid prone on the ground, one foot still afloat in the seat of the swing, his face against the sod, his cap ajar. "SVEN! SVEN!" Krag repeated plaintively, gently turning Sven over onto his back; the imprint of grass and dirt stuck to Sven's open-eye slobbery face. " HE'S JUST A'FOOLIN' YOU, bon ami! " shouted Monique, Sven's wife of two years and some months from the porch. "He's just workin' up to his expiration date and wants his death to be just a part of our normal routine. He doesn't want to surprise anyone by dyin' unexpectedly. You know what a shock a death can be. He's just tryin' to ease us all into it, one act at a time. "WHAT??" Krag fairly hollered in disbelief, looking at Monique, then back st Sven, and back to Monique...
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