Spending Time with Family

Things are really busy at home. It's been great having my family here. Yesterday we cooked up a really nice meal on the grill, David and I were playing in the driveway with the dogs, and I was really pleased that they were there. Mom seems like she's a little anxious to go home, though, and I can't say that I blame her. I'm sure she's comfortable with us, but it's just not the same as being in your own home with your own stuff. Things don't feel the same with us, either. It's too bad we live so far away from each other--it's too hard to put together that kind of closeness all in one sitting. I think Mom feels guilty because she just wants to sit down and watch a little TV. I guess I do, too. We feel like we should be able to forego our daily stuff for the sake of family, but it's the daily stuff that gets us through our day.

I had the same problem with Dad. As he got older and I knew he didn't have too much time left, I would feel the need to maximize the personal time we would have together--try to save up what would have to last me for the years after he died. When I think of that last time together with him in the hospital--important then because it was to be the last time I would see him before flying back home, important now because it was the last time I saw him alive--I can't help but want to cringe. I can't even remember most of our conversation, except I was asking him a lot about his memories of family members and that he said this to me, with tears, "I just wished you lived down the street and I could see you any time." My whole life, I feel like I've been a very good son, that I made my parents proud, fulfilled all my duties. It was the only time he seriously expressed regret over how we got to live so far apart from each other. That sentence stands out to me so insistently, that it will be hard for me not to think of them in years to come as his last words on Earth.