Look at the photo at the top of the page. We all look healthy and mostly happy. None of us really like having our photo made and we are never truly pleased with the results, but that was a good day. Looking at it brings back that feeling of togetherness. I don’t think we’ve all been in the same place at the same time since.
In fact, our lives are so separated and busy that most of us seldom even talk to each other. There are times when it seems that Facebook is our only connection. Even there, we don’t usually communicate directly. I sometimes feel that I am stalking my children and grandchildren. I gauge their well being by what they post to their friends and the pictures they put online.
One of the shows I watch on TV regularly features a family that always meets for dinner every Sunday. Every week, I find myself longing for that kind of situation. Of course, they all live in the same town and we don’t even all live in the same state. Besides, meeting like that would require someone to actually cook a big meal every Sunday afternoon and I certainly don’t have time for that.
Even so, I find it hard to accept those facts as an excuse. I do live in the same town with other members of my family, including one of the two sons who weren’t available for the photo above. Of the three “children” who live here, I only see one on a regular basis and that is mainly because she eats and showers at my house. When she lived in Florida, we communicated with each other no more than we do with the others now.
Of the other two, one still gets her mail here and, if I happen to be home at the right moment, I see her for a few minutes when she comes by to pick it up on Saturdays. The son who lives here and I might run into each other by accident at Kroger’s or Lowe’s a couple of times a year. It’s not that we are estranged. We just don’t communicate. I love them with my whole heart and I am sure they also love me. We simply don’t move in the same circles and our circles seldom overlap.
I am not sure if our lack of closeness is due to our diverging lives or our lack of effort, but I am afraid the day will come when it will be too late. I fear that whoever is left behind will face a heavy burden of regret for lost opportunities. I know that I still feel that regret over the passing of my parents and the loss of my oldest brother. The conversations that I didn’t have time for when they were alive are now lost forever. I dread the day that the loss of other loved ones will increase that sorrow.
A voice in my head urges me to make an effort to rectify the situation, but I remember my reaction when my own mother nagged me for attention. All my life she had been a busy person. As I grew older, we went our separate ways. Living several states away as a single mother with teenaged daughters to support, I didn’t have the funds or the time to give her the attention she wanted in her later years when her life was no longer so busy and she was nearly alone. I was impatient and frustrated by her neediness. I resented the fact that she made me feel guilty with her frequent requests for more letters and phone calls. We had no internet then. Facebook hadn’t even been dreamed about. She had no way to spy on me from afar as I sometimes feel like I am doing with my far-flung family.
So, I try not to let the whining complaints that mutter in the back of my head slip out on the rare occasions that I do speak to my children and grandchildren. I make an effort to stay as busy and involved as they are so that they will never feel that I need them to keep me from being lonely, because I don’t. I am not lonely. I don’t want to burden them with guilt or regret. My own experience tells me they will do that themselves when it is too late. I just miss them and wonder how they feel inside, what they dream about and long for. I worry, sometimes, when I see posts that seem to indicate feelings of frustration or sadness. I want to reach out and make things better, but I am afraid I would only make them worse.
