Present Memories

My memories of growing up are a mixture of feeling supported and feeling alone. It was clear that my parents loved me but I was haunted, from as early as I can remember, by a terrible sense of loneliness. Terrible is too strong a word, for there were (and are) many times I remember of feeling connected and safe with my family of origin.

I fondly recall riding in the car on long trips. In my memories, there are always six of us: me, my older brother, my two younger sisters, my Mom and my Dad. There were endless negotiations about who got to sit where. The space in between Mom and Dad was most coveted one, especially late at night because sometimes you got to sleep with you head in Mom’s lap and your feet in Dad’s lap.

I loved being so close. These people were my world and I lived with an unspoken fear that one or more of them would go away—or was it more the fear that I would be exiled, thrown out of the garden for some unknowable reason?   Either way, the car held us together. Long trips meant that we were going somewhere special like Grandmother and Granddad’s house or, even better, to our slightly ramshackle cottage on the Lake in Vermont where Dad wouldn’t go off to work and we would be together for weeks at a time. And even if my father was angry when we finally pulled out of the driveway because it had taken so long to pack up and get on the road, I knew he would eventually calm down and would start singing.

When my Dad sang in the car, we all joined in. Thinking back, I’m sure that singing in the car with his beloved family was a place of safety and connection for him as well. The world and its incessant demands and confusions passed away and we were just all together, breathing the same air and gratefully eating whatever my mother had packed to sustain us on the trip. My father’s repertoire was a mish-mash of Broadway tunes like My Favorite Things, hits from the forties and fifties like Ragtime Cowboy Joe and church camp songs like Michael Row the Boat Ashore. It didn’t matter much what we sang, my father sang with an enthusiasm and commitment that was contagious.

Many years later, on his deathbed, the four of us children (and his final family but not his middle family) were gathered around and sang to him as the nurse removed his breathing mask. He startled and struggled for a moment, then slowly passed away. I used to think ‘passing away’ was a euphemism that avoided the harsh reality of death. But that day, it wasn’t a harsh reality, it was more of a relief and an astonishment. Something unbelievably sad and sacred was going on. Saying ‘he died’ misses so much. Though he certainly did die—he stopped breathing and became awe-fully still. He was clearly not with us anymore, but where he went and how he did it after hours and days and months of struggle was (and is) a complete mystery.

But those long hours in the car driving and the songs of my childhood are still with me to this day. And they all intermingle with the songs of his death and the ancient and vast feelings of separation. The immeasurable past life that is fully present in this very moment. No separation.

Language is so inadequate to describe how much happens all together. Were you lonely or were you part of a close family unit? Language pushes us to blanket generalizations that miss so much the mish mash of our actual experience. In reality, so much more is happening simultaneously than we could ever describe. Language highlights one explores some dimensions of this richness while it dismisses other equally important realities.

So this morning I remember the importance of telling many stories about whatever is happening and whatever happened. Whatever you think this is is only a partial description that can shift and change and allow even more to be revealed. And maybe sometimes, or maybe many times, we can allow the stories to drop away and allow the activity of the moment to be fully enough to hold us.