15 days since Mum passed away and my third grandchild was born 2 days ago. Gee, it’s a funny life. Since Mum passed away, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, and indeed the last few years have involved a lot of reflection, when I consider that this year and last year I re-visited the area I grew up in 30 to 50 years ago — the Pilbara region in the rugged north-west of Western Australia. A good deal of my reflection is age-appropriate having arrived in my mid-50s.
Only this morning I was introduced to the song The Older I Get by Alan Jackson. As I considered the lyrics of the song as it was played on the radio, the nostalgia was thick. Check out these lyrics:
The older I getThe more I thinkYou only get a minute, better live while you’re in it‘Cause it’s gone in a blinkAnd the older I getThe truer it isIt's the people you love, not the money and stuffThat makes you rich.
I sent this song to my Dad and two brothers. They all thought it was poignant, and especially in the backdrop of our loss as a family, amid all the activities that our children, grandchildren, and now great grandchildren are involved in, life is a blur. As the song says, you only get a minute, better live while you’re in it.
And this is exactly why loss and grief are so polarising, because we’re ordinarily so busy in the living of life, we never consider that there is an inevitable cost in loving those we love, and that is the grief we bear in losing them. Even though the days are long, especially in childrearing, in working hard, in paying off homes, in studying and working to get ahead, the years are incredibly short when you look back over 50, 60, 70 years. I can remember being 30 and scoffing at the thought. The last 25 years have whizzed by!
In the three photographs profiled in this post there are about 10 years between each photograph (1971/1982/1992), and you can readily see how quickly we grow up, from being toddlers to being youths to being adults, and in my case, a parent at 25. When you’re a parent amid all this growth, the length of the season seems incredibly long, but as you look back, myself a grandparent now, you begin to pinch yourself, asking if it even was real. It went in the blink of an eye. My Dad said just that in the week before Mum died, “60 years gone in a flash!”
The days are long, but the years are short. Hardly a truer word in terms of the realities of life — early on those days are long and it seems to take forever to achieve anything. But then you arrive in your later years, knowing you’ve experienced so much life, but it really does feel as if it was a mirage.
And yet, 15 days on from Mum’s death, 9 days on from her funeral, two days since my brand-new grandson has been born, I am filled with thankfulness and gratitude that I have experienced all these things.
Underpinning this thankfulness is an overwhelming sense of peace that has replaced some of the more intense feelings of pain for losing Mum. Mum was a joyful soul, always serving her family with unconditional love and wit, and I sense that her joy and kindness has been imparted into my life — what a gift you’ve given me, Mum! There are times when I feel that my life is too full, with the equivalent of 1.5 full time work roles, some volunteering activities, on top of my immediate family and then my extended family, as well as friendships. The last few weeks have been a massive reset for me in understanding the real priorities of life, for which I am sincerely thankful.
When I think over what has transpired over the last month, from August 11 to September 11, I can barely believe how much has been crammed into that time period. Indeed, I had a very significant phone conversation with Mum on August 11. I’m so very glad we had that chat, but we had so many wonderful and intimate conversations, talking daily on the phone, over the past two years. Sheer blessing.
It seems the grief leaves you with a sense of loss that makes it inordinately hard to continue life as it was. It’s like another filter has been placed over your vision. Life will never be the same, but it’s one thing I appreciate about grief, it changes our perspective irrevocably and that’s okay. In acceptance is peace, and yet it can’t be faked. The peace is there or it’s not. I thank God for this peace that transcends my understanding.
In many ways it feels as if I didn’t have Mum for long enough, even though I was blessed to have her for 55 years. There is never enough time, but from a faith perspective, I believe the best is yet to come, and Mum is in Paradise right now, and that reality will be mine one day too.
I think of all the lives that have been impacted by Mum, just as there will be so many lives impacted by my new grandson over his lifetime. It’s humbling how much impact each of us makes in our lives. It’s humbling how much each of us is loved, and how much each of us is missed when we are gone.
It’s good to remember, “you only get a minute, better live while you’re in it.”
Please feel free to share to get this important message out there.
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