Creating an Echo

I will be 62 years old this year. This shouldn’t be a momentous occasion. It’s not 67 – when one is eligible for your full share of the Social Security you’ve been paying into for 50 years. It’s not 65 – when you can get on Medicare. It’s not 60 – when you’ve crossed into officially being old to 30-year-olds. It’s not even 55 – when you can order off the “Senior Menu” at Denny’s.

Nope – It’s just 62. So why is this one big for me?

My Mom died at 62.

Eeek….I hear you saying. This just got heavy!

Bear with me – I promise it won’t be overwhelmingly sad.

My Mom died while she was recovering from multiple strokes due to her chronic hypertension. She didn’t have the physical deficits that you typically expect with people recovering from a stroke (paralysis on one side, difficulty with coordination, mobility challenges). Her strokes affected two areas only – her speech and her vision – which meant that my mother’s favorite pastimes – singing and crafting – were difficult for her, and that WAS actually overwhelmingly sad to watch.

It also meant that she couldn’t talk or share anything that she had never shared before. When Mom got ill, we knew…just what we had known before, which was not a lot. Mom was never one of those people who talked about herself much. She was incredibly giving to everyone around her. You learned to not look at any one item in her house for long, or you’d be going home with it. She loved giving things away – everything, that is, except details about herself.

So what does this mean for me? I didn’t know much about her childhood, or how she felt about her marriages, or even what she felt about mothering six somewhat unruly children (except my older sister, who, like all older sisters, was perfect. I love you, Debbie!)

We never had deep conversations about what she thought, other than things that she felt that she needed to say. I knew how she felt about God (he is all-knowing, so tow the line), premarital sex (good girls don’t do that), and oddly enough, motorcycles (only Hell’s Angels ride those demon-contraptions). I wonder what else she wished she had said before her speech was stolen from her.

After noting the number of plane crashes lately, I showed our youngest son where the trust documents were before we left for our Canadian conference last month. He was not excited to receive that knowledge. This reinforced my thought that none of us wants to think about a loved one dying. Heck, we don’t even want to think about our pets dying. We just all want to live together forever.

But we also know that we don’t. We won’t. We will all be gone at some point. Hopefully later rather than sooner. But as we can see in the daily news, people die sometimes unexpectedly, like my mother. We thought she was getting better and that she would soon be heading home. Instead, she had an accident that resulted in a cranial hemorrhage.

I’m not overly concerned with dying at 62, but more concerned with – What would be left unsaid if I did die at 62? What would I regret not saying?

I text my kids “I love you” every day. Matt told me that if I miss a day, he’s going to send out a search party, since it’s such a regular thing. I whisper “I love you” to my grandchildren frequently when they are with us. Eric and I tell each other “I love you” several times a day.

I’m not trying to convince anyone that I love them. They know that. I show them that in many more ways than words.

I realized today that I’m trying to create an echo. I want to say “I love you” so many times that it bounces off every part of the earth and comes back to them when I’m gone. I want to answer every question that they have while I have a voice…or a text…or a pen.

So I guess that’s my quest now. I could have 40 years left. Or I could have 4 hours. We never know. I think I’ll text the kids twice today.

Because I can.