My family is made up of train stations & I'm Grand Central. We haven't lived in the same home together in decades. All of us are disjointed, living in separate cities & with different lives. The one thing in common, our blood. We often don't see each other for long periods of time, but we call one another. My parents are always calling me to look for my sister. And, then my sister calls me to chat about how annoying our parents are. They will send each other messages through me, so I'm also the post master. I guess I don't mind it because I always convey the messages. Imagine another universe where we all lived in the same home? No, I don't think that would workout. We would kill each other. This broken telephone with emails in between, that's who we are. They drive me crazy with phone voicemails. Who even leaves voicemail messages any more? Long-winded, with concerns for the weather or asking how we are. Parents are funny in the way they forget you're 32 & don't need to be checked on 24/7. Or do we? Sometimes it's nice to have a phone call & then other times the weight of their lives is a burden. I feel like I carry them all with me everywhere I go. My shoulders are heavy with expectations & disappointments. I am the tree & they are my branches. No longer the child but the one who brings them together. I don't know when I evolved into this. Maybe I have always been this person. The negotiator, the referee, the coach. It makes me happy but also sad. I sometimes forget about myself & what I need. But, then there are times that I'm selfish. I'm an enabler, I allow them all to depend on me. It makes me feel good about myself to be needed. It also drives me mad to do all of the things I need to for myself and still please my husband & the 3 of them. Life is like this I guess, a list of priorities that you have to make. Family to me is everything. No, love to me is everything. To be loved & loved in return. I suppose that's everything to most people. We go through life longing for only this. Ultimately, you can fill your life with things, accomplishments, and places. But, only love endures it all.
I live my life in a train station full of people coming & going. I love watching strangers & peering into their lives. Do they feel the same as me? Sometimes you catch a glimpse of sadness in someone's eyes & realize that you are not alone. I want to envelope those people with my love. To suffocate them into having hope. I see them all the time. People in a daze, exhausted from life. I'm one of them sometimes too. My station is full of the people I know & then these outliers. I love them all. Life is really not about all the bull shit we worry about daily. It's this thing that connects us to every stranger we make eye contact with. We all endure it. It's a single bond not billions like we try and imagine. Do you ever feel your heart fill up so much that you think it's going to burst? That's life. When the hair on the back of your neck stands up & you get goosebumps from something frightening or wonderful. The times when you laugh so uncontrollably that you can't breathe. And, even the moments where you sobbed so hard that you couldn't control the snot dripping down your nose. Being so angry that you curse the world at the top of your lungs. In those moments you remember you're alive.
What will you remember most about your life when you die? I want to remember how it felt when I lay in my husband's arms and gazed out of a window at the clear, blue sky. In that moment, I felt the entire world was at peace & knew that I would be fine. I want to remember my sister's mischievous smile after she ate too many sweets as a child. Pulling my father's beard to see if it would come off when I was only a toddler. My mother teaching me a prayer before I went to sleep. The image of my grandmother praying on her bed while I knelt on the ground beside her whispering the same prayers without either of us acknowledging this daily ritual. My Aunt's dainty hands and feet that were the epitome of grace and beauty. The smell of the cool, crisp air in the Sri Lankan hill country. The wind on my skin as I stuck my hand out of the car window on the first warm, Canadian day after a long winter. The way my step sister's laughter would ripple through the air. Laying on a bed with my cousins after an exhaustive trip and feeling that unspoken bond of shared blood. The look in my niece and nephews eyes as I told them a bed time story that tied together all of the wonders of childhood. My best friend and I giggling like school girls as we shared an inside joke known only to us. I hope in whatever few moments I have before I die that these are the things that come to me because really. . .what else is there?
