SHOWER THE PEOPLE

Shower the people you love with love

Show them the way you feel

Things are gonna work out fine

If you only will.

        -  James Taylor**

Last week, I spoke on the phone with an old friend who lives about as far from me as it’s possible to get without falling into an ocean.  We don't talk very often, but she is dear to me.  When we signed off, she said, "I love you."  "Me, too, you," I replied.  Today, I had lunch with another friend, who, talking about the difficulty of finding time for friends amidst the fullness of our lives, said, "I only see you about every six months and I love you."  “And I, you,” I responded.

Simple words, yet often left unsaid.

Which brings me to the James Taylor song quoted above.  This song absolutely shreds me every time I listen to it.  His soulful voice admonishing us to “shower the people you love with love” yanks my heart right out of my chest.

Yesterday, I spoke with a family member who told me he has been risking vulnerability by telling friends and family what they mean to him.  Why, I wonder, is it risky to tell people that we care, that we love them, that they are an important part of our lives?  Why should this make us feel vulnerable?

Why do we hold back?  Is it because we believe the important people in our lives will always be there?  Here is a cautionary tale.  I had a friend with whom I shared a love of writing.  We would meet for lunch from time-to-time and talk about our kids.  We would exchange drafts of writing projects.  There came a few months during which we didn’t have any contact.  We were both busy. He was in a new relationship.  I kept thinking that I needed to call him, that I would call him.  

And then, quite suddenly, he died.  I never got to have lunch with him again or to tell him that his friendship was important to me. 

Dear reader, if there is someone you are thinking about calling, please do it.  Don’t wait. 

It's not difficult for me to tell some people how I feel. I almost never leave either of my daughters without saying "I love you."  This comes as naturally as breathing.  It was not so with my parents, who, like many in their generation, did not make these declarations of love.  Toward the end of her life, I would tell my mother that I loved her.  She seemed surprised, then pleased.  She was ultimately able to tell me that she loved me.  It felt important to share these words before she left this life. 

I find it easy to tell some friends what they mean to me, and with others. I hesitate.  Will I make them uncomfortable?  Is this their way of relating?  With these friends, I can call.  I can check in. There are ways of showing love without words.

So, let’s do it.  Let’s let our love shine.  

And let me say to my friends and family, right here and now, in writing, I love you.  Thank you for seeing me through.  Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.  You mean the world to me.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

**  This is not the first time I have quoted James Taylor in a blog post. I come back to him again and again.  He seems to be providing the soundtrack for my life.  For those who don't know the song, here he is singing Shower the People. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJWqjoekow

FALLING LIKE LEAVES: SOME THOUGHTS ON THE PASSING OF A GENERATION

         It happened again yesterday.  A friend e-mailed me to let me know that her father-in-law had died.  Two weeks before that, another friend’s father died.  Two months before that another friend lost her mother.  A year-and-a-half ago, my mother died. 

         They are falling like leaves these members of my parents’ generation. 

         It started out slowly, in the way that the first leaves drift slowly from an autumn tree.  My father passed nearly twenty years ago.  Over the years since, several friends have lost parents – I would hear of one and then, maybe a year later, another. 

         But now the pace is rapid.  The tree will soon be empty.  There will be no one left of the generation that gave birth to mine.

         I am a Baby Boomer--one of the many babies born during the hope-filled years following World War II:  1946-1964, to be precise.  I was born during the first years of the boom, and so I call myself a “vintage boomer.”   The members of my vintage cohort will soon all be parentless. 

         Apart from the obvious individual grief experienced by each person who loses a parent, this loss of a generation feels momentous.  Perhaps this is simply because my generation is now the one standing between our children and history.  Or perhaps it is because we lose so much when we lose a generation.

         With the passing of this generation, as with each one before it, we lose not only its members, but their lived experience.  We can read about their times, but we can never really know what it felt like to live them.*  I have read many novels set during World War II.  And I have read non-fiction accounts of those years.  The novels give me some sense of the experience, and the non-fiction works give me information, but these are not my lived experiences.  Once those who lived them have passed, all we will have is history.  And that is cold comfort, indeed. 

         And there is another loss.  A friend whose mother died recently has told me that she is trying to think about her mother before she got sick, before she lost her memory, before she was diminished by the ravages of aging.  This is a tricky business.  If we have been caregivers to our parents, the strongest and most recent memories are of persons who could no longer care for themselves.  We have to work to remember them as vital people, fully occupying their lives. 

         And then there this—we probably never really knew our parents as fully-realized beings, even when they were in their prime.  A line from Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, comes to mind.  If I remember correctly—and it is possible that I do not, given that I read the book years ago—someone asks the narrator something about the narrator’s mother,  who has recently died.  The narrator says (or thinks?), “How would I know?  She was my mother.”  

         This is the rub.  We do not grow up thinking of our parents, who are then in their prime, as people with lives unrelated to our own.  We know them only as “our parents.”  We grow up, if all goes as it should, under their care.  They are the constants in our lives.   We do not give a lot of thought to their hopes and dreams and losses and heartaches.  They are simply there. 

         It is only much later, if ever, that we attempt to pull together the  

threads of their lives, and to guess at the lived experience that each of these threads represents.  Although our attempts will fall short of breathing life into our parents’ experiences, even the shadows of those experiences are worthy of our attention. 

         And so, on this autumn day, I look out my window at the falling leaves and think of the passing of my friend’s father-in-law and of my other friend’s father, and of the many losses that preceded those.  And I pause to give thanks for the gifts (not least of which is the gift of life) that each member of my parents’ generation gave to mine.         

 *  I attempted to address this dilemma in an earlier post: My Mother Didn't Wear Make Up . . .or did she?