Human Nature
There’s a glass of whiskey on the rocks to my right. It’s 11am and I’m doing the homework on the list of doctor’s notes from my mother-in-law’s cardiologist. The what-if’s and when-not-if’s are flooding my mind and the biggest monster in the room is how I’m going to support him when the time comes.
Except the time is already here. Maybe not today, but isn’t it always already right around the corner? She’s not young by any means, and not healthy by most, but she’s his world and he’s her boy. Sip.
He told me while half-asleep on a tequila buzz as I let him let it all out that he doesn’t want to be an orphan. I can’t protect him from that… only hold him as he faces it. We are all facing it at some point, but he’s facing it right now and he’s scared, and he’s hurt, and at some level he’s angry.
And she’s scared. She’s always been scared… that’s just her nature. Scared that the breeze carries disease and the wrong lunchmeat might carry her off to the great unknown. Scared that her granddaughters need more support and that her daughter needs more of her in general… more time to make up for time SHE was rebelling. Now she’s scared that this afternoon’s procedure will be the end of her. Sip.
When his father passed it was a slow process. Warning shots were fired over the bow years before but he rallied and we thought the coast was clear… until it wasn’t. Those extra years were a gift to our kids and a second chance for a father to really get to know his son as a whole man. A father in his own right. A business owner. A partner. A musician. All the things that made his son who he was in the eyes of everyone around him. That extra time was a gift to us all, but it made losing him even harder. It might have been easier if they were still butting heads and defiantly rebelling against each other. Who knows?
He’s never had to defiantly rebel against his mother. He IS the man in her life. Her only son. The king of her perfectly curated castle. To her, he can do no wrong, even when he does. She understands and forgives and loves him all the harder for it. She lets him teach her about life and support her. She’s a saint, albeit a skittish one, in his eyes. And now she’s falling. Sip.
His nature when life gets out of control is to find some. Create a pattern amidst the chaos. Set an anchor in a raging storm. And then circle that anchor until he has a handle on how to ride those waves all the way back to shore. My nature is to be the shore. Sip.
This storm is inevitable, but that’s the order of the universe. Parents are supposed to pave the path so we can walk it in grace and peace. I can tell myself that but it doesn’t make it any easier. I don’t want him to become an orphan either.
Drinking: Basil Hayden over ice