REFLECTIONS FROM AN OLD MAN ABOUT HIS PAST

“It’s said that with Age comes Wisdom, but maybe it’s because regret, as we reflect on our mistakes.”

B.A.

Trough the years,  specially when you reach old age, you reflect on your past. And if we are sincere, we will admit that we  not did  just a few mistakes, but many, and therefore the way we acquired wisdom.

Of lately, I have giving a lot of thought to my now many years gone parents, and realized I could had being a much better son than I was.

I left home at the early age of seventeen, to do what a  lot of young people do, to go and study, somewhere away from home, sure I returned for some years on vacation times, but just for a few brief days, and then life caught in full with me, work, marriage, children supporting a family, on a far away city, with less, and less visits through the years being caught on dealing with all the things all you know too well, if you have your own family to take care, and your parents do not live anywhere near from where you are, my visits were few an sporadic, with long lapses of absences, except for a call to say hello, for a few minutes, and a visit of a week every two, or three years.

And now seeing my own children following my own pattern, of growing up, and being by themselves , moving to other cities, and actually being on the same situation my parents were, I can see clearly, how bad a son I was, not because the same thing it’s done to me, in fact I understand them perfectly, and accept what they are doing, as  normal and natural, they need to pursue their own life, just like I did.

What I cannot do, its to forgive myself  for the fact I pay so little attention to them, and that it seems incredible that on my seventy years of life, I only spent seventeen years at their side, and I did not give myself the chance to spent more time with them.

Today, too late,  I remember daily, their words to me, their love, and caring, and the little details, that not escape my memory, and that make me regret today, I did not make an effort to spent more time, to enjoy them, and to know them better.

On one of my sporadic visits, talking to Mother about something I do not even remember, I exclaimed: “Well we will see how things will end, and mother said: “Where do you think, they will? But right at the end of the street!”  She exclaimed, It took me a few moments to catch her meaning.

At that time my parents lived at a street that ended at a graveyard where the family’s graves where located.

Before mother died I had a dream, she was showing me a tree on the house from my Grandmother, where she grew up, a tree all too familiar to me, although at the time did not knew it was special, since in the house were many trees, on the dream she told me to bury her ashes under that tree.

Immediately after waking up, I called work, to tell them I had an emergency, a plane ticket, and flew over to go visit her, at the time, she was living not on her house, but too old to take care of herself, she was living at the house of my sister’s family, I did not even call her to tell her I was coming, on arriving, I took a cab and went to her house, my sister open the door and saw me with surprise, and the firs thing she said to me pulling me aside, and in a sort of secretive tone, not to be overheard was: “I was about just to call you! Doctors already told us mother only have a few days to live!”

I said: “I know, that’s why I am here!”

My sister surprised said: “Who told you, her?”  Without telling her the dream, I said I just had a dream. My sister, not wanting for mother to get scared, decided not to tell her, doctors already had given up on her, in order not to frighten her, and asked me not to mention anything to her.

Without telling her about my dream, I asked her about the tree, mother then told me it was a special tree, that my Grandfather brought to the house where he build the house for his new family, from the old town where both grew up, before moving to a new town and getting married, and where they started a new life, and a new family.

Ironically, the first moment mother talked to me in private, she confessed to me, she felt so bad, and was so tired, she just wanted to die, and be over with her suffering, but made me promise I will not tell the family about it, I guess considering me already an outsider from the family circle from my sister and brothers, who lived in the same city, me the only living far away. It was ironic, to say the least, but I kept quiet, and silent to both parties. I spent two weeks there, and had to leave and return to work, she died two days later, and could not attend her funeral.

For many years I have not going to my Grandmother’s town, I used to pass there, and stop to look at the old house they sold after my Grandmother died, and stare at the now empty lot, where the house was, the new owner destroyed it and put a mechanic shop for big trucks, but left the big tree, and two palm trees, at the property, once in a while by nostalgia, go into google maps and look at the place where mother was born, and raised, along with my aunts, unfortunately since recently, the old tree doesn’t appear anymore, someone told me they accidentally put it on fire, and they remove it..

Well another Mother’s day is gone, and another year added, to the many years now, since you left us for good, we still remember you, and we miss you Mother, and you too father, and please both forgive me, my many  years of absence!