Life Between Goodbyes

Now in my sixties, with grown, independent children, a long-retired career, and parents in their nineties, I find myself navigating a new, unfamiliar phase in life. When the kids left home I felt a void, but they are where they should be. My parents are aging; this is evident in moments like my 90-year-old mother tenderly cutting my father’s hair the night before his surgery. Their runway is short, and I feel a new hollowness coming. As I drive home from Seattle to my childhood home in the Palouse, the big skies, open fields, and weathered barns dot the countryside. They anchor me to my birthplace. The constant yet ever-changing nature of the landscape makes me wonder about its future, just as I wonder about mine. Sometimes I revisit a barn to find it gone - now existing only as a memory. Recently, my siblings and I gathered to work on Dad’s old machine shed. As we worked, Dad-the-doer became the teacher and observer. Mom, as always, insisted on painting everything five feet and below. As we worked, I could feel the looming transition over the horizon, unavoidable and ever-present.