Gone Now

Every holiday we gathered, in the chairs on either end of the dining room table sat our parents--our mother nearest the kitchen, our father heading the furthest end. Each year, the last decade-and-a-half,  we watched as they, bookending us, grew more feeble. First one left us. Then, finally, so did the other.

This year someone else sat in their places. A sibling. A sibling's spouse. New friends joined us at our family table.

Our parents are gone and Thanksgiving was the first holiday my sisters and I communed without our parents. This December marks the third Christmas since mother's death and Daddy died at the dawn of this year's spring.

Their departure left ruts in our souls. And mysteries unsolved about what weighted their own souls.

Daddy's death turned my world upside down. And, not because I was Daddy's Little Girl. My middle sister held that role. Nothing I begrudge. It took his death for me to wake up to the patterns sown in my life that repeatedly reaped unwanted harvests.

Now I am digging up the fields. Arduous work it is. Much discovery going on beneath the deep, dark soil. I am planting a New Life. It is slow work. Soil tending always is.

Thanksgiving has come and gone and the calendar of days hurl us, now orphaned children, into Christmas and on into the New Year. In our hearts we bless the abundance for which they labored to leave us at their departure. And the rest of the legacy, we work on our own to understand and unravel.

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With poetic license, I use "we." It is "we" who have lost our father and our mother. But in fairness I must only speak of me. The "we" of the inner journey left after our parents gone is mine, traveled by me.

Comments

[Leisa A. Hammett]

Thank you for your comment, Nate. May you have many more holiday with your father.

[Nate]

I can't imagine how hard the holidays are the first time after losing a parent. My father keeps warning me that every year is his last, but I'm hoping (obviously) that we have many more. Hope you have a Merry Christmas!