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| Iowa - sunset, moonrise |
I drove on up with my brother Ted on Friday night. The trip was the best kind - uneventful. Talked my sister into visiting REI with me on Saturday. (I like to shop up there because there are more tall women running around the area, and thus, a better selection of tall clothes in the store.) Saturday night, my local family was busy (what??? they have lives???), so I met up with my brother Tony from Iowa, and got to meet his new girlfriend (who seemed like a good gal).
To my surprise, Libby and Autumn decided to make time to show up at Saturday's dinner. (I was surprised because I didn't think they'd have the energy - they were throwing a big party the next day.) Libby's hair was gone again - she is on a new type of chemo - Lynparza - a new targeted type of therapy just approved for her type of cancer this past January. According to the ever-helpful internet, the drug targets an enzyme, PARP, fast-growing cells use to repair DNA damage. No repair, the cells die.
She hasn't been on it for too long, but she said it's working to shrink her tumors and slow their growth. She said her last scan showed places in her bones where the cancer had taken hold, and then been stopped. (How they can tell this from a scan, I have no earthly idea.) Hallelujah! - anything that can give her more good days is a good thing! (Especially since she said the side effects haven't been too bad, given the givens.)
The party was Sunday afternoon. All of my siblings and many of their children came. I talked to everyone, then stood back for a minute to just watch. It was a proper grad party. There was a baby to be passed around, and a couple of four year-olds having a contest to see how high they could jump. Over at this table, the older adults gathered to share stories. Over there, young adults gathered; our children, who are children no more. The little ones belong to them now - my siblings and I are the older ones, the grandparents (and proud of it, thank you very much!). Our offspring have turned out to be competent adults, done with school, in long-term relationships, having children, holding down jobs, buying houses.
It was clear that, sometime in the last decade, the torch of life had been passed. And once again, though I thought I'd been watching for it, I'd missed it. *Dang!* Time is a funny beast. The days seem long, but the weeks and years pass by at an ever-increasing rate. And I think Frankl was right when he said, in Man's Search for Meaning:
In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.
From this one may see that there is no reason to pity the old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that: Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past -the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized -and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past."
It's not that my siblings and I have already reached the point where our futures are devoid of possibilities, but our harvests are certainly well under way. I do treasure my memories, love to sift through the past to find the places I did well, the times I made a difference in someone's life. It's comforting to know these deeds won't be erased, even if they won't be remembered - they have become the foundation blocks upon which the future is being built.
These were good thoughts to carry with me on Sunday's long drive home.
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