self-fullness

Gerhard Richter
Two Candles, 1983

Oil on canvas
55 1/4 x 43 1/2 in.

I owe my parents at least this much to be close to them, especially near their passing from this life (well, my dad is gone so I mean my mom now). I appreciate and admire what they've done for us kids and what they gave up and went through to do it. For years I felt groundless, especially when I was alone with no one special in my life, and without certain symbols of accomplishments like a steady career and my own place to live. As it turned out my parents needing me - and my needing them - happened at a time when I was falling out of a situation that ultimately didn't work for me and slipped from my life in terms of meaning.

I found new meaning in being near my mom, then. Which in some ways makes perfect sense. I moved out of family not long after I received my college or university degree and started working. I became independent financially, emotionally, and intellectually. I took on the most important job of my life - to think for, speak for, and live for myself. I needed to break away from family, from their constraints, in order to establish my own worth and gain an appreciation of myself and what I was making myself into.

So years went by that saw me go through so many things, good and bad and disastrous. And I survived it all in part because I had very good parents and a very good family. So my being with my mom today at this phase in my life is very natural for me personally. It's grounding and meaningful. I know she doesn't have long left to exist but I don't think of things in that sense. I think of it more like rich moments merging into each other as they happen. And one day she'll be gone, and I'm to move on with myself all the more enriched because of such moments.

That's how I was when my dad died. When he died there was sadness, but only because I was acting a bit selfishly and wanting him to stay a little longer. But I was aware of this selfishness and that it was okay to feel it, it's simply another way of loving him. What I did feel most - and what made the most sense - was that he didn't need to stay anymore. He accomplished what he set out to do. He lived a long rich life and he gave us all love and he was done and he was happy and he could finally leave. The only word I can think of to describe this is 'self-full'. Not really selfish, but not really selfless, either.

I myself want to be that way when it's time for me to die, whenever that may be. To have lived self-fully, and to die self-fully.