Not to be too cryptic or anything, but at some point in my life it became clear to me that my parents would eventually not be there. Either suddenly, or one at a time. You are never prepared for what actually happens when it happens to happen.
I was not particularly concerned about the concepts of senility in my parents. Hell, most of the time they behaved like they were senile since before I was born. But gradually, as they aged and I did not… please don’t think you would want that because you so do not… I got to see my parents dissipate in reality, mind, body, and consciousness … in a fairly non-threatening voyage. So, as safe as parents might want. I mean, if they didn’t mind their 40+ year old, grossly overweight, zit-covered, no-friends-having nerd of a son still living at home right up until the day you die of basically being insane.
Surprisingly, I have no evidence that they didn’t enjoy THEIR lives. I hated mine. I mean, I hate mine because it never ends and therefore can never be referred to in the past tense. But my parents always seemed like they were having a great time. A time so great that including their doofus child in anything would have positively spoiled it for everyone. But from afar (and incidentally how I preferred it) they appeared to be a very normal, reasonably happy couple. Something we all knew I would never experience. And before you get all sobby and insisting I am beautiful just the way I am, I assure you that I am not. I’m pretty hideous, and I don’t care to embellish anymore. I just know that I am stark raving ugly and nobody could possibly see themselves willingly growing old beside me when I never age at all. I am just way too “teenage-dork-chic” to ever appeal to anyone. Especially if they know my real age. Then I am just a torn out page of some discarded Wes Craven novel.
Anyhow, I was trying to describe the descent out of reality that people tend to experience when they grow old. Certain things no longer have meaning. Driving, for example. You eventually get to a point where that is no longer a thing. So is going to the bathroom without assistance, but let’s not get into that. Among a wealth of other daily routines that gradually erase themselves from your hemisphere of “giving a shit” as so eloquently spoken by my dad in his years of late. I found this hemisphere to be quite extensive as time went on. It became so all-encompassing that I could literally confess to my dad every day that I am an undying vampire, forever cursed to fester in the body of a gross human troll, and that I would not only outlive him, but likely the entire human race, and he would immediately forget and go right back to talking about circuit breakers and pure bred boxer dogs. Somehow without anger in his soul. I was eventually pretty open about everything in my day to day existence after my parents hit about 78 years of age… oh goodness I remember being that young… but at the time, I knew there was nothing they would retain, and even if they did, it mattered to nobody. Kind of metaphoric, huh? Well, such is the way I see everything these days…
I’ll get back to this another time. As much as my life was an absolutely insufferable nightmare while my parents were around…
… it’s far worse without them.