Chapter 39

    They sat down to dinner and considered the idea of wine. His mother had known some of John’s complex history with alcohol, and she hesitated before ordering for the both of them. In the end it was John who ordered a bottle of chianti for the two of them, as he instinctively felt he needed the social lubrication the alcohol could provide. He knew it wasn’t a good coping skill given his history, but forged ahead in spite of this. There was a lot of water under the bridge to sift though here.

    Eventually they settled into an easy patter about his trip, the places he had been recently, and some of the things he had experienced. They shared a love of travel, and both had the same kind of wanderlust for new places and experiences that often runs in families. He told her about the Grand Canyon and the ocean at Big Sur, and they both laughed and reminisced about travels in another lifetime.

    By the second bottle of wine he could feel a shift in his mother’s presentation, and knew they were going to have to address the very heavy subject matter that lay before them.

‘Look John, I don’t have any magic words, and I don’t know any of the right things to say to people who are grieving. I never have. I know you don’t believe in a life after this one, but I do. And I’d like to believe my daughter and granddaughter are happy in it. I’d like to believe that and it gives me comfort. I also know that you have to live in this life, and how incredibly painful that must be right now. I know that. You’re my son and I love you, and I know how happy you were. I know because your happiness made me happy, and I’m forever grateful for the time you let me share with you and your family. It gave me a chance to start over too. To love unconditionally and relish in other people’s happiness. 

And with that she began to cry, and John for the first time contemplated the magnitude of her loss from having lost a new family that had in turn loved her without conditions. His grief had been his own. He had made sure of that when he turned on his car and hit the highway, but now he was beginning to see his own part in connective tissue in a much more complicated and complex web. There was value in sharing a burden, and no man could do it alone, although he had certainly tried.

“Thank you mom. Thank you for saying all of that. I’m just now seeing how much you were hurt by this, and for that I’m sorry. I realize now how much you were changed by your time with Stephanie and Kim, and I get it. I don’t mean this to sound cruel, but I’ve never seen you like you were when you were with them. It was like you had channeled a lifetime of experiences, all your hurt, all your loss, all your failings, and decided you were going to carefully and gently do it right this time. I marveled at it actually. You were a wonderful grandmother and they loved you very much.”

’Thank you son. It’s liberating for me to hear you say that. I always thought you carried a kind of anger at me for the way you were raised, and its’ something that has bothered me my whole life. I’d like to believe people can change, and I know the only way you can really do that is to let people get close enough to where they can hurt you. It took me a lifetime to realize this, and I suspect it’s a lesson that you’ve wrestled with yourself.”

He looked down at his glass of wine and pushed it away from him.  She was right. Right about all of it. Love needed vulnerability to thrive, and vulnerability means you can be hurt. The lesson was clear to him with his wife and daughter, but now he realized that maybe she was also talking about them he and his mother. Right here and right now. We the living.

‘I love you mom’ he said as his eyes drifted towards the ground.

‘I know son. I love you too,” she replied. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard you say it before though. You make an old woman very happy.’

Sometimes a lesson presents itself until you get it right.