A peaceful day outside ,its a bit hot, after all its Phoenix Arizona. A day two parents take their baby boy food shopping. How very common, its done every day. This however is not just any shopping trip, not just any two parents, not just any baby boy.
The parents have been shopping , together for the last ten years give or take. Its ~something~ when you consider , then never did that before they hit retirement age. This however is not a story of bonding or two people who have come to appreciate one another over the years. The lesson this day was all there for me to see. THe lesson is this , if you don't forgive people for there errors and then accept them back into your life, you grow old , you grow bitter, and grocery shopping , the simplest of activities turns out to be a real painful event.
On this particular day , I am standing in for my brother who normally accompanies my folks shopping, he has been here too many times to even feel that he is helping them any more. My mom has managed to turn this into a game of ”try a little harder “ for my dad who cant see , and uses a magnifier to read labels. She gets a*special Joy* out of this as if , its somehow pay back for the years of misery he helped her too 35 plus years earlier. While myself @ 37 years old have my own family and relationships to build, I see these two as prime examples of staying to gether for no particular reason. They were divorced previously and after a few years apart remarried to the unnatural bliss from hell. No one benefits. Each has offers from others to live elsewhere. My mother wont because that would almost admit she has made a mistake. How simply tragic!... and dad wont because he is afraid she wont be cared for. What a scene, walking into the store ,My mother mouths, audible for all to hear..’ go that way lÛß}be shop” ....after the second or third chorus of this Dad and I do depart for another aisle nearby. After a few aisles of Mumbling from Mom about what ~he~ is suppose to buy and does not , we arrive at Frozen foods and being Arizona this is a~ last aisle~ event. But we go no further ,Mom is MIA, Dad is waiting for Mom as she is in the bathroom , I don't know how he knows this , he cant see , but he knows. Sure enough a few minutes later Mom comes back. saying she has to go to the potty at least once during shopping.... the rest of the aisles are a bit like the earlier ones , and my joy at helping push the cart and spending time with my folks starts to tarnish. I see my parents maybe once every few years, and the relationship(theirs) is now beyond pretense, its a sad state of affairs. The lesson for me is this , SON, don't let your life get to this point , and yet its not far from it. But starin me in the face is this..... and they are OLD and have lost all the sense of joy, they just exist. I was told recently by a friend to “save myself, from my own debacle”. If this is not evidence of truth , I cant say what is.
At Check out my brother strolls in with his knowing smile, as if to say.....”.now do you SEE what a JOY it is to take these two anywhere.” I do see and I was disappointed , that this honesty is not more pleasant to look at. I find honesty very attractive abotu people, but this is far from attractive. All my life I was taught to be honest by these two people and today they did not let me down. Honesty can be the most brutal form of pain inflicted .
For the final honest thing to say , just be blunt ONCE and say “I cant live with you or like this”. Whispering it for years on end through actions of dispute are just too traumatic. How I wish I heard those words one day when I was growing up. Perhaps its time to formulate my own version of them.