more thoughts on last night

As I think about last night’s unusual conversation with Dad, I’m struck by the thought that, in a way, we’ve come full circle.

Thirteen years ago, last month, is when I first came out to Mom and Dad.  I don’t think about that too much, as it was quite a painful experience of all three of us.  It changed, forever, how we interacted.  For years up to that point, Mom and Dad and I talked on the phone every weekend.  Our conversations were fun, generally lasting more than an hour, lively.  But after that event, our conversations dwindled.  We’d go months between calls, and when we did speak there was always the unspoken issue that we skirted.  The calls were tense, and relatively short. 

Whereas before that time, I always looked forward to every opportunity to fly to California to spend time with them, I began to dread those visits.

By the time Mom and Dad moved to Council Bluffs in the summer of 2003, the tension was largely gone.  We’d settled in to a routine of talking about everything except what was important in my life.  We were talking nearly weekly, again.  When they arrived in CB that summer, even though they lived only a mile away, we kept our contact to a minimum… though I knew they wanted more contact, it was hard for me to spend time with them.  There was always the unspoken but obvious “elephant” in the room that we had to avoid.

It was hard because Scott and I were always together.  And yet Scott’s and my relationship was unaddressed, unspoken, hidden.  Their words from that initial conversation always served to keep me cautious, wary. “We’ll never accept anyone in your life.  They’ll never be welcome.”

While we got along well, and they did seem to accept Scott, it felt to me that the acceptance was predicated on never speaking the truth about who Scott was in my life.  It got to the point that Scott was expected, and they even would inquire into his whereabouts if he didn’t join us.

In time, I had resigned myself to accept the status quo, and that worked.  And it would have served me fine until the very end.  I was okay with the way our lives finally settled in to a comfortable pattern.  It ceased to bother me years ago.

And then, last night happened.  The conversation at Missy’s I’m sure “lubricated” the conversation in the car which followed.  I do wish Scott had been with us.  But perhaps it worked out the way it did because he wasn’t.  The elephant has finally been acknowledged!

It’s remarkable on another level.

After Mom died in 2007, Bob related to us his experience at the funeral home with the butterfly, and the special connection he shared with Mom and butterflies, and how he knew that it was Mom’s way of saying she was still with him.

Mom often told me how she would have experiences where she knew Grandma was with her, after Grandma passed away.

Honestly, I’d come to expect that.  But then, after Mom died, nothing.  I prayed frequently to Mom, spoke to her just about every day in my prayers, asking her to somehow let me know she was around.  Nothing.  This period also coincided with the beginning of my ceasing to experience God on a daily basis as I had for so many years (I wrote about this on Monday).  I had come, to be blunt, to the assumption that Mom was angry with me.  That perhaps, in death, she no longer loved me.  I know that’s just plain inexplicable to some of you who may read this.  I’ve been carrying a lot of baggage from those last 6 months of Mom’s life, that I still can’t put aside, that drove that assumption. I know it’s not rational.  But, then, in modern culture, for me to even talk about Mom’s being present or not after her death is not rational, either.

But last night, at the height of the conversation with Dad, I knew… I just KNEW… that it was Mom who made it happen. 

And now, perhaps, the wound from 13 years and 1 month ago can scar over.  Or perhaps this means the scar itself can now go away.