My parents died many years ago. My father in 1982 at the age of 78 and my mother in
1998 at the age of 84. Both deaths were relatively quick; my father in a nursing home
and my mother at a hospital following a heart attack at my sister’s house. My memories
of the their deaths and the events surrounded them have passed over time into the dark
recesses of my mind leaving me with just the memories of the lives that they had led
and our times together.
My wife’s parents both were alive and lived in Florida for the past two years near her
brother and his wife. They both lived in an Assisted living community, her father in a
memory care unit following his third stroke and her mother in the same community but
in a different apartment. Unfortunately her father was getting worse with Parkinson’s
disease and dementia and the prospect of his surviving much longer was slim.
The need to comfort my wife and her parents as they went through this long process
preparing for the end brought up those black times and feelings that were filed away in
the corners of mind.
My wife and I were traveling to Massachusetts to visit my son recently. On the ferry ride
to Connecticut we managed to sit next to a family of four. The youngest child kept
calling out for his father’s attention, “Daddy, daddy, daddy”. Under any other
circumstances this would not have bothered me. But hearing the child brought up the
memory of the day after my father died. I am in my classroom trying to get things
organized for my substitute as I’m about to take some days off, for the funeral and such.
Helping and supporting me is my best friend and colleague; with him is his young son
who is constantly calling out, “Daddy, daddy, daddy”. Back on the ferry I tell my wife
that I can’t sit there anymore, with no explanation. I go outside on the deck still with the
vision in my head of that classroom so long ago.
As my wife’s father’s health deteriorated, we wait for a call from her brother that he has
passed away. Each night I go to sleep the memories come back of my sister calling me
up to tell me that my mother had been taken to the hospital and the follow-up call deep
in the night that she had died. How my wife reacted, how I felt, even the actions I took
the next day when I tried to go to work and was sent home by my fellow teachers
become a vivid movie in my head. When the phone rings at three o’clock in the morning
this past week, it all is real again. I become what my wife was to me those many years
ago. As sad and comforting as I feel and act for her and her family, my thoughts are still
on the two memories of my own.
Black may not be my favorite color. For me it tends to reveal the darkness of things and
in some cases the hopelessness of our thoughts. But it can also be the hidden depths
where we save some of our memories that are not bad, but ones we choose to
suppress. It may be necessary to open those black boxes periodically to remember that
we did handle whatever occurred and survived. It may also hold the tools we need to
help others add some lighter colors to the memories that they are forming to put in their
own black boxes.
