The Unbearable Swiftness of Wane

It's December 2011, the final month of the year.

It has been two years and a few months since my wife's mom died. It has been almost four years since her dad died.

They have disappeared.

Vanished out of sight.

For a time, they were there and now they're not.

It seems that the older I get, the more profound this all becomes. I don't know; maybe it's a perceptual thing.

When my grandparents passed on (the most recent being around twenty years ago), they all seemed to be matter-of-fact events. That may be partly due to not being particularly close to any of them. But none of their deaths led to any sort of contemplation on my part. It was really no different than reading about some stranger's death in the newspaper.

My wife's parents' leaving, however, has remained with me.

I still think about them; perhaps not as actively as I once did. Now and then, though, they will pop into my mind, and I will remember specific times with them.

My wife and I had been married twenty-one years when her dad left, closer to twenty-three at the time her mom passed on.

Two decades plus is a long time.

Yet...

It isn't.

We were already older when we married. I was 26 and she was 32. We put off having children for seven years. Because of our lack of immediate timing, my in-laws never got to see their grandsons graduate from high school. I think about this from time to time. They won't see either of my sons get married and have their own children.

It's too bad, really.

My parents are alive, so there are still grandparents available for my sons. They've been able to see the Little League games, the graduation and other important events in the boys' lives. Hopefully, this will last for a while. Both parents are approaching their 80s, but they are still in pretty good heatlh.

Thomas Hobbes wrote in 1651, "Life is nasty, brutish, and short." This is a paraphrase of the actual line which was longer by several words. He was speaking about his time, of course, when life was as described, especially without a sense of law and order. It is a sentiment often applied to current times as well when moroseness sets in. There appears to be a common feeling among my peers that time goes by so fast and kids grow up in a twinkling before our eyes. Before we can even blink, we have gotten old.

I have been trying over the last few years to enjoy moments as they come, to not get so wrapped up in doing stuff that I lose track of time's passage. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Live a day at a time. Take it as it comes. Seize the moment. And so on.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have had any real effect, for every time I turn around it seems like another month has passed, another year.

Like everyone else, I have no idea how to make it stop or, at least, slow it down.

So, I'll just think about my in-laws now and then. Maybe look at some pictures and video.

And cherish the people I still have with me.