Growing Up

Overnight I have become my parents.. my parents have become their parents.. and it scares me to death.

On March 25, 2005 at approximately 3pm in the afternoon, my aunt Pearly took her last breath. She was in her early 80’s and until this past year they had all been healthy. I was sure she’d live to be 100 years old, she always seemed so healthy and active. She was a stubborn ol’ bird and I think we all thought she’d live forever but unfortunately, like most of her family before her, the cancer won.

She was a hairdresser by profession but an angel in my eyes. Ok maybe not really always as sweet as an angel, she could be a cranky thing when she wanted to be .. but still, to me an angel nonetheless. She was a loving sister to my grandmother, whom she lived with most of her life. A protective and caring aunt to my father, whom she helped raise after my grandmother left his father… and an incredibly loving, spoiling, and funny part of my life.

When I was still young enough to be amused for hours by bouncing a ball in the driveway, she taught me how to lift my leg and bounce it to the otherside while singing:
Bouncy bouncy bally
I tore the leg of my dolly
my mother came out
gave me a clout
and turned my petticoat inside out!

I still sing that song when I am bouncing a ball to tease the dog, and I’m sure I’ll sing it when I play ball with my children one day. What was once an experience with her will then be a memory of her and a reminder of how quickly time passes us by.

She was one of six children, and of those two generations before me, was the last to go..

Pearly, on the bottom left, had four sisters.. one of which was my grandmother. Most people in the family called her “Bones” because she was always so thin. They called my grandmother Muriel (Middle – yellow shirt ) “Murt” the kids called her “Wowwie”, her sister Rita (Top left) “Diti”, Evangeline was called “Van” and Louraine (not sure if I spelled that properly) was called “Lulu”, her brother Frank always answered to “Sonny”. They are all gone now.. every one of them lost to cancer.

Their entire generation in our family is gone… now my parents step up in their place. Myself and my cousins step up into their place, and our children will take ours. Gone are the days of family gatherings.. grandmothers and grandfathers together with their children and their children’s children. Aunts and uncles, first, second and third cousins all gathered together. Times have changed over the years, now all the young people want to get off the island and explore. Nobody is satisfied with small town life anymore or the lack of employment available where we grew up. Somehow between our grandparents and us, things have gotten scattered. The closeness isn’t there and we won’t be able to provide our children with that closeness within the family that our parents and grandparents provided for us. This really saddens me..

What saddens me more is knowing that some of my parents generation lost their parents at our age. My father has already had a massive heart attack and open heart surgery. The father of my cousins Robin and Sean just had a heart attack as well and was told he has very little “healthy heart” left. Is it already beginning?!

My parents spent their entire lives close to their parents. When they lost them they consoled themselves with the knowledge that they spent all the time they could with them. That they had many happy and fulfilled years together. If there was any peace of mind to be had at such a tragic time, that is where they found it. Where will I find mine? I’ve been living in Holland for almost six years and have seen my parents a total of not even three months during that time. How will I feel down the road when they are gone and I know that I could have spent all those years near them, spending time with them and filling my life as much as I possibly can with memories of them?

Will my children ever really know them? Can we provide them with the close bond with their grandparents that I experienced with mine? Is that possible from such a distance? I hate that they will never know family the way I knew it… especially over here. No matter how loving a mother I am, or how loving a father Xander is, there will always be that piece missing. That extended family that makes everything so different.. They’ll never know Sunday dinners at Nana and Papa’s, they’ll never know what it’s like to play with cousins at family gatherings. How will I ever make up for these things in their lives?

Will I be able to make those who are gone live in the hearts of my children? Will I be able to describe them so vividly that they feel love for them as well, simply because I have loved them so much for so long? God, I hope so..

The biggest question of all… when that time comes, will I be filled with regret for choosing to live my life so far away from so many people I love? Then again, if I had stayed in Cape Breton to be near my family .. when they are gone, and I am left without them. Would I regret not having made my own path?

I miss my family… all of them! I miss my parents and I want to spend more time with them. I miss my Nana, she died to goddamn early! Now I will miss Pearly too. When I am home in Canada again I will go by their house and there will be other people living in it. Painting their walls, changing their carpet… making it theirs. Just as if Nana and Pearly had never even been there. It was as if I thought they’d be there forever…

I want to be ten years old again.. riding my bike, going to Nana and Pearly’s for lunch on Sunday afternoons and bugging my dad to take me to the park to feed the ducks before we go home. I want my biggest worry to be whether the girl down the street has prettier tassles on her handlebars than I do, or how many shiney gold star stickers I’m going to get on my homework that day.

I hate growing up and all the questions it brings that there are no real answers to..