Transitions

Transitions can be difficult to know how to deal with partly because it might not be obvious how to deal with new things in our life.

My father bought property in the high desert above Yucca Valley in 1968 and on weekends my father would get off work and drive however many hours it took to get there to start working on his new home there almost every weekend and sometimes vacations too from 1968 until 1980 when he and my mother retired. He loved building things and always had since he was young so he didn't see doing this as some kind of hardship but rather as a challenge and a way to save money building his home since he only needed to buy material rather than to pay labor for people to actually build it. Many weekends I was out there helping him especially work intensive times like digging the footings for the cement slab foundations, helping him set up the underground plumbing that all would be cemented into the slab. Then being there the day the cement trucks came to pour the slab and helping also with that. Since Dad was born in 1916 he would have been 52 when we started to build his retirement home and 65 when it was ready to move into completely done. But, even after he retired he still wanted to add a room and Mom wanted to get  motor home too.  But in the end this was both a good thing and a bad one depending upon how you look at it because when they went to get a loan for this the appraiser appraised their house almost 3 times what it actually was worth. So, when my father passed away in 1985 my mother had no choice but to let the loans for the extra bedroom and the large 35 foot long Motor Home foreclose on the house. So, she was left with a paid for Motorhome but lost the home my father and she and I had worked so hard and so long on since 1968.

Now, I suppose there is another way to look at this as well, which is my mother did not want to live in a home my father basically had died in and she had never really liked living in the desert anyway. So, for her it was mostly about moving away from the high desert that reminded her of my father's death. So, from her point of view she was able to live a very good life moving around California and Oregon and Hawaii until she was in her late 80s when she finally got senile dementia and it was necessary because she tried to burn her apartment down accidentally by placing a plastic bowl on the electric burner and then praying for the fire not to consume the kitchen for 24 hours. Luckily, her prayers worked and the kitchen didn't burn down. But, most of us would have just turned off the electric burner and cleaned up the mess. So, we knew she was a danger to herself and everyone else after that.

But, she had lived a very good life from 1985 when my Dad passed away when she was 66 until she was in her 80s when she got senile dementia and still made to within a couple of months of being 90 before she passed away.

However, my experience of her losing the house was completely different. I was horrified that she was losing the house because of the loans they had taken and the appraiser appraising their home 3 times what it was actually worth which meant when Dad died they were going to lose the house that he had been building all of those years. However, I didn't want to live there. I loved the house but this wasn't at all where I wanted to be other than for riding motorcycles on a weekend vacation in the desert. The views were great but if you have ever stepped on a Cholla Cactus with beachwalkers on you will suffer with the thorns in your feet for weeks or years. So, watch out for Cholla Cactuses because their barbs are like porcupine quills that are designed to go ever deeper when you try to get them out and then they are thin and break easy on top of that. So, watch out for them!

But, when my Dad passed away I had a good business mind and I am very logical like my Dad and very pragmatic like him too. So, when I would tell Mom the best thing to do she would always do the opposite thing just because I am the son and (She never went to college at all). So she would show me a thing or two and it was just awful to watch the decisions she made. But then again, it was her life not mine and I could not replace my Dad. So, in a practical sense in some ways I lost my mother and my father in 1985. But I also gained someone who was sort of like a traveling little sister in my mother. My mother was sort of like a ship without a rudder without my Dad. So it was wonderful to watch her and it was awful to watch her at the same time.

I finally realized I couldn't replace my Dad in Anyone's life but I could be more of myself. I also realized I was starting to become my Dad in some ways because that is how you psychologically survive your parent passing. You incorporate all the good things they taught you into yourself. So, they stay with you in all the good memories you shared and all the good things they taught you.

I never expected to lose both my parents when my Dad died. I was 37 and was completely unprepared for this and barely felt grown up myself in some ways. So, it was sink or swim. Luckily I learned to swim enough to still be here but it was a struggle for quite a while until I was about 50 or so and almost died myself. Then I was so grateful to be alive each moment that I stopped struggling and just got a whole lot more efficient in everything I did.