And then . . .

It was, in fact, very nice. It was also funny, because the guy who waited on me earlier in the week--and whom I'd told that I'd gotten married there (but was now divorced)--saw me and came over and said, glad you made it back again, and I said, and here's my ex-husband. He was a little taken aback, I think, but amused as well. It was also bittersweet, of course, but it is what it is. We know each other's lives so well, and much of the fundamental liking for each other remains, so we can have a good time talking to each other. Apparently I don't know how to be divorced any better than I knew how to be married, given that most people don't seem to manage amicability. Then again, we've both worked hard at that, and struggled through a lot of difficulty, so it's not as though it happened by magic, and it certainly hasn't happened easily. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, if I use the generally available narratives about relationships and divorce and marriage and whatever, but if I throw them out and accept it, it works a lot better.

Meanwhile, my dad is going through some changes of his own. The bladder cancer keeps reappearing, and he's reaching the point where they're going to want to take it out completely and replace it w/ a bag. At first, he was absolutely opposed to that idea, but my mom was telling me today about a conversation she overheard. Some friends of theirs were visiting, and the other guy also has bladder cancer--more advanced than my dad's so they're pretty much stuck with removal--and my dad was telling this guy that it would be okay, that you have to do what you have to do, that he golfed with someone in Florida (my parents used to spend a few months each winter down there) who had a bag and it was okay, and so on. My mom was kind of (okay, totally) eavesdropping, because this was a rather significant change of position on my dad's part.

My dad's a pretty sensible person, and I think he's capable of evaluating quality of life and figuring out what it's worth to him. The thing for him is that he'll be 80 in a couple of weeks, so his balancing act has different constraints than someone who's younger, for example (or older, for that matter). As my mom and I were discussing, chances are pretty good that he'd have a pretty good quality of life with a bag--he'd still be able to do all of the things he likes to do, he'd get to hang with his grandkids a while longer, so . . . there it is. I suspect he'll go for it.

Of course I'd like to have him around awhile longer--I like my dad! But I also know he'd rather die sooner and happier than later and more incapacitated, either mentally (especially mentally) or physically. One of the great advantages to having spent so much time working on my relationship with my parents is that I don't feel like we've left a lot unsaid. We don't have unhealed wounds in our relationships. To be fair, we haven't had many to begin with; my mom and I have always had the most difficult relationship--remember when she didn't speak to me for more than a year?--but even that is bounded by the knowledge both of us have of the love we have for each other. The other contributing factor is that we talk nearly weekly, and have done so for the 24 years I've lived out here. Some weeks there's not a lot of conversation, other times we talk for awhile, but it means we have a dense fabric of interaction to sustain us.

The difficult part of our relationship is, and always has been, that I haven't lived my life in a way that she completely understands. It is so different from what she would choose for me, and, in some ways (more ways than she knows, actually), so different from what she considers a proper life, that she can't always get her head around it. I've known this for 40 years, and, when I'm not having difficulties of my own, I can deal with it. We have problems when my life is going to shit in some way--she tries to help, but her suggestions are so contrary to what makes sense to me, for me, that I get defensive and upset and she gets more entrenched. In my heart of hearts, I know that she just wants me to be happy--what all parents want for their children--but she cannot for the life of her figure out how I could be happy doing the things I do.

The other thing for her is that, all things considered, the patriarchy has been very good to her. She married someone she loved, they've been happily married for 54 years, he's more of a feminist than she is in some ways. This makes it difficult for her to identify and recognize the subtle (or not-so-subtle) incursions of patriarchy into people's lives. She played by the rules and she hit the jackpot, so she sees a causal conneciton there, where I would argue those things are really not causally connected at all.

No matter. At heart, I know she loves me, despite the many challenges I pose for her, and that's the important part.