Perhaps for some there is a definitive moment of becoming an adult, or at least feeling like one has finally grown up. Perhaps it’s the moment your newborn baby is laid in your arms and you stare into her
face, or when you pledge your life and fidelity to another, or yet the day you sign your first mortgage (and sign and sign). For me, life occurs on a continuum flowing rapidly toward one thing or another, and while I try to take time to reflect on certain life events and my reaction to them, all too often the next moment is occurring and the moment has passed.
Yet there are times when something so monumental and significant unfolds, it demands more from me. I’m sitting on my Dad’s bed in Tri-State Rehabilitation Center located in eastern Tennessee, just through the tunnel from Middlesboro, Kentucky. It’s really a nursing home, but it certainly makes an effort to help people get back on their feet with its large centrally located exercise facility. It also has a bird sanctuary inside with wrens nesting, and multiple bird feeders outside, which lends to the feeling of life and vitality. I’m sitting with my Dad who has been diagnosed in the last month with terminal cancer throughout his brain, lungs and kidneys. Yet there’s a strange sense of normalcy since he’s not feeling any pain, and we’re sharing a box of my chocolate chip cookies my two girls and I made for him. My Mom is also sitting there, which only adds to the feeling of home for me, yet could be considered peculiar since she and my Dad have 
been divorced for about 13 years. Just a drop in the ocean, she tells me, when compared to the 34 years they were married. In fact, that’s how my Mom is now referring to herself, “Jerry’s wife of 34 years.” Understandable, given the many looks she’s received from the southern caregivers and distant relatives. Plus, it’s true. There’s nothing more normal than me hanging out with both of my parents, eating far too many cookies, and since the girls are spread across the end of Dad’s bed watching a video, it’s almost as if they weren’t there and I’m thrust back to the time of childhood.
We’re sifting through a few pictures Mom brought to both pass the time and reconnect my Dad with our family. In the 13 years of divorce, my Dad moved back to Tennessee, the land of his origin and upbringing, and really disconnected from his family almost entirely. Somehow you adjust to these things, feeling like you’ve misplaced something deep within, but in the business of getting married, moving several times and having two children, honestly, life just continued for me. Yet, here we are, drawn together by my Dad’s death sentence, and I’m suddenly grateful for this moment. For the carelessness of eating cookies, sifting through memories, the occasional joking between my parents, along with the occasional jab that causes my six-year-old to say, “Grammie, don’t fight with Grandpa,” which only lends itself to catapulting me back in time when we sat around the kitchen table talking for hours with my three siblings and my parents. I come across a picture of myself in my early 20s that I never have liked… sitting on a Caterpillar tractor, hair coming out at odd angles under a straw hat, and I comment, “Ugh, that’s so bad of me.” Immediately, as if in chorus, both parents say, “No it isn’t,” and I’m not sure if it’s the sincerity of their tone or the immediacy of their response, or perhaps both, and I’m a child again. I look up startled because I had utterly forgotten how it feels. My parents, rushing in defense of me. My parents, completely agreed on how beautiful I am. My parents, loving me again. Together. Just the quick statement of defense, such a seemingly insignificant thing really, yet I remember the years of being defended. The years of loyalty. The years of “play
that again, Missy, it sounds so good” or “your hair looks so pretty on the pillow” or “thanks for listening to me.” The moment feels both so foreign and so familiar. And it’s just that distance from it that makes me realize that all the other days, I’m an adult. A wife and a mother, loved and valued deeply I know, but in an entirely different way than a parent loves.
And now, as my father struggles to drink through a straw, I’m even more grateful for those cookies, for that day. For the picture we took of him, eyes sparkling up at me just as my six-month-old eyes sparkled up at him in another forgotten picture imprinted on my heart. His smile. Mine in return. Two images juxtaposed. A love soon to be lost.
I’m truly grown-up now.
(Note: My father went to be with the Lord on Thursday, August 27, 2009. He is finally released. I wrote this the last week of his life.)
