They're gone now, you know. Both of them. Their house was sold. Their estate has been settled. Their lovelies–furniture energy-rich with love and lore–was divided, moved and now adorns our respective homes. And now we are left to sort our inner worlds. My sisters and I find ourselves at that place that I'd only read about. That emotional space at which orphaned adult siblings find themselves when both parents have died.

I'll take the "we" out of the equation now, though it is truly not just me. I'm facing terrain I never knew was there. Foreign land. Darkened woods suddenly illuminated. It is tempting to run and hide in the safety of a locked closet. Maybe one of us has. But there's little secrets buried in the blackened forest. Heretofore unknown bits and pieces about who they were. About how they related to one another. Once missing details about how they became themselves via their parents and ultimately how the people they became shaped us and how we would relate within our world.

Nearly two decades of therapy never revealed what I knew a month after my father's death. Ways I was parented by my father that led me to seek relationships to be healed. But not everyone a wounded adult child seeks is healed themselves. I am facing boogiemen in those woods. Demons even. So bold about so much, so much of my life, but learning now–unknown before–that I've let little truths remain unspoken and that now I can do so no longer. Little becomes Big. Learning that remaining silent choked my spirit and that I must now learn to speak up about the little, whereas once upon a time a parent may have ssshhed me and thus I learned to ssshhh myself from speaking my truth. I, an already fiercely strong woman, am declaring boundaries that I never knew I needed to declare. And, at last, after decades of wondering lost and painfully detached from her, I am beginning to trace the path to my long-buried visual artist self that was shamed into dormancy because art was not considered productive within our family value system….To the top of my lungs, I am bellowing a warrior's cry to shatter old patterns forever so that they are never ever again repeated.

This is work. This is deep work in which I am now engaged. But it is good work. It is rewarding work. And while I am tending old wounds suddenly ripped open again by my parents' deaths, it is a good hurt. I am massaging vigorously to prevent scar tissue, which I know is producing the salve of true healing.

So, we–we again–watched their once bold spirits shrivel and deteriorate with age and disease. We have cherished the good with Gratitude. And, as we sort through the emotions that remain–back to first person again–I am gifted that the passing of their wounded selves has hand delivered me the opportunity to heal my own self. And to her–me, myself and I–I am learning to be true in ways that I never knew before.

And so it is….

————————————————————

This post is another in my series on my family's journey surrounding my parent's death, chronicled here, to the end. An e-book of this collection coming soon….

Photo by Cathy Kaplan