I’m gaining on my parents. Dad died at ninety-two years and nine months, Mum died one week short of her ninety-second birthday. It occurred to me when I turned seventy-eight recently that I’m catching up with them.

It would be nice to catch up with them in the contemporary sense of a catch-up. But in reality, such a catch-up wouldn’t be face to face, but bone to bone. I’m not ready for that, not structurally nor emotionally.

I do catch up with my parents from time to time. One of the two will appear in my visual field when my eyes are closed in sleep. They don’t speak, but we know each other and we understand each other. They smile. I expect I smile in turn. I know I feel smilish, a feeling of being loved and deeply known, a feeling of loving back.

The feelings are sweet, sweet. 

It’s when I’m awake that I muse on the narrowing gap between us. Somehow the musing carries no pain, no fear, no sorrow. This contrasts with the fear I had as a child, of the annihilation of death. Death has no sting now: Dad did it, Mum did it. Their time had come and they went. We wept, we remember and the loving feeling is unquenched. They died, the love loves on. 

It was the love of my parents that formed me and sustained me. They taught me how to live. Now they are helping me as I approach the exit. If, as is written, the task of a lifetime is to come to terms with life’s finity, then my parents have taught me one final time.