Repeat: Living in a World of Last Times

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they return to college. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty and I could have space to best use the end of their break. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

The middle layer consists of the lasts that I am resigned to because they will happen whether I like it or not. There was a last day of college, and I thought about that last day the entire time I was at college. There will be a day that my hair is no longer brown. I can dye it, but I can’t stop my hair from greying over, stop my skin from going soft with wrinkles. There will be (G-d willing) graduations for the twins and marriage and children (if they want them) of their own. These are the things I want to happen as much as I dread these lasts because the alternate is too terrible to consider. If my hair doesn’t go grey it isn’t a happy thing: it means I’m either dead or don’t have hair anymore. So I both grieve these endings long before they happen and also know that I don’t want the alternative to any of them.

Read the whole post here.