We Don’t Get to Pick Our Family

 This article is a reprint from a column I pen each month for the website of my high school class www.DanMccarty70.com.  While it has been over four decades since the 400+ of us exploded from the halls of Dan McCarthy High and into our lives, today over 250 of us still meet on a regular basis in cyberspace to remember, smile and stay in touch.  I hope you enjoy my Ramblings.

We Don’t Get to Pick Our Family

Doris Parker

7/5/30 - 4/4/12

As I sat in hospice watching my dear sweet mother slowly move from this world to the next, I was struck by a simple undeniable truth—we don’t get to pick our family. In God’s infinite wisdom, we emerge from the womb smack dab in the middle of the only family most of us will ever have. As we all have learned by now, for better or for worse, family is for life.
I sat beside my mom’s bed holding her hand for hours, and at least in the beginning of her final journey, we talked—mainly about our family’s early years. We fondly remembered days long past, told stories, laughed, and yes, cried a bit together. Early in the morning of Saturday, March 24, I sat in her hospital room, hand in hand, discussing the operation the surgeons claimed held her only chance for survival, while simultaneously admitting the same surgery had better than an 80% chance of taking her life.  I looked at her and said, “Mom, if you are tired, it is OK to let go. I will take care of Dad and anything else that is needed.” 
My mom looked at me and said, “OK, son, and thank you. That is what I want. I just want to go home.” And it was decided. The next day, she was committed to the loving hands of hospice for her final few days on this Earth.

The first two days at hospice, she was lucid, and we talked and even laughed together as a family. That time with my mother at the end of her earthly journey is a time I will cherish for a lifetime.
As for Mom, her desires were simple—they numbered only two. The first, to be assured that in her family’s eyes, she had been a good mother, wife, and person. That was an easy assurance to give her. Her last desire was to finish her journey. She was very tired, yet most assured that her next stop would be in heaven; she was ready to go.

It was only last December that my wonderful wife Joan and I welcomed my parents into our home.  Joan has always lovingly treated my parents as her own and vice versa.  Dad, beginning the third and final phase of Alzheimer’s depended on Mom for almost everything.  Regrettably, the move to our home was followed by a series of falls that saw Mom move from home to the hospital to rehab to hospice in a few short weeks.
As she and I sat and talked, she reminded me of the day, 56 years ago, that she and dad brought home my brand new baby brother Roger. It seemed to me, at the ripe old age of 3½, that this newcomer was requiring an awful lot of my mom’s time and directly reducing my own personal mommy time. Finally, I asked her the question that needed to be asked, “How long is he staying?” I was ready for him to be returned to whatever place they had found him and let our comfy little family of three get back to our lives.
She hugged me as she broke the news to me that the screaming little red-haired brother was home; he was now part of our family—for life. I was devastated. How could things change so quickly and forever?
Much the same is true of our graduating class of 1970. No action was required by most of us to find ourselves winning the birth and geography lotto that landed us square in the middle of the last graduating class of Dan McCarty High. Once in those hallowed halls of learning, all 400 plus of us also became a family of sorts—not by blood, rather by fate. Nevertheless, here we are, some 42 years later, still tied together through the threads that make up the tapestry of our lives. None of us in the Class of ‘70 can be “sent back” to whence we came; we are now and forever family.
In my birth family, there is quite a collection of colorful characters—some wonderful, and some, well, not so. But as I was so recently reminded, they are now and will always be family.  That screaming little red-haired baby brother is still redheaded, but not so little. And I have long since reconciled that I am glad Mom and Dad decided to keep him. I guess he just kind of grew on me. I do not know what I would have done over the past couple of weeks without him.
I have an eclectic menagerie of aunts, uncles, and cousins who could make a circus troupe look as conservative as a Lutheran ministerial convention. A few of these you must really work on loving.
As my mom lay on her deathbed, she asked me to make sure to “overlook” words and deeds of one of the most opinionated and vocal of our clan. She reminded me that no matter whether I agreed with the people in my family, they were still family, and family is forever.
My brother and I sat on each side of her bed as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Once she opened her eyes and spoke softly, drawing us closer to her to hear. She asked that we not forget to love each other.
Just like my mom to be dying and still trying to make others feel better. This is the mother I was given—talk about having the luck of the draw.

Maybe we all can learn from this. The next time someone from our “class family” should do or say something you disagree with, or think should have been done differently, I hope you will remember the words of my dearly departed Mom, and if the truth be told, your own mother, too—“we are still family, and family is forever.”
So, Mom, this is for you… If I have ever said or done anything mean, wrong, or even inconsiderate to any of you, I am sorry; please forgive me. After all, the only way never to do something wrong in life is to never do anything, and trust me, I’ll never been accused of that. I commit that I will try always to remember and to show that you are not just someone I graduated with 40 some odd years ago, but that you are family.
Your Brother,
Richard Parker