You Will Be Me and I Will Be Her.

Dear Mom and Daughter,

Someday I will sit in my bed, after making myself a cup of tea, and wish I could see clearly the birds outside or the news on t.v. Maybe that will be your dad. I imagine he will still be holding onto an instrument or trying to take a bike ride. I hope I am walking a small dog. The house will feel quiet, as it already has and does. Your job as a mother will be taking on a different life as mine did many years ago.

Someday, I will ask you or a nearby family member if they’d like to sit with me for a minute, as you do now mom. Sometimes it feels like that day is here for me too. The pace of life and fieriness of worldly thoughts slowed down, for just five minutes over tea. We talk about dad and how he had dreams and worked hard. I will too. Someday. Or he will talk to you, daughter, about me. You repeat the events from days past to me, including the last hour, and you are so grateful for the time given. You tell me about all the texts and phone calls from people you don’t know. I ask you to ignore them. I already see myself there. I still have a husband to tell. You have beautiful white hair mom and I am slowly catching up to you. I wasn’t sure I was ready, but somehow in the scattered frizz of going natural I have aged ten years in the mirror.

My older look is reminding me of older things that have aged me.

Your home, the one you always shared with dad, is full of hanging memories, reams of photograph albums and his collection of cameras. Every tool still in it’s place in the workshop.

When you walk into our home someday, it will look the same. Just like grandma’s. I’ll have her albums, that you will have browsed over the years, with many of the pictures granddad and I took, placed lovingly in them, by her. All of granddad’s cameras, my cameras, dad’s array of musical instruments and bikes will need to be sorted, plus many things you wish I would have got rid of. Just like I’ve been asking you mom. “Could you just get rid of the old tupperware?” Before you go?

In your house mom, I am a child crying at a wedding in the hallway. You are young newlyweds on an old shelf. Grandchildren, now my adult children, are laughing, smiling, proudly graduating. You made it to their weddings. I hope we make it. There’s the rodeos dad loved, vintage cars, nature. Great grandchildren’s pictures are in an Aura Frame that takes at least an hour of concentration to grasp and see. For both of us. Thank you daughter.

A furry friend sleeps in your room, a collar laying on top of the frame, an image that still evokes a goodnight delivery over the rainbow bridge. Dad’s words printed the exact way he explained them to me on the phone. Miss me a little, but not for long… I loved it when he asked me to print something for your wall. An off-the-cuff request without his knowledge that he was acknowledging he trusted me and my profession.

Thank you family for all the years of trusting me with my camera, as we trusted dad with his. We were lucky to have the days of vinyl, film and patience.

I am still good for some of those things but not as much anymore. The iPhone and Shutterfly will do.

Perfume bottles dad gave you are too precious to toss.

Birdhouses still speak of dad’s handy work and although you can’t see too well, I still see you in your garden mom.

I have a garden your dad built for me in 2020. It became a sanctuary in a terrible time. You didn’t want to know us then. I get it. Worldly voices were in charge. Still are. It will tell it’s story someday as garden’s always do. Nature usually waits to tell just the right person it’s story.

A beautiful wood box sits in a rested state. Dad upon his side table. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 64 years side by side and now….

I see why the leaving is so hard mom.

Someday this will come full circle. And then again.

You strain at devices with large letters, reaching out in all the modern forms, only to be left hanging. I know this feeling. Someday daughter, you will know it too. We are at the end of an overland trail. It takes a long time to communicate. The stagecoach passes us by often...

Suddenly I am mad that I’ve been asked the same thing three times in a row. “I am not a child” I yell with too much frustration. I will be you mom. You will yell too daughter.

And your hair will go natural, like ours. You will own every zoom mirror you can find as your eyes deteriorate and hope that someone will be kind enough to pluck the unwanted hairs from your face, sit with you when your partner is sick, and drive you to the dentist and skin doctor when they are gone. Thank you brother.

Your hope will be that you can remain encouraging, independent and busy.

If you’re flat chested, there will be less to tuck in. Large? Get high waisted pants with room. Calling all men too. And many of us will lose them all together. Every part of your body will take on a gravity and life form that never seemed possible in youth. Even when you have done everything to stop it. Or not. Tattoos fade into wrinkles. Bones crumble.

I am still feisty for nearly 64. Hanging onto every last shred of dignity, reading, writing and Wordle to keep my brain going. Worried your dad will never retire and if he does, how long will he live in retirement? I can’t help it. But God. Yeah. You have a plan. Half the country doesn’t understand this independent small business working man stuff.

You are seeing life go by at supersonic speed for 88 mom. It’s hard to understand what is going on in the world anymore. Why old women need to scream reproductive rights in a first-world-well-provided-for-over-educated-intelligent-country when women in other countries have no voice at all. Why are groceries, utilities, unaffordable? Necessities, slowly killing people by lack of? Homeless and shut-ins dying of the cold. Why more war? What is healthcare? vaccines and pills? You have lived through it already. World War II. Piercing hate and ration books.

You, at 35 daughter, teach me how I can do better, while you strive to do better. I did that too. She did that too.

You’re trying. I’m trying. She’s trying.

Someday you will be me and I will be her.

And the world will spin madly on…