Head-on

I am flying down the highway with my older son in the car (I remember flying down the interstate with my mother). He despises Radiohead, but he puts it in for me, cranks it loud, and we sit still, motionless, quiet—except for the actions I must take in keeping the car on the road. (It was U2 in the car with my mother, it wasn’t a band I hated, but the experience was so surreal, so slow, and so quiet). He’s demanded information from me; he has to know what’s going on. He makes the decision that he will be coming with me, whether I like it or not. (I needed to know what was going on. I needed to be treated as an adult. She was my family, too).

It has hit me head-on: I was his age when my mother pulled me out of school and flew down a highway so that we would be there when her grandmother passed. I have now pulled my son out of school and am flying down a highway so that we can be present when my grandfather passes. Here I am, witness to yet another cycle of life; cycles that get so terribly lost in the mundane tasks of daily life, until you are hit head-on with one and they are lost no longer.

Realization crashes into me. I realize that I am now setting the stage for how my son will react (just as she set the stage for how I react today) with his child when I call him and tell him that my mother is passing. And this is the way his child will react with their child when he calls to tell them that I will die. The specifics may change, but the cycle of familial behavior will likely remain the same. Who set this behavior in motion? Was it my grandparents, and how they responded to the deaths of their grandparents? Did my mother learn it from them, and they learned it from their parents?

I am suddenly witness to the past, to the present, and to the future of us all, and I cannot tell if the weight of this is overbearing or comforting to me.