My mom and I regularly told each other, “I love you”. That’s pretty much it. I’ve seldom exchanged the phrase with anyone else. Now that she’s gone, It causes trouble for me.
Sometimes my Aunt and Sister will say it when we say goodbye on the phone. I kind of robotically say, “I love you too.” in response, but it’s hard for me because I can’t help questioning the validity of the statement. And it sounds weird to hear it and speak it.
I’m pretty sure my aunt is genuine. She is perhaps the second-closest relative, emotionally speaking. I do feel that she loves and cares for me, so it’s not really hard.
My sister is a little more difficult to know what she really means. She left home to go to college in Austin when I was 5, and we seldom ever saw her again for the next 45 years, except for maybe Thanksgiving and Christmas. She basically abandoned me when I needed her most. I don’t hold a grudge against her (much) but there just isn’t that kind of connection between us. She is virtually a stranger to me. She says it sometimes when we get off the phone, but I don’t know what she means. We now live only about 12 miles apart, but I have a hard time wanting to connect on a deeper level. Maybe she does love me, but it’s almost too late for that.
More perplexing, perhaps, is my cousin Pam. She and her brothers, Ronnie and Jeff, were magic to me when I was a kid. I think I was magic to them as well, as I was the only kid in the family at the time. I remember them and their parents (another aunt and uncle) being together with my family. I especially remember Ronnie’s unusual laugh that I could hear from my bedroom late at night as they talked in the living room. They lived in Brownsville which is geographically a million miles away down at the southern tip of Texas. We at least made the attempts to be in each other’s lives for a while. They were some of my happiest memories.
When I was around 10, shortly after my father died, something happened, and we didn’t see them again for 40 years. I was abandoned again. My dead soul lay on the living room floor for decades and nobody knew or cared.
Now that I’m retired, Pam, Ronnie, and Jeff along with their spouses, try to get together with my sister and I and have lunch every few months at some town midway between here and La Grange. It’s so good to see them again and there’s still magic there. However… When we met again a few weeks ago, upon leaving the restaurant, Pam was saying goodbye to me and said, “I love you.” I could only smile back. She said it again a few minutes later, probably thinking I didn’t hear her. I could only smile back again. I couldn’t return the phrase. I wanted to, but my mouth wouldn’t move. What does that mean?
Now that I think back on it, I hope she didn’t think something terrible when I couldn’t respond. Nothing would make me happier than to say, “I love you too.” But I was abandoned for 40 years. I’m not sure what she means by saying that. Does that make up for it? Can you love someone you haven’t cared about for 40 years? Should it matter?
I expect that I will be able to return the salute next time since I may at least be expecting it, but will it be meaningful or just lip service? It takes more than an occasional lunch get-together to make up for a loss of 40 years. I think full repair will be impossible and improbable. I guess lip service is all that matters anyway.
Love is pretty much meaningless to me. Really. What is that? I wouldn’t know, as I’ve not known anything other than the love between a mother and a son. To me, it means nothing. Words that humans utter. Words that freak me out.
Buying Time 