A Cross Between Our Parents....and Hippies in a Tent

My parents died about a year apart. My father died first, in 1985, and my mother died in 1986. That's a long time ago. I was young when they died; 32 when my mother died and 33 a year later. I wasn't ready for something so traumatic.

I've been thinking about their deaths ever since stumbling across the Loudon Wainwright III YouTube video, "Homeless," over the weekend. I relate to the lyrics of the song because I was utterly unprepared for adulthood without a parent to depend on. I was taken by surprise and thrust into the world, walking without a net. I'd been married a few years, but I hadn't matured. I wasn't really an adult. I may not be, still.

Hmm. Time to get to sleep and shake this off. There's work to do tomorrow and people depending on me to get it done. I don't want to be the parent.

I think of my wife and me as the living examples, in some ways, of Greg Brown's whose line I always remember: "a cross between our parente, and hippies in a tent." I'm more like the hippies in the tent. I didn't mature into the parents.