All Grown Up Now

Paul and Hilda Girdlestone, October 12 2008

In my late twenties, some time after my father had died, I was thinking about my favourite thing, me. I was thinking about success and accomplishment and doing things I was supposed to do. It came to me then that my greatest motivator to that point in my life had been to please my elders - my parents and one or two aunts and uncles, such as my Aunt Betty.

Then I wondered what would I do when they had all passed away. What would motivate me to be a better person then?

I imagine at that moment I decided I needed to find another reason to make me try harder, but I don't think I completely shook my small child's strategy for success in life.

As predicted, in a long line stretching from August 1985 when my father died, to this past week in January 2017, when my mother's sister, Hilda, died, each of the people in my life ahead of me on the timeline has shed their mortal coil and left me one less guide.

With Hilda's passing, I can no longer lay claim to having living aunts or uncles. 

Hilda's son, my cousin Paul Girdlestone, reads this blog. 

Paul lost his older sister and brother long ago, and his dad in 2000. Paul and his mom were a dedicated pair for the past seventeen plus years. I took the photo in today's post over the Thanksgiving weekend in Winnipeg in 2008. I had always intended to visit Winnipeg again, but I didn't.

After the pain of loss comes the resolve of solitude so that even when the ones we looked up to and loved and cared for are gone we still have the guidance they gave us. Those gifts remain.

My deepest condolences, Paul.

Thanks for reading.

Karen