Sunrise, Sunset

In the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye and Golde, our parental protagonists, sing a gorgeous and bittersweet piece called Sunrise, Sunset, about the joy and pain of watching their children grow up. We can feel their tristesse as they sing “I don’t remember getting older/when did they?” But I don’t know if Tevye and Golde knew that the pain can run both ways.

My mother died late one night, four years ago. My dad passed away quietly in 1995. While I was never all that close to my dad, it’s still a bit weird to think that Mother is gone. Every time I took a trip, I would call her on the phone and tell her all about it. I think she got a vicarious kick out of hearing about places she never got to see and things she never got to do. These days, each time I go on a trip, I feel as though I should give her a call and hear her laugh as I describe my adventures to her.

Richard and Carol Eberhard have been so good to me…they are like a second pair of parents, Suzi and Carl are the best siblings I could have dreamed of. You know, that feels mildly unfaithful to Mother, and the rest of my family. Mom had such a problem with the Eberhards—she later confessed to me that it was because she feared I loved them better than her. It is so sad that she never really believed that I had enough love in my heart for all four parents.

I also sometimes feel, albeit very mildly, that I am stealing from Suzi and Carl…but that’s another story.

I just spent a week with my “second parents” at their home in Los Angeles. We drove up to Cambria and stayed in a beautiful hotel on the beach. We dined like royalty, spent happy times talking, shopping, and just being together.

I see my second set of parents dealing with their own mortality now. Carol walks with a cane—Richard, still strong and vigourous in his late 70s moves a little more slowly than he once did. They discuss their mortality with their children, all three of us. I’ve come to love these geeky, ultra-intelligent, adoptive folks of mine, and it hurts to see another set of parents grow old.

A few years ago, songwriter Warren Zevon was unexpectedly confronted with a rapidly oncoming death from cancer. Someone asked him what he had learned about life and he said, “Enjoy every sandwich.”

See the beauty in every tiny detail of every day, because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

I think that is the only advice I can offer myself…to hold every minute in my heart, and to be thankful for those fine folks who took in a 17-year-old stray back in 1981, and made me a part of their lives.