I am writing this from a hotel room in Tennessee, while my aging mom sleeps (Parkinson’s disease slows her down) and in between visits to my mom’s cousin and his wife who are wasting away by millimeters in a marginal nursing home here in Tennessee. These are folks who never had kids, but who would have made great parents. Fred has Parkinson’s as well, and is intermittently “with it” and not. Irene has been bed-ridden for months, is losing her hearing, and is far less with it than she was when we last made this long trip.


I have never, ever done well in nursing homes. I don’t know what is in my parent’s future, but it scares me. So where am I going with this?


I know first hand how hard I worked to incorporate my attachment-challenged kids into my family. All else in life pales in importance compared to one’s relationships. The richest people in the world are often the poorest as well, if they don’t have one or more people close to them who love them and share life with them.


I know there are folks who read this blog who had horrible childhoods and who have adversarial or severed relationships with their family of origin at this time. And presumably if they are reading this blog they are also dealing with an attachment-challenged child, at least in some capacity. I certainly hope that those of you who fit this description have someone (or several someones) in your life that meet your deeper need for intimacy.


Both my parents and Fred and Irene have been married well over fifty years. Fifty years of sharing the triumphs and tribulations of life. Now they are in the very tail end of that existence together … but they are still doing it together. It breaks my heart to see them this way, so broken and depressed where they were once so vital and active. But they have shared a love that I can’t seem to explain to my kids who don’t understand family.


I am so very sad for anyone who never understands that it all starts and ends with relationships.


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