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Last month, the last member of my parents’ sometimes rowdy, always vivacious cohort of lifelong friends died at the age of 96. Nancy was cognitively sharp until the end, but largely immobilized, her hearing and sight rapidly failing her. She was ready — even eager — for death.
Nancy’s late husband Harold and my father had been friends since they were 14. And though my mother and Nancy only met in college, their feminism-before-it-had-a-name, their outlier status as working mothers, their common curiosity, bound them quickly and durably. The two couples traveled together, worried together and celebrated together. They showed up for each other.
One of Nancy’s kids is a good friend of mine, and was tremendously kind to my own mother in her final years. For those reasons alone I would have gone to Montreal for Nancy’s funeral. But even were that not the case, my brother and I would have made the trip because it’s what our parents would have wanted us to do.
Since Nancy’s funeral, I’ve been thinking about my obligation to my dead parents. Actually, with its implication that an action is undertaken grudgingly, “obligation” is the wrong word. It’s more accurate to say that I’ve been thinking about why and how I choose to honor their wishes, despite the fact that they are no longer around to express them.
