#and is the personal caretaker to my dad who has severe short term memory and brain trauma

[nowhere-to-fly-to]

Chapter Five: Eulogy

There’s an expression that has been stuck in my head for the last several days that is causing me some grief. It’s a oxymoron, so it contradicts itself, but that’s not what is bothering me. It’s the fact that it not only describes my siblings and me, but also now describes my daughter Lauren, nieces Brenna and Cailin, and very soon, Rebecca, Christian, and Mayson. That term, and I feel obligated to mention it using air quotes, is “adult child.”

I am an adult child, with an adult child of my own. And as an adult child, talking about my mom is equal parts nostalgic and sad, and I’m trying to balance the memories of my mom as a parent - a caregiver - and as someone more dependent on me and her other children in her later life.

It’s not at all unusual for kids to be compared to their parents. Do you look more like your mother or father? Do you have the personality, or the intelligence, or any other trait to make you somehow more like one parent than the other. In my family, the comparisons were fairly obvious. Tim and Colleen had the blond hair and blue eyes and were commonly described as “100% Irish,” as my dad liked to call himself. Matt and I, on the other hand, with slightly darker complexions, slightly darker hair, and greenish eyes were more often compared to my mom. But I can’t help but imagine that, as she began to view her kids as adults, my mom saw new comparisons in her “adult children” - attributes that hopefully made her proud, not only of us, but of her own ability to raise a successful family.

I imagine she viewed Tim in the same way she did her own father, my grandfather. Successful. Practical. He has been a role model provider for not only his own family, but for countless other kids (some of which are now adult children) on the soccer fields of southern New Hampshire. I think my siblings would all agree that Tim is the most “adult” of the adult children.

Colleen could best be compared to my grandmother. She became my mom’s most reliable caretaker, and, as hard as it is to call Colleen “matronly,” I think that’s as good a description as any. Colleen is one-half no-nonsense and one-half, well, nonsense. Quick with a joke when mom’s spirits needing lifting, and a shoulder to cry own when things were hard. Equally important, Colleen was not afraid to make sure she was eating her vegetables, brushing twice a day, and wearing clean underwear (cause you wouldn’t want the paramedics to see you in dirty underwear). She could be my mom’s best friend or a pain in her butt, depending entirely on what was best for my mom at the time.

Matt is clearly my moms brother, and my Uncle Thom. Compassionate. Thoughtful. Someone that she took great pride in watching grow up to be the person he’s become. And someone not ashamed to show that he has always had equal if not greater amounts of affection for her. Whether it’s a younger brother or her youngest son, my mom needed Thom and Matt every bit as much as they needed her.

And that leaves me, and I don’t know if this ultimately made her happy or drive her crazy, but I think my mom saw a lot of herself in me. I always thought that she and I had completely different beliefs on everything from religion to politics to the economy, and we had more than a few arguments when she felt like the values I was demonstrating were not in line with what she expected of me. But in these last few years we talked more than ever, sometimes for hours at a time, and we both came to realize that we shared a very similar belief system and shared equally similar traits. Introspective. Prone to overthinking, but also not afraid to wonder - and worry - about the meaning of life. And what we both came to realize - and what I hope brought her some peace over these last few years - is that it’s OK not to have all the answers. Don’t get me wrong. She had her faith. She believed strongly in the Catholic Church and the teachings it represents. But she also came to realize that maybe it’s arrogant to assume that you understand all of God’s plans. Maybe we’re not meant to know with certainty the meaning of life, what happens when we die, and why bad things happen to good people. And I think she accepted that not being able to explain these things to your kids does not make you a bad parent. And disagreeing with your adult children over such questions does not necessarily mean that their value system is substantially different than what you worked so hard to instill in them. And when she looked at her four adult children, hopefully what she saw was that she raised children that embody all of the best traits of the people she loved and that shaped who she became during her time on earth. A strong work ethic. Willingness to sacrifice for your family. Humor. Empathy. Compassion. And a sincere desire to never stop learning, never stop asking “why”, and to never take for granted the world that you’ve been blessed to be a part of, if only for a short time.

My mom raised four children, each of whom became an adult child, and each of whom are currently or will soon be wrestling with the frightening understanding that they have adult children of their own. And the cycle will continue generation after generation. And us, as parents, and later our kids, as parents of their own, will look at their adult children and question whether we have been successful and have instilled in our families the traits we think are necessary to make the world a better place. And I think my mom, if she could provide one last bit of advice, would tell us to embrace the uncertainty and encourage the discussion - and even the disagreements - as necessary steps along the journey to adulthood. And I think she’d tell us to take joy in the fact that our adult children have become living representations of all of the people that we’ve loved and who loved us throughout our lives, and that this fact alone will be a source of comfort in the most trying of times.

Technically, I guess I’m no longer an “adult child”. Both of my parents have now passed away. But I think that Tim, Colleen, Matt, and I will always be proud that we were the children of Pat and Carol Field. Did my parents raise perfect kids? No. Will my kids, and my nieces and nephews, be perfect, and raise perfect kids of their own? Not likely. But with each generation we’ll continue to do just a little bit better, and we’ll instill in our children the best of those that came before us. And because of that, and because of everyone who gave a little bit of themselves to make me the person that I am, I feel blessed to be compared to my mom, and I look forward to hearing more people tell me that that “you remind me of your mother”.