Dismissiveness and Irrelevance in the Last Quarter

M and I were sitting over salad and coffee musing about some of our own feelings about growing personal irrelevance in the Last Quarter. We wondered what it must have been like for our parents towards the end of their lives.... my Father's difficulty in accepting that maybe we weren't home when the Answer-call came on.

"C'mon. Pick up the phone."

... M's Mom's distress at no longer being necessary, not infrequently taking the form of angry outbursts towards the end of her life ... criticisms of grandchildren ... oh! and in-law sons.

We fascinated about how -- as our connections to groups dissolved due to retirement and our relationship to family was altered due to the no longer deniable fact that our children and even our grandchildren were 'all growed-up' -- that personal relevance diminished, in kind.

It begins early that our powers are usurped by children. Where did they get the nerve -- the Old Folk say with either or both a smile and a scream -- to:

Turning over in the crib & then, later, standing up                       

Putting spoon to mouth & No longer needing to be carried about

Choosing their own toys  & Walking, then Biking

Going to school and accepting succor from teachers (mere strangers!)

Waiting at the bus-stop alone  &  Dating ... (Really?)

Driving  & Hooking-up (as they say, nowadays)

Building their own Families

and, finally, 

Not picking up the phone when you call!

Yeah! It begins early and the offensive usurpation of our powers eventually becomes nearly complete.

Hans Loewald once (1978) said that in order to develop, the child in a psychological way needs to perform a kind of killing of the parent. 

Well! Nice for the individuating kid but what about the parent who has, indeed, thus been left behind and made irrelevant.

                                                        "Hey! C'mon. Pick up the phone."

We wondered, too (M and I) about the speed at which one is forgotten when one leaves an organization or work-situation. 

I do take some comfort in friends (a lot, actually), a great deal in M and, also, in comments (some comfort, I suppose) made by Gibran Khalil Gibran 100 years ago:

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.