All things must pass

When you're in the middle of it, life always seems as though it will go on the same way forever. Of course, I understand intellectually that "all things must pass" as the philosopher/musician George Harrison famously sang. But life changes so incrementally that it's hard to notice - until change is unmistakable.

This past weekend I visited my 96-year old father on the Gold Coast, still living in the apartment he shared with my mother for 6 years. He is cognitively sharp, yet uses the same verbal strategies to control and diminish opposing viewpoints as he always has. Just less vigorously. Our relationship is much easier since I ceded any attempt to gain his approval or recognition. I simply allow him space to reminisce and pontificate.

We lost mum last year, and he has lost all his friends and colleagues. As the oldest of my four siblings, I am the only one left who knows him the longest. Life with my father was always predictable, until it wasn't. And now as he says, "I can see the chequered flag".

All the old familiarities, stories, empathy and enmity fall away. The past becomes a foreign country, and I can never get a visa to travel back. I see now that "all things must pass" is an aching reminder of the reality of change.

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