It occurred to me while I was enjoying my turkey dinner last week, that my role as daughter to my 85 year old mother, oldest sibling to my sister and brother, wife to my husband of 15 years, and stepmother to my 33 year old stepson and his fiancée, and aunt to my nephew and my niece and her current boyfriend, we all play amazing and complicated roles in life. And these only speak to my personal, familial roles.
When we add to that the role of president of a company, trusted financial planner to very dear clients, radio host, author of many articles, blogs and my new book, Power of the Purse, there are even more roles for me to account to others for.
Then there is friend. Way too numerous for me to list all of them here but ones I hold dear to my heart for being there for so many years and through so many of life’s crises will always keep my spirits up.
It seems the older we get, the more pressing all the roles become and the less you can take them for granted as the calendar pages turn.
And with the termination of each of these roles is the loss we feel over the end of that which we take for granted. My role as daughter only lasts as long as I have a mother (my father passed away over 30 years ago). My role as wife, only as long as my husband lives. And on and on.
How prepared are we for these transitions? Most of us are not prepared financially, let alone emotionally. And as we feel empty nests, empty beds, empty places at the holiday tables, we cannot but wonder if we know how to manage the inevitable losses.
On a happier note, I see the future generations of family when I hear the nieces and nephew and stepson talk about their next steps, the marriages, the graduate school, the dreams of the houses they will buy, the children they will bear and the cycle continues.
Wonder how it will feel to be the matriarch?
