The Part They Don’t Talk About

For the first few months in Portugal I checked my phone hourly, dreading to see a message from my sister telling me dad had fallen, or caught COVID, events I knew would likely kill him given the frailty that had set in since his diagnosis of dementia. I worried a lot with a thirteen hour flight between us - what if I couldn’t get home in time to see him, to say goodbye?

When the message did come, I was back in the US, only a short flight away but it didn’t matter - he had already passed and even if I’d lived right next door, I would not have had the chance to say goodbye before his last breath. It was over so quickly it still takes my breath away.

I was back in Portugal when my phone buzzed in my pocket with the news my mom was so severely ill with pneumonia she did not have breath enough to speak or walk. Again I checked my phone hourly. When my sister texted that mom had seen dad at the door of her hospital room I packed a bag, wondering if I left by morning, would I be in time to see her once more?

I’d spent a week with her after dad’s passing, and another few days when we drove from California en route to New York and our flight to Portugal. She was in grief, of course, but otherwise healthy and full of plans for the future. Then, in a 48 hour period, she went from having what seemed like a worse than usual cold to barely making it to the ER in time to save her life.

I belong to a number of Facebook groups that support expats and provide assistance to people considering moving to Portugal on a residence visa. Many of the questions people have - How do we bring our dog over? What are the best areas to live? What is the cost of living? - come up over and over again. Sometimes I wish more people asked, and answered, more personal questions like Have you missed important occasions like weddings, funerals, college graduations? Did you get to say goodbye to elderly or unwell loved ones?

It’s likely I’ll be here when I eventually lose my mom… a date I hope is far far in the future, but the fact is the farther in the future it is the more likely I am to be here. It’s nothing I can really plan for, anymore than I can plan for my own unknowable exit from this world, so I try not to worry. Instead, I make sure to call and text and email often, filling our conversations with pictures and descriptions of what my life is like here.

Why am I here, when everyone I love is there? Someone asked me that recently and I could see my answer didn’t satisfy them, didn’t explain to them what seemed inexplicable. I don’t know if there is one answer to that question. After all I’ve always been moving - to Texas, to California, to Alaska. Maybe it’s just endemic to my nature. Mostly I think I saw it as a way to have everything I want from life - including spending time with loved ones - in one expansive place.

I often think of the Mary Oliver poem about not wanting to die without having lived, having only visited this world, and the quote from Louise Erdrich’s The Painted Drum about not lamenting all the fallen apples at the end of your life but rather living in such a way you can tell yourself at the end, surrounded by a windfall of untouched fruit, you tasted as many as you could.

I love to be with my family, and I hope moving here will tantalize them to come often. I even hope mom might make it out here one day, in the company of my brother and sister and their families. We’ve had older visitors, even when we were without electricity. One was 87, and he brought golf clubs too, a hassle most men half his age wouldn’t bother with, even on a short domestic flight. Age brings challenges but if an aged family member or friend is bold enough to want to venture forth to the Old World, I’ll do everything I can to accommodate.

And as I show them around the property - the gardens and the pool and the koi pond and the winding trails, we’ll stop last at the tree that grew wild for decades, uncared for, thriving through drought and torrential rains against all odds, dropping its bounty to the ground and onto the road leading to the guest house where no one but the chickens have traveled for decades.

Have an apple! I’ll say. In fact, have two.