Together Forever — A Gen-Exer on saying goodbye to our parents

Originally published in The Baltimore Sun

Actors Jeff Conaway, Olivia Newton-John, John Travolta, Stockard Channing dance in the carnical scene of the 1978 film “Grease.” (Paramount Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection) (©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Coll)

Olivia Newton-John just died. I feel like I honestly loved her, like the famous lyrics to her song. Soon enough, her sweet, innocent face will be added to the grand montage scattered across the screen when the Oscar’s present “In Memoriam,” a digital obituary showing a snippet of creative achievement.

But what about when the real celebrities in our lives leave this earth — our parents?

As a Gen Xer, I and the majority of my peers are sadly at a stage in our lives where the inevitable is happening — our guardians are dying. And with each one that passes, I feel pangs of dread. I hurt twice: once for their families and their pain and for my own sense of security, which is now slowly being shredded away. When a life is taken, the lives that remain are distorted, there are holes where light shone in.

With the spread of COVID-19, our elders became our most precious and sacred commodity, and we did everything possible to protect them. Unfortunately, this meant for the most part not seeing them even if we really wanted to. Needed to.

One day, I got so nostalgic, that I made a cardboard sign expressing my love (think John Cusack in “Say Anything”), and I held it by my parent’s window. “Hi mom and dad. I…