Buckley on Buckley(s) and on being an orphan @ age 55

Christopher Buckley writes on the loss of both parents.

Usually, I just copy and paste the entire article, but this one is pretty long.
In my opinion, it is worth reading in its entirety.

I've always found C. Buckley to be a funny writer. This too is funny, but with pathos.

A few excerpts however:

One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you’ve now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You’re next. Another thing about parental mortality: No matter how much you’ve prepared for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed.

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Mum’s serial misbehavior over the years had driven me, despairing, to write her scolding — occasionally scalding — letters. Now I saw that she had simply stopped opening all letters from me, against the possibility that they might contain another excoriation. I opened one of them and read:

Dear Mum, That really was an appalling scene at dinner last night. . . .

I wished that I could take back that letter, even though every word of it had been carefully weighed and justified.

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I forgive you. I was glad to have the chance to say that to her at the hospital, holding her hand, tears streaming down my face. I can hear her saying, Are you quite finished, or shall I fetch my Stradivarius?

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When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a 13th-century saint being burned at the stake.

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Pup’s self-medicating was, I’d venture, a chemical extension of the control he asserted over every other aspect of his life. The term “control freak” is pejorative. Put it this way: Few great men — and I use the term precisely, for Pup was a great man — do not assert total control over their domains. I doubt Winston Churchill ever said, “Whatever.”

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cheers.