You and your family aren’t getting any younger

This past weekend, my dad surprised my family with a trip to downtown Chicago for a bit of fun. Needing to make a trip to meet with some higher-ups at his company, he had figured that it was a good opportunity for the rest of us to take a brief vacation. The trip was great and an experience no different from most big-city vacations any family might take. It was only on the way back home that my mom made a suggestion to my father that no one had expected:

“You should see your brother.”

With what little I knew about my dad’s side of the family, I knew that this was a suggestion that he had neither expected nor anticipated. My uncle works in Chicago, not too far out from the downtown area. I know very little about the history on that side of the family, but I do know that out of the six siblings he has remaining, he speaks to none. According to some sects of Islam (including the one my family follows), breaking off family ties constitutes a sin, and my mom now invoked it as rationale for him to visit his brother.

My dad hesitated initially, but eventually yielded. An hour later, we found ourselves at my uncle’s office. We hadn’t called ahead, so in my mind, I had been expecting a surprised reaction and lots of hugging. However, contrary to these expectations, my uncle simply continued eating his lunch and half-heartedly called out my dad’s name with a mild energy that I can only describe as surprised, not overjoyed.

This initial interaction considered, the rest of their reunion went about as well as you’d expect. My mom made most of the conversation, while my dad tried to make small talk that didn’t end up going all that far. After a brief catch-up conversation, we left, and judging by the atmosphere, no one wanted to talk about it.

I am glad to say that although my family and I argue about things quite often, there has never been a time when we have not resolved it within a day or two. There is no denying that I am at fault for a lot of these, and I appreciate that they try to hear me out.

It is with all of this said that lately, I am increasingly worried about going down the same path as my dad and his brother. There is a compounding fear I have that, as I grow into a proper adult, the disagreements that I have with my family might get more serious. A fear that there might be one argument that breaks us all apart and brings us to a point where the most we share after a half-decade of being apart is a handshake and a strained conversation.

After moving out, it is estimated that an individual will only see their parents another 50–60 times before they die. I would imagine that a similar principle applies to siblings that live far away from you. Most of you reading this have likely already left home, but commuter students like myself still see plenty of our families at this stage in my life. But, what will happen when I graduate? What will happen if I find a job that is located further away from Wayne County? How often will I see my parents then?

Imagine if you concentrated those 60 days into a single two-month period that you could spend with your family. Once it’s gone, you would never get to see them again. I imagine that to many of us, this seems far too short. Now, imagine that something happens that distances you from them, in turn cutting that time period down to only a fraction of what it might have been. Before this past weekend, my dad last saw his brother, who is 70, some 7 years ago. Given that the average U.S. life expectancy is 79 years, that would leave my dad with an estimated one remaining chance to see his brother at the rate that things are progressing. On top of that, once my dad started our family, I don’t think that the two spent more than a fortnight together after moving to the United States. He has seen his other siblings even less, given that most of them live in Pakistan and it’s been roughly 17 years since he last visited.

In all fairness, I don’t think that it’s necessarily practical to estimate the number of times that a person will see their family with a linear equation, but since it is based on previous trends, and because I don’t see the situation with my dad and his brother changing, I think that it works as a very broad guide in this circumstance. My dad has seldom spoken to his family in the last two decades, and I think that it will stay that way forever.

I can’t speak to my dad’s situation, nor do I think that it is a subject he wants me to breach, but I inevitably end up missing my brother if we argue and don’t talk for only a few hours. It’s very hard to imagine scaling that up to decades in a situation where we can never truly reestablish the relationship that we once had. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that you should take the opportunity to see your family. If there is a barrier, physical or emotional, do your best to overcome it. Make some time to go home, or see if there’s a way to get over a disagreement. Most of us might be young right now, but none of us are going to get any younger, and given that half of us are in-state students, we’re probably not going to get any closer to home after graduation either.

Mohammed Hasan is a student at the University of Michigan. This article was originally published in The Michigan Daily and is posted here with permission from Mohammed Hasan.

Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.