The Cards We Are Dealt

Nobody plans for the hard ones.

Not the loss. Not the detour. Not the season of life that arrives uninvited and rearranges everything you thought you knew about where you were headed.

We just find ourselves holding them.

My brother-in-law used that phrase — the cards we are dealt — when he and my sister had to find a way to keep living after their 22-year-old son was killed in a car accident. There was nothing to fix. Nothing to undo. They had three daughters who needed them, grief that wasn’t going anywhere, and a future that looked nothing like the one they’d imagined. They didn’t get to choose the card. They only got to choose what to do with it.

I’ve thought about that phrase a lot in my own life.

I married later in life. To a wonderful man whose first wife was one of my closest friends. When she died, neither of us could have predicted what would come next. That loss was a card none of us chose. The life that eventually followed, a friendship to a love that quietly grew from a shared grief, wasn’t in anyone’s plan either.

Now we’re in Oregon, navigating rising costs, wondering about buying a home, holding our resources carefully. And we have a dream. Italy, Portugal, Croatia, a slow travel through Europe we’ve talked about for years. Our health is good. The timing, in many ways, feels right.

But there’s a card in our hand we’re not willing to set down.

His first wife’s parents are still alive, both in their mid-90s. There are no other children to check in on them. They lost their daughter. And then, six years later, lost their son in a bicycle accident. They are alone in the world in a way that is hard to fully take in.

We don’t provide daily care. But we stay close. We visit. We remain available. And that means staying stateside, at least for now.

We could let that card go. Nobody would fault us. But it would cost us something we’re not willing to spend, a piece of who we are.

So we hold it. We plan accordingly. We trade the dream of European cobblestones for the quieter act of showing up for two people who have lost their children.

We’ll travel someday, when the season changes. Maybe our health will still allow it. Maybe it won’t. Either way, we’ll know why we waited.

Some cards you’re handed. Some you choose to keep. The difference between the two is where you find out what you’re made of.