I'm still obsessing over these last words. And interestingly, my BIL and I had a morning coffee conversation about their move to live next door in 2007. As I had suspected even back to right before they moved, my BIL tells me that neither he, nor his mother, really wanted to move from their home in New York. Apparently my MIL was afraid for BIL because she was on in years and she thought that at least when she was gone he'd be right next to us (presumably, so we could carry on with her enabling).

He also said that his gut was fighting the move all the way but his mother was the "voice" for the two of them, so what she said went, even though he was 48 years old at the time.

So. Her overbearing fear that her adult son would not be able to fend for himself, coupled with his inability to stand up for himself led to both of them doing something that they did not want to do. And my willingness to take on a huge responsibility for them in terms of holding a jumbo mortgage, which I THOUGHT was going to be for only 4-5 months and which turned out to be 5 years, cost DH and I probably a half a million dollars.

LESSON: Live for yourself. I remember being in a writing class, and I still remember a story that one of my classmates had written about taking her son to the movie Bambi, and when it came to the forest fire scene, the little 3 year old boy started yelling, "Run, Bambi! Don't look for your mother!!!"

And I also think of Mary Oliver's famous poem The Journey.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

LESSON: In order to not waste your life you have to live your own life.