There’s been a lot of conversation in our house recently about senior living and geriatric care and all the super fun and complicated issues associated, and I gotta be real — it’s making me sad. As we all know, grief comes in waves. It surprises and sustains. But my grief? Couldn’t it see I was kicking its a** after so long? Apparently not.

For many years, I have been grateful to have arrived safely on the other side of caregiving crises, medical challenges and senior planning concerns. My mom, dad, grandparents and favorite oldsters were all dead, the horrendous caregiving fiasco I slipped into was over and — poof! — I was suddenly and miraculously free of the geri-scaries and the dark webs they weave. This was something to celebrate! It was not sad to me whatsoever. Until, it was.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not desire to manage another senior caregiving crisis ever again for as long as I live. That stuff is hard and will literally suck the life out of a normal person. But when it occurred to me I won’t get to do that for my people, the OG gaggle — the beautiful souls who are now dead or gone or out of touch — that crusty old grief broke into my nest and unpacked its annoying, messy baggage.

I know this sounds very weird, but I have been imagining myself as a flamingo. And all the people in that photo above, including my mother who was taking the picture and many other family loves now on the other side, were the pink birds in my glorious flamboyance. And then one by one in a poof of down, they all started flying away until it was just me and my kids and my tall, beer drinking flamingo brother who is off in another pond doing his own life very capably. Suddenly, it occurs to me that my perch is surrounded by a menagerie of pigeons and other birds. Sometimes, I’m like “how did I get here?” and “these are some fowl up in here!” I think how wonderful these new birds are, but how I was much more cozy with my flamboyance and it’s too bad they took off like that. Don’t peck — my thoughts are def strange, but somehow this bird imagery is comforting perspective.

I miss my flock is the long and short of it. I long for the birds of my feather, the ones who used to flock together around our dining room table and at the Farm and in the rooty backyard of 338 E. Melrose Drive. And even though I’m relieved to look into the horizon without dread of crazy senior caregiving misadventures, I still grieve the flamingos that flew off into the sunset.