Couple pondering parenthood

DEAR AMY >> My husband and I are in our mid-30's. We've been together for 10 years. During the course of our marriage, we have traveled a lot and have had some wonderful adventures.

We've been talking about whether we should have children, and, true to our personalities, we've been doing a lot of research about what it is like to be parents.

Honestly, a lot of what we've read and heard makes parenthood sound fairly awful, like an exhausting and depleting journey with no guaranteed happy ending.

We're really undecided and are looking for reasons to become parents.

Can you help?

— Undecided

DEAR UNDECIDED >> I think this may be one of those cases where, “If you have to ask, don't do it.”

I can affirm that parenthood is exhausting (especially in the early days). Being a parent is also extremely depleting, expensive, and occasionally heartbreaking and soulsucking (especially in the teen years).

And ... although parenting doesn't have a “stop date,” it also seems over all too fast — because for many parents, the experiences in between the exhausting, frustrating, frightening, and depleting periods are made of spun gold.

Parenthood will also alter your notions about “happy endings.”

Oftentimes, for parents a happy ending means sleeping through the night, attending a business meeting without spit-up on your blazer, leaving the emergency room with a child on the mend, or seeing your teenager make it home safely in a snowstorm.

Some of life's happiest happy endings and greatest lessons are delivered through the quotidian experiences of parenthood.

So look at the families around you. If being around other families fills you with longing, then — dive in.

Parenthood is not for everyone, and unfortunately it is the children who end up ultimately shouldering the burden for their parents' choices.

DEAR AMY >> “Annoyed” reported that both parents had died, and she didn't like it when her siblings said that they were “going to visit mom and dad” when they went to the cemetery. She felt that because their folks were dead, they should not be spoken of in the present tense.

In my opinion, Annoyed is wrong.

I am the designated crypt-keeper of my family.

When I go to clean the graves of my relatives, I even chat with them, especially with my parents.

This does not hurt their memories at all. Both of my sisters live out of town and I even send pictures of the graves after I have tended them.

I think Annoyed needs to take a chill pill.

DEAR BETSY >> This question got a huge response from readers. I've enjoyed reading many tributes to lovedones who have died, and many readers — like you — visit and talk to their family members at their gravesite.