Suddenly I feel old. Oh, I understood full well that I was aging; it just hadn’t sunk in fully that I am OLD. Until now. I accepted aging pretty well as the decades clicked by. There were the young years when you look forward to getting older. Becoming a teenager. Hitting 18, then 21. All thoughts and plans dealt with the future and goals and dreams and fun.
Thirty was a problem for some—“Don’t trust anyone over 30!” But my 30s were the wild years I never had as a young single. At 34, my husband and I agreed to part and I lived out fantasies I never knew I had. It was exciting and crazy and downright stupid at times. When I turned 40, I was at one of the lowest points in my life, and that decade I would gladly have done without, except that’s when I probably learned the most about myself and the world.
At 50 I settled into my own little house, adopted a greyhound, put in a hot tub, turned crabgrass into an English garden, and gave up on men. It was heaven. Funny how when you give up on a dream and let it float away, that dream walks through your front door. Or garage/kitchen door, which was the door Handyman Jack came to install. And then he became my true love.
Since the settled 50s, I’ve had the pleasure of the company of four wonderful dogs, a very good man, cherished friends and wonderful workmates. The 60s were mostly satisfying on all fronts. My sights were still focused on the future. Retirement, moving to Lacey, community involvement. All good stuff.
Challenges began to creep in by my 70th birthday. We’d survived the worst of covid by then, but political chaos and world problems preyed on the minds and hearts of anyone who has sense and empathy. Then body parts start to wear out and there are trips to doctors, dentists, estate lawyers. I sometimes wonder how life might be now if I’d stayed married and had the kids we chose not to have. Does a family give a person more reason to make the most of their later years? I’ll never know. I have what I have, it is what it is.
I’m reading a book about making healthy changes and the first thing they want the reader to do is to get clear on their life purpose, at the age they are now. Well, fuck. I’ve been trying to do that for a long time. “You can come back to this part later,” the book says. I guess they know for some of us, that task may take a while. Right now, I’d say my purpose is to outlive my pets and be well long enough to move to Panorama where there’s a plan for aging out to the next world.
The main reason I’m feeling old, though, is that people are dying left and right. In my case, literally. I’ve lost a neighbor on each side of me in the past couple years. Celebrities and idols from my youth die each week and it still shocks me. Yes, I know we’re old. But it still shocks me. The worst is all the friends and loved ones who have passed. Of the trio of best buds from college, I am the only one still standing. One was lost to cancer, the other to covid. They both lived healthier and saner lives than I did, but died before me. My ex-husband died last month. Old lovers are buried. A quarter of my graduating class is gone, as well as good friends from more recent years. Death sucks.
My grandmother Maude used to say, “All my friends are dying, and I don’t feel so good.” Then she’d laugh, and we would know we could laugh, too. But sometimes I thought I saw the pain in her eyes. Now that I am old, I understand that pain. When she came to live with my family, she was in her 60s and newly divorced from an abusive man. If a book asked her what her purpose was, I believe she might say to save my sister and me from the family turmoil that was happening then. And she achieved that purpose, while managing to always have a good time. She laughed loud, but quietly held things together, and has been a guiding light all my life.
So now I ask her, “How do I get through this phase?” I think she would tell me to look for the good things in life, be kind to others, and do what brings you joy. She’d tell me to laugh. Then she’d pour herself a beer, slap a deck of cards on the table, and motion for whoever was there to sit down and deal.
Left To Write 