Age is a funny thing. It creeps up on you when you’re not looking, and takes you by complete surprise. I turned 50 this year, and even though I (usually) firmly believe that 50 is the new 40, there are moments when I quietly question that.
Yesterday I visited my mom’s grave. It wasn’t something I had planned to do, but rather a visceral response to a week where the darkness and division all around in the world was wearing very heavy on me. Sometimes man’s inhumanity to man is overwhelming.
I got in the car and decided I wanted to go see my mother. She passed away when she was quite young – too young. While there, I walked over to her mother’s grave, a woman who I remember as being old and frail, with an unsteady step and no light behind her eyes. As I studied the dates on her stone, it hit me that she was only 53 when my mom passed away.
Wait a minute. My old and frail grandmother was only 3 years older than I am now when that happened? That just can’t be right. Then I saw that she lived 9 years more, and passed at just 61.
I walked back over to my mom’s grave at that point, and sat down to really mull all of this over. It didn’t even compute at first. It’s not that I didn’t know these ages, but they never hit like this before.
Even today, my mind keeps circling back to this and trying to digest the fact that I’m the “old” age I saw my Nana as all those years ago. Yet I don’t really feel that old. I’ve caught myself running mental checklists to prove I’m still young:
I still jump up and go on adventures with my kids, who – admittedly – are mostly all grown now. I stay active and recently jumped and screamed my way through a My Chemical Romance concert with 3 of my children after walking all day around the city. I took my youngest two on a road trip to Michigan to see an obscure indie band reunite at a random free show in a park.
Do these count, I wonder? Do they keep me young?
More importantly, does it matter?
At the end of the day, I’m not sure that it does. My mother and grandmother are evidence that youth doesn’t always matter, and you should live the life you’ve been given to the fullest that you’re able because you don’t know that you’ll have tomorrow.
Do I wish my joints didn’t ache quite so much now? Yeah. Yeah I really do. But sitting with my mom yesterday, surrounded by the absolute stillness of the cemetery,was a stark reminder that there are things worse than being stiff in the morning.
