When I was growing up, and even into my mid-life years, I never did understand why my mother read the obituaries so religiously. I’m fairly certain she read the obits before she read any other section of the paper. Creepy, I thought, and really, really, dark. Why would anyone be so interested in who had died?
Well, I certainly understand “why” now.
In the past 18 months, my friends have been dropping like the proverbial fly. Covid, you presume, but you would be wrong. All from cancer, and all in their 70’s. The most recent departee passed on just a couple of weeks ago – she would have turned 78 a few days after her funeral. Then, there’s been the “rockers” of my youth: David Crosby and Jeff Beck, not to mention Anita Pointer and a year ago Meatloaf. I keep waiting for Keith Richards to kick the can, but I think he may have made a deal with a supernatural entity.
At any rate, I don’t have to look at the obituaries to know what’s happening. I am getting freaking old.
Okay, 70 isn’t that old. I’ve been told 70 is the new 50, but I think that’s stretching it a bit. Still, I’m healthy, so far as I know, I’m in good physical shape, mostly, and I have a great BMI number. So what’s there to worry about?
Answer: The fifteen-year conundrum. Or, put another way, time is running out.
I want to think I’ve got at least fifteen or twenty years ahead of me, but the average life expectancy now for a woman in this country is 81. SHIT!! 81!!! That’s only eleven years! The good news, if there is any, is that because I’ve made it to the age of 70, I get an additional 5.54 years. Whoopee! 86.54.
So, I ask myself, “What are you going to do with however many years you may have left?”
I’ve spent most of my adult years dancing to someone else’s tune, acquiescing to someone else’s demands, instructions, or objections, believing that I was “less than” and incapable of handling the important decisions of life. When those are the messages imprinted from childhood, and reinforced by the significant men in one’s life, it’s a hard pattern to break.
But break it I have. Finally.
So, what am I going to do about the fifteen-year conundrum you ask? I’m going to live my life, an authentic life, an honest life, a caring life, not placing my needs ahead of duty or commitment, but recognizing that my needs are just as important as anyone else’s. I want to do the best I can to enjoy whatever days my Higher Power sees fit to place before me. The secret will be staying in the present, living one day at a time, and not counting off the days that some statistician has decided I’ll have before the undertaker is called. Who knows? I may fool all of them and end up in the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest living woman in the world. Well, probably not, but I bet I can have a great time trying.