In a couple of days, my husband will celebrate a milestone birthday. One that ends with a big 0. I’ll let you guess which one, though I will say that it’s getting harder to claim he is still middle-aged. Plausible, but harder.
My husband and me in much younger days
We know many people who are older than he is, including his mother, so odds are he has many more birthdays ahead of him. Therefore, neither of us thinks he should be called old.
I had thought I might write a funny post in honor of this occasion, but I’m not finding much humor in life at the moment. His milestone birthdays have always hit me harder than they hit him. When he turned forty—a long time ago now—his mother and I both recoiled, but he took it in stride.
Once again, this milestone birthday of his gives me reason to reflect.
It doesn’t help that I just finished reading When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, a poignant memoir by a dying young neurosurgeon who ponders what makes a life worth living and whether life’s meaning changes when life nears its end. I was given this book as a gift in 2016, but the time was too close to my parents’ deaths for me to want to read it then.
I finally picked it up a week ago. As I read, I realized that whenever we reflect on our own mortality and that of our loved ones, whether we have recent experiences or only distant memories, we feel both joy and sorrow.
Joy, of course, because we have loved. My parents. My siblings. My husband. My children. Friends and other family members. Each has come into my life and brought me joy. My life would be infinitely poorer without them, even knowing the pain I’ve felt from losing some of them.
Sorrow, because each of them has caused me pain during life, as I know I have caused them pain. And because ultimately we do lose each other.
But not today.
Whenever I think of loss and death, I am reminded of my brother’s first dog. Tucker was ailing, and my brother knew the dog wouldn’t last much longer. So my brother sat his older daughter down (she was about five at the time) and told her Tucker was likely to die soon.
“But not today?” she asked.
“No, not today,” my brother assured her.
Later that day, Tucker went outside, came back in, laid down, and died.
Sometimes it is today.
Despite the adage that nothing is certain except death and taxes, sometimes death is not predictable. At least not its timing, though it remains inevitable. Sometimes we can only hope it is not today.
My husband and me a few years ago
As my husband prepares for his milestone birthday, we both have to admit to some health issues. A few of them are serious, but most are just inconveniences. We have to admit we have more years behind us than ahead. Nevertheless, life and death are unpredictable, and, as Paul Kalanithi argues in his memoir, we must face both head-on. And live full lives as we do so.
My father told me several times after he moved my mother to assisted living, “We’ve had a good life.” He said it again several more times after she died.
My husband and I are not yet close to needing assisted living, though there are days when I can envision that possibility. Rather than focus on future possibilities, however, I want to spend my days saying, as my father did, “We’ve had a good life.”
And I want to affirm the present tense also—“We have a good life.”
Despite the creaks of bones and aches of muscles, we do have a good life. Our adult children are independent and are people we like and are glad to know. We are blessed to live in a beautiful home in a lovely setting. We have the resources to be comfortable, and the time every day to do mostly as we please. (It would be nice to give up cooking and laundry, but those chores keep us humble.)
My husband teases me about going into planning mode. Which I do frequently. He doesn’t mean it as a compliment, because planning mode takes me out of the present. It’s in planning mode that I start to dread the future, that I forget we have a good life now.
So, on the occasion of his milestone birthday, I step back and reflect on what I am grateful for today. For him. For our family. For our blessings, material and spiritual.
When it is his turn to offer a mealtime blessing, he uses the prayer he learned at Philmont Scout Ranch over half a century ago:
For food, for raiment, for life, for opportunity, for friendship and fellowship, I thank thee, O Lord. Amen.
This pretty much says it all. For the blessings we have this moment, let us be grateful.
Happy Birthday to my better half, who reminds me to live in the moment!
Lovely.
Good words here, Theresa! Nice pictures!
!
Beautifully said. Thank you.