Maturing

I understand why women, especially, do plastic surgery so much now. It’s really hard to age and have other people look at you in a way you wouldn’t recognize being looked at. It feels like they’re looking at somebody else. But they can’t know the you that’s really you if they just met you and you’re older.

They don’t see that 15-year-old is still in you. They don’t see the 20 year-old, or the 30 year-old. They see whatever they think is in front of them, and that is not at all what they’re truly seeing.

This elder phase of my life is not one I asked for – it’s not one that any of us ask for.

My doctor’s office had a sign in one of the exam rooms that read: “Don’t regret getting old – it’s a privilege denied to many.”

I both agree with that and disagree with that. I remember watching my relatives age, and really felt like, ‘wow death is often by 1000 cuts.’

It’s accepting the indignities of an increasingly hurting body, or a body that doesn’t want to operate the way you used to be able to operate it.

It’s such a strange design, this human body. And there’s also the reality that even if we live beyond 100 years – it’s just a moment in the expanse of time.

And who wants to live 100 years if the end of that is barely being alive or functional?

My grandfather, at 102 years old, didn’t know why he was still waking up. He could barely see, he could barely hear, and it was just existing – it wasn’t being functional in the way any of us would want to be functional.

Maybe science is working on that, and the other side of that is I wouldn’t want to be here forever either.

We are a largely warring, selfish, greedy people bent on this planet’s destruction. As one of my very dear friends said, with a broken heart, “we could’ve made this a paradise.”

My oldest sister and I went to Rhode Island today to meet with my deceased sister’s tax prep guy who seemed like a lovely, caring person.

Our sister had been using his service for 29 years. 29 years! I don’t think I’ve used any kind of service for that long.

He told us that they used to chat while he did her taxes, and she would talk to him about her nursing schooling, and he would tell her about his love of all things Germany – especially Munich and Oktoberfest.

We all got teary-eyed over our departed sister.

Her house sold two days ago, and while her partner bought the house, it’s not the same. She’s gone. It was her house. Many of her things are still in it, but she’s gone.

I can’t conjure her except in memories, and maybe someday they won’t be as sad and depressing.

I can’t sing music we both enjoyed without sadness and sometimes weeping. I can’t talk about things that remind me of her, and there will never be another family beach day that she attends, or time to just spend with her – because no matter how awful she could be to me sometimes – she also just let me be wherever I was most of the time.

I don’t know what happened the last several years, but she became less happy, and less happy meant me not being treated well.

I think part of me understood that she was damaged. She didn’t want to be a jerk, but trying to make me feel bad made her feel slightly better. I understood it as our shared trauma. She learned differently. She would fight and I would flight/freeze. I was the youngest sister and learned to never mistake who was in the one-up position. Having an oldest sister who liked me helped moderate our other sister’s behavior toward me. She wasn’t top dog, but she was more top dog than me.

She told me she wanted to be a better sister. I saw her struggle with her inner world. I watched her change in ways she didn’t like, but the work to be different was a foreign language she couldn’t invest in.

We had a mutual friend from our early teens and they grew closer while they seemed to shut me out.

It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with. I honestly didn’t understand what happened, but I had to learn to accept it. Another mutual friend told me it was because they lived mostly on the surface and I had the unfortunate bent of wanting more dimension in my friendships. I also remembered the past more vividly than they did, so even if it wasn’t shutting me out, exactly, it was still a shock. I’m still shook thinking about it, but I’m adjusting and adapting, and doing my best to move on.

I guess that’s growing up. Those who I thought were my tribe are not. Maybe they once were, but that was then, this is now – and she’s gone. There’s no more chance at being accepted into the tribe – and why would I want to belong to a tribe that doesn’t want me to belong?

Still, my oldest sister and I, and my deceased sister’s partner, were with her the last days of her life. We did the best we could. She knew we loved her, and she told us she loved us.

It’s not easy to die. It’s not easy to leave a life in the middle of it. I think it’s easier to go quickly with no time to reflect on the fact of life’s end.

But we’re all dying. We’re also living. Living is what this place is for, and one day, sooner than I know, my turn to go will come.