The Third Act of Life Before the Final Curtain

I'd like to be picked up in this...
in case anyone cares

The curling script read "Forest Lawn" on the side of the pale silver hearse.  I was peeking out between the blinds of my bathroom window for my usual morning weather check when I saw it. As gaped through the slats, two people dressed in sombre black got out of the vehicle and mounted the steps of the house across the street. They knocked and were immediately let inside. Show over, I went downstairs to get my morning coffee with the new knowledge that someone on the street had just died. Those people don't show up for false alarms. The unofficial town cryer of my block soon apprised me of what had happened. A 62 year old man had died of cancer.  I didn't know the man, I've only lived on the block for 18 months and he wasn't here most of the time, but still....62.  Sobering.

Ian Brown's "Sixty"

For the last month or so I feel that I have been surrounded by the prospect of aging and the end of life. My doctor had recommended I read a book entitled "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by  Atul Gawande. The author is an American doctor, a son of two doctors. It's a thoughtful, informative (too informative, perhaps) and honest description of our aging process and how modern medicine aids or hurts us in the end. That was my light Christmas holiday reading. At the same time I also read a book recommended by my sister, "Sixty" by Ian Brown. Brown is a Canadian journalist who decided to keep a diary from his 60th birthday to his 61st and record his thoughts on his own aging and what he saw around him. It's comic, tragic and unflinching. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Male or female, we share much the same problems and issues with our human bodies and minds. Aging is a great leveler.  In both books the authors watched their active, interesting, very elderly fathers die. One son recorded it in great medical detail, the other as more of an emotional event. I was touched by both accounts and could identify with each of their losses.

My friends and I are all watching their parents get older and die. Many of my conversations now revolve around what is happening with our parents. Those who have already lost their parents to the great beyond can easily empathize with what is going on with those still left.  My father is gone and my mom, though healthy, is in her late eighties and is moving at the end of this month with her 90 year old partner into a retirement center. They are on my mind a great deal as I help them with their packing and concerns. This will be my mother's seventh move in the seven years since my dad died. That fact alone leaves me with a feeling that my older years may not be ones of peace and contentment but rather a searching for something I have lost. If I even make it to her age.

"Gentle Into This Good Night"
original art by Megan Podwin

I have believed for a while now that my arrogant Baby Boom generation is not going to live as long as we think we will. Our parents are from a generation in which so many have benefited from modern medicine and are living into their eighties and nineties. Do we think we will do the same? Will medicine save us from ourselves? As humans our lifespan seems to have stalled out, the oldest age reached is not getting any older. It is still very rare to see someone live past 105, let alone 115, despite medical intervention.  Our bodies do give out.  My generation has abused itself with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and stress. Unless the aliens come to help out with their space age technology we will be, and already are, dying off. With assisted suicide becoming a reality in Canada I'm not sure that every Boomer will even choose to live out their years as those before us might have done.

Even though I am attempting to be 'ageless' those around me seem to be moving into their sixties and talking of retirement, of a loss of excitement with life, a feeling of closing doors, regrets.  No more big firsts ahead, so much of life is behind, not in front.  Ian Brown points out in his book that if we can expect to live to 85 then the span from 60 to 85 is as great as the span from 30 to 55. Who can't look back on that space of time and not feel that a great deal went on?  I believe we can still experience many "firsts", we just need to redefine them. There will never again be a first love, a first job, a first home purchased or a first baby born to me. That doesn't dismay me. I envy my children their beautiful youth but am well aware I had mine and that I enjoyed it. There are no 'do overs', that is not what I'm after. I may not be quite as energetic or as physically strong as I was but I am smarter, wiser and less foolhardy than when I was younger and I'm still curious, still interested and still hoping for more.
A friend of mine has a mantra, "this is as good as it gets" to help with her acceptance of where she is in life.  I dislike that phrase because I think there is the possibility of many things out there that I cannot even imagine yet that may prove to make life better next year than it is right now, at least for the next two decades. Life after eighty appears to be more problematic according to the reading I just did.  January has been a month of reflection and learning about aging and I am internalizing that and moving forward with positivity.  As an antidote,  I'm currently reading Blogging for Dummies and the latest novel from Alan Bradley, starring  his eleven year old fictional sleuth Flavia deLuce. Flavia puts me in touch with my eleven year old self who fell in love with stories of plucky children in England. They were a favourite escape of mine as a young girl and they still are, I guess.
 My grandmother, as she was nearing the end of her 93 years here, told my mom , "we just have to live it out until it's done". None of us knows when that will be so here's to living it out every day and finding our new set of "firsts" for the decades to come.

"Whereabouts Unknown"
original art by Megan Podwin

No Resolution To Be Had

I don't make New Years resolutions, never have. This is the time of year when I am at my physical, mental and emotional low. Not a good time to decide to give up something that's bad for me or take up something physically strenuous or mentally demanding. Those things are all pretty much guaranteed to fail. The middle of winter is a time of retreat, hibernation, conserving what is left of my energies to get me through to spring time. My cravings for carbs, caffeine, sugar and alcohol are at an all time high, slaked somewhat by the overindulgence of the Christmas season but certainly not ready to be denied. I cannot imagine getting through the month of February without my crutches.

Caffeine and carbs, baby!

Now, don't imagine me sitting at home slurping B52 coffees for breakfast with my hand in the cookie jar. I have some control.  For better or for worse I don't do anything to excess. I hate hangovers, gaining weight and pimples so while I give in to my cravings I do so within moderation.  When it's summer and I'm feeling my best I can say no to the after dinner piece of chocolate, the second or third glass of wine, the cookie with my tea. It's summer!  The sun is shining, the days are long, dinner is on the BBQ. It's all good.  But winter....
A friend just told me she was giving up alcohol for the month of January. I applaud that decision and support her totally in it.  Good for her, I hope she does what she has resolved to do. It would be an excellent choice for me as well but it ain't going to happen. The best I will do is to maintain what I already have going on. Go to yoga, walk in between rain and snow storms, have a couple of drinks when I want, eat a cookie with my afternoon tea, order good pasta when out in a restaurant and try not to buy too many chocolate bars.

Winter survival food

 I am actually very tough with myself given the size of my cravings and the tiny rewards I indulge in. If I gave in willy-nilly to what I wanted I would be twenty to thirty pounds heavier for a start and probably not be seen out of bed before noon.  I have never eaten a whole box of cookies or an entire pint of ice cream in a sitting. Just not in my nature. But I did once pull a half-eaten chocolate Easter rabbit out of the garbage where I had thrown it in a fit of self disgust and polish it off. Yeah, I know, right? We all have our dirty little secrets.
So because I can maintain a modicum of self control, even over the holidays, I don't feel the urge to punish myself with New Years resolutions. I get annoyed with the newbies that pack my yoga classes with their desire for a "new them" but I know they will soon be gone. That's the problem with these resolutions, it's just the wrong time of the year to try and start this kind of stuff. And people try to correct so many bad behaviours at once, quitting smoking AND going on a diet...madness. Or they set the bar so high for fitness goals. Workouts five days a weeks, train for a marathon. In the middle of winter? Seriously? Doomed to failure.
September is another time when many people start a new regime of some kind. The "back to school" effect. Summer holidays are over, time now to buckle down. It all seems well and good and achievable in September but as the days get shorter, the temperatures cooler and the rains set in it gets tougher to change our behaviour. I'm not saying give up on change, not at all, but pick your times, people! I think the Spring equinox is an excellent time for resolutions. It is the time for the rebirth of the earth, why not time our rebirth to that as well? The days are getting longer and warmer, everything feels more hopeful and enjoyable. That is the time to cut back the calories or the cigarettes, start that running programme, take a night school class.  It might actually be achievable! I started this blog in May, a coincidence?  I don't think so. By March I was coming out of my winter stupor, shaking off the sluggishness of the season and looking for something to change my ways.
I am not a winter person, I hate the cold, I don't ski, so snow doesn't thrill me and I suffer from mild depression due to lack of sunlight, so obviously January 1st is not going to be the time that I reach any epiphanies about changing my behaviour. It just has to wait until spring.  That gives me almost three months to roll some options over in my mind, give them a good perusal, consider if they are even remotely achievable or desirable and then work up a plan. By mid-March I am ready to commit to a change and when I do finally commit I have pretty good follow up. There is a good chance I will achieve my goal. So by all means start that big change in your behaviour in January, I will sit on the sidelines, glass of wine in hand, chocolate at the ready and cheer you on but when March 20th rolls around let's have a sit down and discuss how well you met your goals and then we can make an Equinox resolution together. I'll be ready then.