Growing Old
“It’s all for the ones who are left behind.”
I watched a video clip featuring a woman who was over 100 years old. In the conversation about her current life she mused: “It’s all for the ones who are left behind.”
The tone of her voice suggested that she had given up on life because ‘it’s all for the ones who are left behind.’
I’m not 100; I don’t know how I will feel at 100, but I know now how I feel about those who will be left behind.
When I asked my then-husband about getting life insurance for the house that we had just purchased for our family, he told me “no”, He didn’t want life insurance because there would be no benefit to him on account that “I’ll be dead.”
I was only 30 years old, yet I knew that his vision was rather short-sighted.
It is all for the ones who are left behind. It is. All of it is.
Sadly, he didn’t care about ‘them’. He only cared about himself and he is sowing now what he reaped during his lifetime.
Yet, it is in fact all for and about the ones who are left behind.
Life is yours while you’re living it and when you’re gone, you and your stuff are for the ones who are left behind.
That’s you with a capital Y.
We’re all recycled - our stuff and every part of us.
The world spends much more time without us in it than with us.
What are we going to do with that fact?
I have always loved finding evidence of my parents’ memories, something they left behind to give me a glimpse into their lives.
There are pictures that tell stories of friendships and unrequited love. Turns out, my parents had a life just like I did - a life that existed before I did - and what a short journey it was!
Both my parents died at 83. They were children, experienced a war, teens, rebuilt a country, adults, built a family and then they enjoyed a few years of living before they died when their body gave out.
They lived great and fulfilled lives with lots of friends and a massive funeral!
At 62, I am becoming aware that the journey ahead of me is now shorter than the one behind me.
I do want to leave something behind for the ones I loved, for the ones who love me.
Hopefully, I will leave behind a house or two - properties that my parents helped me acquire. I could have probably gone on more vacations, but life was such that vacations were not part of the deal.
As a single parent, vacation time was hard to come by. Security for the kids was more important.
Life is not just what happens, it’s also what does not happen.
It looks like my need for security may provide security beyond my lifetime, just like my parents need for stability did.
My Ex’s parents left him nothing tangible. No home, no nothing. They tried, they tried so hard to make it work. But in the end, they lost the farm, he lost his life to lung cancer, they lost the trailer, - and then the daughter ruined the apartment and everything in it after Granny died of lung cancer.
Her 5 kids - the Ex and his 4 siblings are a mixed bag: From home-owners to folks in assisted-living, some living in the country and some living in the city, some dead (in a box on a chair) and some alive - with 0 to 5 children - with 1 to 3 wives/husbands. That is quite the mixed bag now that you think about it.
For now, they’re all still above ground.
But I digress.
Where am I going with this newsletter?
Where am I going with my life? My job?
What will the next year look like?
We’re certainly starting it with a new variable:
a new house in another state - and an invitation to move.
An invitation to stick around and influence the children -again? - for the first time?
Is this that second chance I was hoping for?
What we truly leave behind is influences, not things - and I have the offer of a lifetime.
“It’s all for the ones who are left behind.”
I want to leave behind a better world, something that tells someone what I learned while I was here (so nobody else has to), something the kids can find when they’re looking for Elsie and Franny.
I am already leaving some stuff, now I need to decide what else to leave. I’d like for it to be words - and stories, so that the people I carry in my brain don’t leave with me.
My Ex failed at telling his or his mother’s story. Both wrote it down though, because they cared enough for someone to read it one day.
It’s all for the ones who are left behind to do or not - to enjoy or not.
Such is life.
But while we’re here, the next step is entirely up to us.
The question every day is, are you brave enough to make the kind choice?