Another Decade Bites the Dust!

Our conversations with friends mark the passage of time. When we are young, we casually mention attending a grandparent’s 75^th birthday celebration or a great-aunt’s funeral. Then, our parents’ health leaks into the discourse and before long the occasional query becomes commonplace. “How is your mom doing?” Or, “I was sorry to hear about your father passing away.”

One by one they leave us, until we become the older generation, next in line for our own funerals. And, even though we attended each funeral and memorial service, we wonder, are we really that old?

I wasn’t old when my mother died, only 36; she was 63. We had no warning. We talked on Sunday night and Friday she was dead, from pneumonia.

She was the first of her generation to pass away. Just a few years later, an aunt died. My father was next. Then both uncles passed away in the same week. My mother’s baby sister, my last remaining close relative of that generation, passed away last year.

Now the funerals will be for my generation.

I was just coming downstairs to breakfast the other morning when Rob said, “Dr. Campbell died. It’s on the front page of the paper.” He was our dermatologist. We’d both been seeing him for annual checkups; he was a nice man, caught a patch of skin cancer on Rob’s back a couple years ago. We didn’t know he was ill. Apparently he didn’t, either. He died in his sleep, at the age of 53.

Fifty-three once seemed pretty old. Now it’s in the rearview mirror. Makes you think about the time you’ve been borrowing and wonder how much longer you can check it out.

Maybe that’s why we mark each decade with a big celebration, saying to the Fates, “Hah! So there! I’ve made it!”  Because we’re like turtles crossing a road. One car speeds by, and then another. The turtle in front of us gets flattened and, even as we mourn the loss of our friend, we breathe a sigh of relief that we’re still upright. And we just keep chugging along, until we get to the other side. Of course, like Sisyphus and his rock. we’ll just have to get back in the traffic, but for this one day we can party. We’ve made it this far. Good.

Now that I’ll be turning sixty, I am, quite frankly, perplexed. Sixty was my father's mother who complained about being old for as long as I could remember. Then sixty was my parents’ generation who never climbed a mountain, or went on a bike ride, or ran a road race. My mother and her mother both died in their sixties. 

I must be looking old because I get the senior discount without even asking. (It's the gray hair.) But I just don’t feel old. I have no chronic illnesses, still have all my original teeth. 

I’ve invited a few friends to help me celebrate my birthday with a 60-mile bike ride. We’ll ride to Kittery, Maine, and stop in at my new favorite donut shop, then cross over the Piscataqua River back to New Hampshire and wander down the coast a bit before heading inland to Exeter for lunch.  It’ll be a leisurely foodie ride.

So I’m thinking, if I ride 60 miles this year, does that mean 70 when I’m 70, and 80 when I’m 80? I’m going for the full century.