I’m Making Reservations to Hike the Appalachian Trail Next Month
Been There, Done That
Writing for the Provo Herald is a bit different than writing for the Springville Herald because I knew a lot of the people who read my column and I got regular feedback.
I’m a sixty-something woman married to a seventy-something man who still works full time as a contractor and is planning to buy some land and work on the weekends as a farmer.
Our ages are several years apart, but we’ll probably both die at the same time only I’ll be in my eighties and he’ll be playing around with the nineties. We can probably have my funeral and his 100th birthday party on the same day. Or at least save the balloons from one to use for the other.
I think about the things people my age think about, and one of those subjects is death. It’s not that I’m necessarily worried about it or sad, it’s more like I realize that if I’ve always wanted to learn French or hike the Great Wall of China, I probably better get on it because who knows what my memory or my or my knees are going to be like next year.
The idea of dying feels like it felt in first grade when my parents said we were going to move at the end of the school year. I recognized what they were saying, but the idea of summer ever happening again was inconceivable. Most people feel that way unless you’re dealing with news that gives you a more immediate timeline.
Along with recognizing that I’m officially an orphan, which feels stranger than you would think it would at my age, I also know several folks on the other side. My maid of honor at my first wedding, cousins, siblings. In my youth, I would have never imagined that anyone who died was anything but wrinkled and old. My freshman year of college, a high school friend was in a car accident, and my thought was that it made me more interesting because I had suffered her loss.
When I was young, I thought old people were accepting and complacent about their fate. I thought you’d get old and realize what a nuisance you were and move on.
Such has not been my experience. Life as I’ve gotten older is like watching other people move into your house while you’re still living there. I keep waiting for all the young people to go home.
Meanwhile, until they do or don’t, I appreciate my April plum trees that city hasn’t taken down yet as they keep threatening to because they’re making the sidewalk uneven. I’ll hand down pictures of my house with those trees in front, and everyone will say how great the old days were.
When I was here.
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