Archives for posts with tag: life

The Downhill Slope

November 12, 2025 //
2

You climb hills in life and, after you reach the top, you face the downhill slope, the sometimes slippery one. I think I’m on the last slope as I turn 80 (YIKES!) in a few weeks. When I turned 79, I looked down at my fingers, thinking how we used to hold up fingers to show how many years old we are. Now I was looking at them, thinking how many of these finger years do I have left. One hand worth, both hands, more? The answer is I have no idea, but each of them is going to be important, not to be squandered.

Life is uncertain. We think we will reach middle age in about our 40s. My son died at 35, so he was basically in middle age while in high school. My husband died at 53, so his middle age was in his 20s. I was thinking about my grandparents and parents. My father was in his 80s when he died, as were both of my grandmothers. My mother was about to turn 86. That’s not many years left if I were to follow their path, but I don’t have some of the health issues they had or am being treated with more modern medications. There’s a good chance I can go beyond that if I’m careful – and lucky.

80 is a definitive age. There’s no way to pretend you’re young, even if you look younger than most people presume 80 year olds look. It’s a hard age to swallow. You can be proud to have made it, you can embrace it and keep going, if you are healthy in body and mind. There is no doubt that our bodies are aging because parts wear out. Your frame has weathered 80 years and how many things are still working the same after 80 years. You can exchange parts, exercise, eat healthy foods, keep your mind active, and have a good attitude only to have something break down that starts to take the rest of you with it. There is a saying among doctors that if you’ve seen one 80 year old, you’ve seen one 80 year old. We are all different.

Watching your lifelong friends and family age is a landscape of what can happen. I have good friends who have lost their vision, their hearing, their mobility, and their memories in varying degrees. Reading obituaries is an unspoken exercise in checking the person’s age. If they died younger than you are, there is a sense of thinking you have made it longer than they did. If they are your age, you think YIKES! If they are just a few years older than you are, you are reminded that you may only have a little time left. If they are a lot older than you, you think there is hope. At least, that’s what I find myself doing, even as I grieve their loss and treasure the memories of our time together.

There are some bonuses to being 80. I find that it can be a good excuse for just about anything. I don’t feel like doing that and it’s ok because I’m 80. And there are things that you actually can’t do as well. I try not to get on ladders and watch my steps more closely. We all know that a fall can be the beginning of the end. I’m lucky that I can still drive and can drive at night, so I find myself continuing a lifetime of carpooling as I drive friends to appointments and outings. That’s ok. I’m grateful I can still do that. I used to take off by myself on day trips to wherever and I don’t tend to do that now. I’m trying not to be reckless with the years I’ve been given.

It would be nice to live in a society that values their elders, but I’m not sure we get that respect in my world. I tend to get more eye rolls than anything. I have been to several protest marches this year and I always recognize those of my generation. We have been here before and are exasperated that we still have to do this. On the other hand, we need to speak out against things happening that we have lived through before and know are wrong. We are also old enough that we can speak out without having the danger of losing our jobs or our clients. Many of our younger friends are unable to be as vocal without repercussions.

It gets depressing sometimes being old and alone. I often wonder if anyone will even know if I die since I have been independent for a long time. My family is here but they are busy and don’t worry about that since I look ok. Actually, I worry more about what my dogs will do if they have to worry about me, although one dog is 18 years old and technically older than I am. I treat her as I would like to be treated. She doesn’t see or hear well, but she is feisty and wants to be part of everything even though she sleeps a lot more. I try to be patient with her accidents and her slowness, knowing that I may get to that stage. Just don’t put me down at the first sign of aging – please.

In my lifelong quest to be out there doing things, I’m making sure to get my friends together whenever we can, and planning trips while I can still take them. My maternal grandmother stayed with us a lot when I was growing up and she always wanted to go somewhere. “Let’s go!” is how I remember her. We would get up and walk to the bus stop and head downtown or walk to nearby shops or just go somewhere. The fact that she didn’t drive didn’t stop her. My mother was even more so. We used to just get in the car and go, driving into the country or planning an adventure or just seeing what was new in town. I’ve inherited this trait to the max. I love seeing new places and learning new things and sharing them with family and friends. My friends who used to go with me at the drop of a hat are mostly sidelined by lack of money or mobility. We are all watching our money in these years when there aren’t many ways to earn more, although I do have a few friends still working. This year, I took three of my grandsons on a trip, which is getting harder since they are adults and have jobs. I was lucky to share time and make new memories with them as we visited some of my favorite places. May there be time for more trips like that.

There are going to be changes with everyone I know and they may be sudden or they may be incremental things that build up. We don’t know. We just don’t. I don’t have any answers – just thoughts. We all hope our lives have made a difference, even if just a small one in our own circle of family and friends. We want to keep mattering. We keep putting one foot in front of the other and hoping we get where we are going as gracefully as we can. Or we have to keep our sense of humor and try to laugh if we do it a little more clumsily than we wish. It’s all we can do

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Categories Memories, Reflections

My Time Capsule Home

June 19, 2025 //
0

Today, I had a rare treat as I got to tour the first home my husband and I ever purchased. We lived there from 1969 to 1975. I was 23 and he was 24 when we moved in with our one year old daughter. This is rare because the home I grew up in and our other home where we spent 27 years after this house have been scraped and either left as a blank space or filled with a new home. This was a surprise. There was an estate sale in the house that my daughter noticed and texted me, so I headed over to see it. I knew the same people we sold it to, almost to the day 50 years ago, had still owned it. I got very emotional driving over – this was a place of very sweet memories.

I had actually driven by the house a couple of weeks ago and took a picture of the huge trees.

As a young wife, I spent a lot of time reading magazines like “Better Homes & Gardens” for ideas for our home. I think I found this landscape design that I liked and had my husband copy it. He planted three trees and they are huge 50 years later. I have to laugh because I don’t think I ever thought they would be so big. Just the first of so many memories – my sweet guy digging those holes and planting the trees.

Walking up the house, I passed the gas light, which I think we updated way back then.

Here I am, pregnant with either our second or third daughter, in the front yard. Photos of me are kind of rare since I usually am the photographer. The lamp isn’t updated yet here.

The front porch, where we took so many photos looked incredibly the same.

I think this doorknocker used to have our name on the plate that seems to have been removed.

Here is one of many photos of my little family getting ready to go out Trick or Treating.

I walked inside, not expecting much & turned down the hall towards the bedrooms, which seem smaller than I remember. In our old bedroom, the folding louvre doors we replaced the sliding doors with were still there. Across the hall, in the bedrooms our two oldest daughters shared, the wallpaper threw me into a new flood of memories. It was the paper I put up when they were little – still there in all its 70s glory.

Walking through the house, the main bathroom still had the pink tiles and the laundry room looked the same as the days I did loads from diapers to my middle daughter’s beloved nitey-nite blanket that she waited patiently for.

My almost 80 year old self was suddenly that 23 year old mother and wife, trying to be the housewife I saw in the magazines. I was making a home for our family. I headed for the back yard next. My husband, Alan, was 6’4″ tall and a strong young man. He would work all day and come home to the projects around the house. We had a big yard in both the houses we owned and he loved to go out to “survey the grounds,” as he loved to say as we smiled at each other. He was the head of his little kingdom and spent so many hours taking care of all of it. Reflecting 50 years later, we had no idea that his life was half over during these years. Life is funny like that.

At the back of our yard, which had a chain link fence to keep the kids from the creek behind us which would flood and rush by to our delight, he built a big sandbox for the girls. Here they are with our next door neighbor who had only older brothers, so she loved being at our house. They are still friends to this day.

After a while, we decided we needed a patio back there, so Alan built it. I picture my big ole guy hauling the railroad ties and bricks, digging out the area and then setting all of it, sometimes into the night after work.

It is still there today, looking more like an archeological dig. I walked along the stepping stones he hauled and laid to stand in the ruins, his work still a strong memory in my mind.

The covered patio at the back of the house where we hosted so many family birthdays and parties with friends and activities for the kids looked the same other than an addition the other owners had added. So so many memories in that area. The kids learned to ride their tricycles there, Alan cooked on his first Hasty-Bake, we laughed with so many people.

Back in the house, the kitchen looked the same. The same cabinets, the same countertops, the same stove. Wow!

My girls had their first cooking lessons here and I baked so many cookies and cooked so many meals and filled so many baby bottles. How many times did I mop that floor and clean the sink?

The den with the high brick fireplace was still there although the room was painted blue when we lived there. That fireplace held one, then two, then three stockings at Christmas time. We hang those stockings plus many more these days. I made them in my craft era.

I have so many pictures of special events in that den. It was a very fun room that held lots of laughter and joy.

The dining room had the same doors and the same rug (Really?) after all these years. I do love red.

I left the house flooded with so many emotions and memories. I came home to look through my photos for more from those years. There were dance recitals and all the holidays and summer fun and winter snow. There was a little trampoline, tiny swimming pools and a swing set, snowmen, trikes and bikes, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins and friends of all ages. It was a very special time.

It’s not often I get a surprise like this one these days. Rather than being horrified that the house looked the same after 50 years, I was literally transported back to being that younger version of myself with all the wonder of being a mother and wife and all the unknown ahead of us. I can look back with love and wonder, pasting what has happened since onto my thoughts, the good, the great and the sad, and be grateful for those sweet years that helped build the foundation that propelled our family into its own future with all that life can bring. My heart is full with all the memories of events, faces, voices from those days. Such a gift.

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Categories Memories

Life’s Chapters

August 23, 2022 //
8

The problem with thinking of life in chapters is that there has to be a last one. Who wants to think about that? I’ve just been pondering where I am, following the quiet years of COVID-19 where I was home more than I had been in decades. There were good things about it. I spent more time with my pets, listened to the birds, walked the neighborhood and everybody smiled and waved. Now we’re back to mostly normal, but it’s hard to comfortably move from pandemic life to whatever the new one is.

I’m 76 right now and, pre-COVID, I was going all the time. Now it seems to be moving more slowly and that’s not just due to my age. We’re easing into life at a time when I feel like I need to be hurrying so I don’t miss anything before, frankly, I just can’t do it anymore.

There have been so many chapters in my life so far, starting with childhood in the 40s and 50s. I was fortunate to have a very peaceful, comfortable life.

Then there was junior high and high school, where I changed and grew and learned and questioned.

And then there was college, where I was away for the first time and made new friends and learned more and even got married.

And then I was a wife and mother to four before I turned 30, finding a life for myself through volunteer work and family activities.

And life went on as the kids grew up and went to college and married and I went to work part-time, then full time and then owned my own business. And then the shock of becoming a widow at 52 and starting yet another chapter where I had to close my business and find work that gave me health benefits and supported me and all of that. During that time, I pushed myself into going places by myself or with friends to meet me. The first was Alaska with my high school friend who lived there. It was a big trip to take alone when I’d always had my husband to travel with.

By the time my husband died, we had the first three of our grandkids, who proved to be my next chapter and my salvation.

I could go on about each chapter, but they are all parts of a huge whole life. I had several careers that I had never dreamed of as a young wife with an English degree, but my life experiences and my ability to communicate served me well through the years and I made new friends, accomplished new goals and was amazed at what I had done when I finally retired.

My other love has been travel and I’ve been grateful for special friends who were available to travel with me as I traveled the American West, South, and back to France. I’ve taken my grandchildren on trips and explored my own state of Oklahoma and the states around us. I’m always ready to go visit somewhere.

So, what is this new chapter? I’ve lost friends who were near and dear to me in recent months and spent the last week or two at memorial services. I’m not good at funerals, but two of my favorite people lost their husbands after long illnesses and I needed to be there for them. I also lost a friend at the end of last year who was 95 and another who was 101 in the last few weeks. I also went to a memorial for a friend’s mother who was 101 – two services for 101 year olds in five days!

But those deaths and the lives of these women we were celebrating have inspired me. I have had many men I loved and adored in my life, but it’s the women who are speaking to me at this time of my life. I had strong grandmothers and a strong mother and their lives have taught me so much. These other women I adored who lived so long were as strong as anyone can be. And I look at their lives and try to find the secret of what made them the role models they are for me.

First, all of these women had to face hardships at various times in their lives, whether loss of spouse, loss of child, loss of husband’s job, loss of any support other than themselves. They all lived on and smiled and laughed and loved and didn’t just sit around feeling sorry for themselves. None of them ever considered themselves a victim. There was no drama – just life.

Second, I can remember all of their voices and their laughter so well. The memories make me smile. They all had terrific senses of humor and were able to laugh at life’s little kicks.

Third, they never quit going as long as they could. They were always curious and learning and keeping up with what was going on in the world. They never stopped growing intellectually or emotionally. Several traveled until they had infirmities that made it difficult. The 95 year old and the 101 year old read all the time. The 95 year old was still reading about a book a day until close to the end.

They all loved their families as much as anyone could. They died beloved by their offspring.

So, where do I go from here? I’ll keep traveling until I can’t, reading until I can’t see (and then there are audio books), learning several new things every day, fighting for the things I believe in and doing what I can to leave the world a better place because I’ve been here, even if my contribution is something small. I’ll keep enjoying my children and grandchildren and be here to share their lives with all the ups and downs that there will be. I’m not sad that they’re all growing older because I’m so privileged to be here to watch it all and put it in the perspective of our world and all the family members who have gone before.

So this next chapter is exciting to think about and invites new goals. Basically, I’m just going to keep on keeping on for as long as I’m supposed to. Lucky me.

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Categories Family, Friends, Memories, Reflections, Uncategorized