Today is my last day at 47 and it was a doozy. I woke up in pain as usual and things went downhill.
I dropped my breakfast sandwich on the floor and managed to spill some coffee on my left shoulder. It wasn’t too hot. So I had to nuke another sandwich in the microwave. No big deal but it seems every day now, I lose my grip and can’t hold on to something. And sometimes something breaks or spills.
When I tried to take a shower, it took twice as longer because my shower chair is showing signs of wear and tear so I was hurting too much to stand. There’s already limited space and I equate it to having to take a shower in a phone booth.
So I had to get out soaking wet with soap still on me and do a quick fix so I could finish. By that time, my back was breaking me so hard, I realized that my plans to run to town to do a few errands wasn’t going to happen. Besides, I didn’t want to risk it.
Let me say I’m not one of these people who get hung up on aging. It happens. I’m glad and happy to celebrate every birthday even the ones I can’t celebrate. In 1999, I was on the road trying to escape Hurricane Floyd which was projected to hit coastal Georgia…but didn’t at the last moment changing trajectory.
Two years later, well a lot of things happened during the week and it’s hard to celebrate a birthday when people are planning funerals and memorials or just hoping to find their loved ones in the aftermath of a terrorist attack we’ve never seen before.
In my early 30s, I was working at the paper when covering a meeting, a worker at the courthouse received word her son had died. And she reacted the way you’d think. My cousin who viewed my late mother as a second mother (and she lived a lot longer than his own mother) celebrated his 50th on the day we buried our mother.
His mother, my aunt Sandra, never lived to be 50 or even 48. Another aunt never lived to be 30. Another cousin never lived to be 3. My late girlfriend, Kerry, passed away at 43.
So many other people I grew up with or went to school with have passed away whether it was a heart attack, cancer, car accident, boating accident, drug overdose, suicide and even murder.
People who get hung up on getting older aren’t really concerned with aging. They’re concerned about their own vanity. They’re listening to the wrong people telling them if you don’t do this by this age, you’re doing it wrong. It’s best to live your own life and not someone else’s.
Life’s a journey and sometimes you never know what direction you’ll take until you’re at that crossroad.
Zane Says 