Life had something else in store

Here is me, pulling a face with a gorilla, on the occasion of my 50th birthday, over nine years ago. That day, my spouse and I drove to nearby Harrison Hot Springs to spend the weekend and celebrate.

The decade leading to that point had been one of change. I’d attempted to reincarnate from a contract academic to a grade-school teacher, but had been failed twice from the program (old dogs are not allowed to do new tricks!)

I’d also gained substantial weight, lost it slowly and healthily, traversed through a rather early menopause, and finally returned to academic work with renewed energy for students and a new work supervisor.

I felt it all to be culminating; I’d landed on my feet and arrived. Did I mention my marriage of decades had renewed in the last few years…? What a wonder that was after three children and almost as many decades.

Like so many women, my 30s were filled with the adventures of childbirth and wakeful nights, school starts, and that busyness that eats us up.

So this —this decade, my 50s — was going to be mine. Things were sorted. All was On Track.

Fifty weeks into that first year, our family doctor gave my spouse a preliminarydiagnosis of ALS — the only way he could account for the loss of strength in arms and fingers, and the emotional sprawl and overwhelm he’d been experiencing, too.

And the next year, from just before my 51st birthday, was one of 24/7 caregiving, and the years after that, grieving and loss with their waves and fluctuations.

Since then, I’ve lived with the aftermath of caregiving. And it does have “after-math” — physical evidence. I broke my elbow, slipping on ice some months after my husband passed, and it didn’t heal well. I think grief takes its toll on the body in ways that are tricky to recognize. It altered my pain threshold. I ground a molar to bits. I could go on… but enough.

Living with the realities of one’s children also grieving is its own challenge. And I chose to move and downsize. A positive, yes, but change, change, change became too constant. I left my academic job two years ago as, once again, it became a drama zone.

I’m back to self-employed writer-hood, and long work hours. But coupled with freedom.

Drama! Up or down…

I remember meeting a neighbourhood friend sometime before my spouse’s diagnosis. We knew each other mostly from our sons being on the same ball team, and our evenings sitting together on bleachers watching. I always enjoyed conversing with her, another teacher.

But at that meeting, she shared how she felt about her life at the time, in her forties. She had a solid marriage with a #1 spouse; two children with no serious issues; the same house for years; same job in the same school. Once in a while, she and her spouse would take a vacation somewhere different just to shake things up.

She said that the years and days all felt similar, and to be passing by. She was not ungrateful for the general calm — which was a good thing, I recall thinking. If one has a life without ruptures and spinning corners, it’s not to be taken for granted. Why drama-up a thing if you don’t need to?

I remember feeling a little envy. But more so I felt her quiet wonder that — up to that moment at least — her life had yielded few storms. And the wonder for me was that, standing with her in the early morning sun at the side of the road, I could feel a peace emanating from her, and shared.

Nice. I’ll take it from wherever I can get it, I’ve learned. Even by osmosis. Drink it up.

So now I’m 59

This decade is coming to an end. And it doesn’t feel like an “end.” It feels like an eve — the eve of my 60s.

And now I have absolutely no thought that my 60s will be a decade of “me,” or of being “settled,” or of any respite. I fully expect turbulence and upheaval. I fully expect there will be lessons gleaned — on the daily! When the rug gets pulled, DANCE! And there’ll be sadness too — there’s always that. I’m not going to think ahead to the possibility of an unbearable; I’ve learned the significant steps to not thinking ahead — not too much.

My hope is that I have time to write — also on the daily — and time with my sons. My mother is still alive and active, and I enjoy every minute with her, and value that time. I know that she will not be with me forever.

I know that there will be happenings that I cannot begin to imagine now — I know that.

The books I write, and the stories I will tell, are all pieces that I might have begun to imagine, but more likely not. My memoir of caregiving, Dance Me to the End, was not in any way in my mind or heart that Sunday nine years ago when I packed my little suitcase for the weekend, thrilled to be going away with my spouse to celebrate my birthday, my new beginning.

I accept that. I know too that there will be moments and times of stillness, and I will revel in those — I will— however fleeting. There will be laughter and love and friendship, and I will recognize these, and take pleasure in them.

Life is full. It’s taken 59 years to learn all I have; I cannot forget.

~~~

This essay was first posted in Middle Pause, on Medium, October 2023