Life

My father-in-law is doing better, sounding clearer, and will be checking out of the rehab hospital for home this week.

My mother-in-law cannot remember what she has eaten during the day due to agressive frontal lobe degeneration (aka Alzheimer's) and will doubtfully even remember her own name, let alone her children, in a few months.

It is so difficult to see those we hold in such high esteem for all of our lives become weak and decline with age. Perhaps because it is a constant reminder to us, in our "prime", of what we are to become with age...and such a thought is just not very promising.

My father almost died of a pancreatic tumor that doctors at OHSU had never seen before back in 1980, when he was 40. That recurred in his liver in 1995, finally killing him in 1999. Instead of looking forward to my future, I find myself dreading the aging process that I face over the next few years. Logically, it is highly doubtful that I will suffer the same issues that my father battled; our lives are so different--many external variables were in play in my father's life that have not ever been applicable in my life. However unreasonable, the fear and the dread exist.

My mother was diagnosed with Graves' Disease after my father's death, so I have been watching closely my thyroid as well. However, with her that is the extent of any "malady" of age that she has experienced thus far. I consider myself, in a way, lucky to have not had to deal with the problems, yet, that many face when their parents become older. That may sound extremely self-centered, and interpret that as you may...but I do not for a moment wish that my father were dead instead of being here to complete my mother's life and to be known by his grandchildren.

La Princesita, the highly sensitive soul she is, can tell that something is up so we talked about it this evening. The situation is completely beyond her comprehension, but I vowed when I was about to become a mother that I would not allow anything to inhibit my communication with my children, so when they come to me with a question, I do all I can to answer it at their level (Today's magic question was, by the way: Mommy, what is a "hippie boy?"...duuuuuuude...).

Bringing Real Life to their level also makes me think a lot about growing older, and how much easier it would be to just end Life so as not to put our loved ones through the pain of watching their parents decline, forget who they are, forget their children, have their insides eaten up or rot away by some disease...whatever. But that is no solution, either, and is selfish to boot--not to mention morally unacceptable by the standards of institutionalized religion and social standards.

So what do we do? How do we grow old with grace and beauty? Do we live each day as if it were our last? To what extent is such living possible? The accident of two years ago brought this to the forefront of my mind, as all who came to our rescue in our overturned, afire car were prepared for a carful of fatalities. Had it been a car made to a lesser quality standard, we probably would all be four little crosses on the side of the road just east of Nashville.

But we weren't.

Why?

How do we live each day as if it were our last? I honestly am not sure how, when we get so caught up in the to-do lists, work, the children and their schedules, trying to salvage even a moment for a little me-time--then start feeling guilty when I think that I should be taking every moment with my children and making it as if it were my last.

I never thought this way before the accident.

Now I find myself thinking it more and more.