...still feed me? When I'm 64?

As 2017 comes to a close, again I become introspective and sentimental. Memories of the past woven with future thoughts in general and 2018 come flooding in. That is who I am and what my blogs do. Maybe I ruminate because no nearby female blood-relative has gone before me to blaze the aging trail. Mom died at age 62 1/2. 

Hallmark Channel's cheesy and predictable Christmas movie-binging has made it clear. Almost every one of their movies include aged 20s-to-30s young main characters talking about the premature loss of their mom, dad, or both of their parents. Losing a parent at a young age is tough.

Being left motherless before aged 40 (I was 35) provided un-requested membership into a club that no one would want to be a part of. And few of my friends are in the club. Losing my mom was more complex because I didn't realize at the time that I actually lost both of my parents. Within a year Widowed Dad entered into a rebound marriage. When that happened, blending two adult families felt harder than hand-stirring a batch of dense cookie batter.

Sudden and unexpected loss is tough. If not for a mortal car wreck, how long would my healthy 62-1/2-year-young Mom have lived? Would she have experienced great grands? fulfillment? breast cancer? senility? How would she have faced them? Did she experience literal age-related cold feet syndrome? A mom makes the home and its essence. Good, bad, ugly, warm, hygienic. I am mom, and I have made my home.

I had only a few short years to complain about Mom's interference into my personal life. Which was admittedly my fault. After marriage I moved a long 14-hour drive away. And back in the olden days, before cell phones, we were charged for every minute of a long-distance phone call. 

When Mom died, I had no close "Auntie" either. No heritage modeled my family's menopausal symptoms (during invincible aged-30s, I was too young to even think about that sort of thing or ask about it). Nor how to bravely face aged-60s, a time when adult children need parents in ways that are less obvious. Lost was the art of observing the cutting-of-children's-cords, while still invisibly nurturing them as independent adults. I enter Mom's uncharted territory.

Aged-64 is nearing, and it is the prize. Attaining any age beyond 62-1/2 are opportunities Mom was never afforded. Maybe it is a booby-prize, because I have heard that it takes guts to grow old. As my husband and I experience dehydration, Arthur (arthritis), and more gray hairs on our heads, I embrace the privilege of life. We still need each other, and we still "feed" each other, and our children can watch.

I face 2018 with these thoughts: Be grateful for every gray hair. Be grateful for every year with aging parents and observe how they face life. Nobody is perfect. There is always something to learn.