Journal of a Living Lady #124

 

Nancy White Kelly

 

My grandmother lived to be ninety-nine years and six months old. I always wished she had made it to 100. There aren’t any centurions in my family. Quite the opposite. My other grandmother died from a stroke in her early forties. An uncle died suddenly of a heart attack in his forties just after an unremarkable routine physical examination. My father died of stomach cancer at the age of 62. With the diagnosis of Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, without a miracle, it is highly improbably that I will make it to old age, much less die from it.

When I was a child, my age now was considered old. Now “elderly” is ten years older than you are at the time. Buddy and I have many friends who are in the 70’s and 80’s. Come to think of it, Buddy will be 70 his next birthday. There is twelve years difference in our ages. I was in the first grade when he was a senior in high school, but I didn’t date him until I was nineteen. My parents were strict.

I sometimes wonder how old I would be if I didn’t know my age. We rush to grow old  and then long to be children again.

While slower and more forgetful, my mind seems the same as when I was a teenager. Yet, the mirror reminds me that some years have snuck in.  My never-svelte body is now full of surgical tracks and becoming a warehouse of spare parts. In inventory are acrylic teeth, a chrome knee, and a removable, often forgotten silicone prosthesis. If I had it to do over again, I would have had a total mastectomy. Don’t intend to nurse any babies. And what good is one without the other? Some things were meant to be in pairs.

I do  have the same funny bone, but it  responds differently than when I was younger. Probably your tickle bone does too if you can appreciate the nutritional fact that beans are 23% protein and the rest explosive.

There is a senior center is our little county. Whether the following happened there, I do not know. Nonetheless, I was recently told about  two elderly ladies who have been friends for several decades. Lately their socialization has been limited to meeting a couple of times a week to play cards at the senior behavior building.

One afternoon they were playing Old Maid. One looked at the other and said: "Now don't get mad at me.... I know we've been friends for a long time...but I just can't think of your name! I've thought and thought, but I can't remember it. Please tell me what your name is."

Her friend adjusted her glasses. For several minutes she just stared and glared. Finally, she said, " How soon do you need to know?"

 

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