Olding by Carolyn

Looking in the Mirror The only person in my immediate family that I watched grow old was my maternal grandmother. The other grandparents died before I was born. Both of my parents died in their 60s. My grandmother was petite and cute, unlike her fraternal twin sister, who was handsome and statuesque. She was very particular about her appearance, she was active, and she had a trim figure. My mother and I were shocked to hear her comment as she looked in a mirror, "Anybody as ugly as I am ought to just die!" To the rest of the world (well, the world of Rome, Georgia), she was a model of aging well. To herself, she didn't look the same as she had thirty years previous; therefore, she was ugly. 

 The Sad Side of Olding "It's a shame folks has to die, idn't it?" ~my grandmother after yet another one of her friends passed away. She outlived everyone she loved, except me. People do die. That's the sad side. This week, a friend's husband died. I remember the day she told us (The Girlfriends) that her husband, Ralph, had pancreatic cancer. Anyone who didn't already know could find out with an easy search, that pancreatic cancer is nasty business. Not many people survive it, and remissions are rare. Ralph lasted nine months from diagnosis to death. He never got to the acceptance phase. Today, on a whim, I did a Google search for the husband of one of my closest friends from high school. We haven't been in touch for several years. I used to call her on her birthday, but for the past few years, she had a hard time carrying on a conversation. Another friend said it was because she was stressed from caring for her husband who had dementia. In my search,...

 No Big Deal! Well, it turns out that being 80 is just like being 79. It's not a BFD. It sounds old, but it doesn't feel old. When I turned 70, that was a big deal. I felt like somebody had flipped my Old Switch. Things started changing, falling apart. But other than the fact that I can't avoid using the words "old" or "elderly" anymore, I don't feel that much different now than I did then. My birthday was the 28th of September. The regular monthly lunch I have with friends was the third Wednesday, so some of them brought gifts and cards on that day. Some of them waited until our lunch in October. My son came to celebrate on my birthday, my stepson and sister-in-law came two weeks later. So that was a long, drawn-out birthday celebration.  At the October lunch, a woman some of us knew from NAWBO, stopped by our table and said she just celebrated a birthday, too. I said I just turned 80 and she said she was 86. I wanted to say, "You don't loo...

 October 16, 2024 My birthday was September 28 and my son was here for the weekend. Two weeks later, my stepson and sister-in-law were here. I thought we were done celebrating my 80th birthday. Today was Ladies' Lunch Day, and they decided to drag it out a bit longer. I got more presents and the restaurant brought out individual lava cakes.

 September 18, 2024 Ladies Who Lunch I met with my friends today for lunch. We get together once a month and call ourselves the Inner Circle. We've known each other for over 20 years, some of us for over 30. Everyone in the group is or was a business owner and that's how we got together in the first place. Now we are meeting to catch up. This month we celebrated two birthdays, one of them mine. I'll be 80 in a couple of weeks. For some reason, today was a bit different. We talked about things like our favorite TV shows. Shared names of reliable cleaning services. That's not the kind of thing we usually talk about. While we were waiting for the last one to show up, another woman some of us knew walked into the restaurant. She sat down for a few minutes to chat. She said she was working with the governor on a small business advisory group and my name had come up. Twenty or thirty years ago, I wouldn't have been surprised. My name would always come up in a conversation...