OLD AGE – IT’S A MONSTER

My grandmother was a very powerful woman. She was probably the most influential person I have ever known to this day and profoundly affected everyone in our family, even the generations who never go to know her the way that I did because some of her vibrancy had faded in her latter years. She even impacted people who had never met her because she was so much fun to talk about and her life and quotes have become folklore.  She died when she was 99, fully intact mentally (and I do mean fully) and I was almost 50 when she passed so she and I had a long, glorious run which I am in immense gratitude for.

One blogpost about her is impossible and I will be writing about her often but today what comes to mind is that her fire never went out.  To her last breath, she was a spitfire but one of her favorite lines and one which everyone quotes is “old age; it’s a monster.”  For her, it was because she was so full of hell.  She saw the world and her life as full of possibilities.  There was always more to be gleaned from life: more jobs to learn, more meals to cook, more places to see, more job opportunities to be had.

She never got old, in her heart and in her mind but her body couldn’t keep up with that imp spirit and she bemoaned that.  That was her monster. She had many, many adversities throughout the course of her life but she was smart, full of ideas, fearless and tenacious.  She truly believed there was nothing she couldn’t do and that is how she lived her life.

She was an incredible role model, at any age but now that I am in an older chapter of my years I find myself increasingly inspired by that spirit.  We can take VERY good care of ourselves and persevere in keeping or bodies as primed as possible but we’re still going getting older and need to acclimate and accommodate an ever-changing body.

We will all have to make peace with the monster but that doesn’t mean that our spirit or joy for life, sense of adventure and wonder has to be diminished.  Learning to find some comfort with change is really important, as well as staying present and creating a life that really pleases you.