Living in the Present

There’s a funny thing about getting older and coming to realize our own mortality, as well as the mortality of

those around us. Today, my sister welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world and while my parents have been grandparents for almost 5 years; it wasn't until sitting in the waiting room that everything hit me at once.

For years we struggle to find our independence from our parents. As a child we grow up thinking our fathers are super heroes, our mothers can fix anything, but we also think they will be around forever. That these people who brought us into the world won’t age, even though we so desperately want to grow up.

At the age of 10, is when independence started for me. Although I valued the time spent as a family; the thunderstorms that would knock out the power, sitting by candlelight, huddled under a blanket in the living room. But I was already starting to form my own independence. At the age of 10, you cannot drive, so you rely on your parents for everything. At the age of 10, is when we start to want to find our own identity. I remember working with 4^th and 5^th graders at the job I held in college and they thought they knew everything, they didn't need an after school program; they could walk home by themselves and even babysit their younger siblings when their parents went out for a few hours.

I remember a classmate’s mother having an asthma attack in the 5^th grade and dying. I hugged my mother a little tighter that night and hoped she wouldn't have an asthma attack. At the age of 14, my mother had a seizure right in front of me right before I went to school. I was so scared, at the time my mother and I had been fighting almost every day; me struggling against her for some independence, her fighting to hold onto her little girl. My mother was fine, but it was a reality check for me and despite the ups and downs of my tumultuous teens, I believe I grew a little closer to my mother that day.

At the age of 20 many of us find ourselves with a whole new level of independence from our parents. Finally, after years of living under the supervision of our parents, we are out on our own, in our own apartments, working jobs to pay the bills. And while we love and often thrive in this fairly new independence, we start to miss home. We start to miss the luxuries of living with our parents meant: ”laundry? I actually have to go to a Laundromat if I can’t make it home for the weekend?”  By the age of 20 most people have experienced their first loss of a loved one, a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a family friend, or maybe even a college classmate. For me age 20 meant my grandparents were getting older, and the people I so loved and looked up to growing up were not going to be around forever. I had lost my Grandma at 17, and while I knew it meant a big deal to my mother, I still did not understand the depth of what it would mean to her.  You see, at this point my parents were divorcing and that was a huge loss of family for me. So death was so far off my radar, my now husband however, was learning his mother had been diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer. So the reality was that he didn't know how long he would have left with his mother and he had already had to prepare for a life without her.  I had known friends who had lost parents to cancer, to car accidents, to illness, or even chronic medical conditions, but it still was not on my radar. My mom and I were becoming best friends, my father and I spent much of my 20s rebuilding a relationship that had changed during my teens.

This year I turned 30. It was scary for me for many reasons. I threw the plan I had for my life out the window and now face several realities. You see for years I feel like I have taken for granted that my parents will always be there, but as J’s mother suffers the final stages of cancer and my mother’s health fluctuates, and I discover the relationship I have with my father is not the close relationship I believed we had and he has health concerns; I am starting to realize that our time here on Earth is very short. I have said for a while now, “this getting older thing sucks.” To which my mother chuckles and says, “Yes, it does, but it doesn't stop.” And it doesn't stop.  We get older every millisecond of everyday, many of us spending so much time focusing on a future we have yet to see or spending so long looking at a door that is closing.

It’s an area of my life I have struggled with for so long. I struggle to leave the past behind, always living in a constant state of “remember when…” nostalgia. Then there are the times where I focus so much on the future on the, “what if I never have kids? I want his mom to meet her grand kids before she leaves us.” And I've come to realize I cannot keep living in the past. I cannot keep wondering about the unknown. For me these realizations are such a huge step; I have always struggled with the idea of living in the present. The birth of my niece really woke me up to the idea of living in the right here and now because days go by way too fast, children grow up faster than we think, and we are aging and getting older. Days feel shorter and despite feeling we could live forever at times, we are not infinite.

I also realize this opens up a whole religious and philosophical debate about eternity and reincarnation to name a few.  My point is I have made a conscious effort, starting today to live in the present; to live each day as if it were my last. Now I’m not going to get crazy and spend money I don’t have, but spending quality time with those I love that doesn't involve a TV or a movie; going on adventures and creating memories of joy, rather than thoughts of “if I’d done life differently.”