Old Age and Age Old – Life Ongoing

PART 1

I awoke early to a wonderful, but still sleeping world here in Ajijic. It’s a nice time to be awake; before the day has really begun to unfold with all its time demands. The roosters haven’t even begun squawking out their morning announcements. The dogs aren’t yet barking; small birds aren’t yet chirping.  

I’m glad to still be a part of it and a part of my peers and others who are still with us.

Having hit the “old age stage” at 80; statistically the average age when humans expire, I am glad and grateful to still be here. The one thing, as many of us are aware, is that time is precious and not renewable.  Life is still such a gift, even though my iPhone has stopped recognizing my face and my eight year old great grandson innocently asked me, “Grandma, when you were my age, were there schools?”

Oh the fun answers I was tempted to give about living with dinosaurs and sending his great grandfather out to hunt or fish for our meals.  The problem with that was that the question was sincere and he would have believed my answer.

Sometimes it takes an unwelcome event to shake us into understanding what is and what isn’t important in life.  When my husband was diagnosed, after a cancer surgery, with the gloomy prognosis of death within a year, it was just the event we needed. Why? Because when he asked what we should do, the liberating answer was, “any damn thing we want!”  

We were in our 50s. He gave his beautiful business suits and Cromby coat to our sons.  I donated my business clothes to good causes. We bought a Harley and “hit the road, Jack.”

We rode all over Canada and the U.S and eventually came to Lakeside for a quick visit as snowbirds. We refused to be afraid.  It is a choice. We had each other and we had trust, both in one another and in our higher power. How incredibly lucky is that?!

We put our things in order, had a house built here and had the best 14 years of our 40+ years of marriage.  Why?  It wasn’t because of denial.  We knew our time was limited. It was because if some little thing about the other bothered us, we held our tongue and questioned, “How important is it?” Most of the time it wasn’t that important and when it was we talked about it to reach a welcome consensus or an agreement to agree to disagree, and we moved on. We chose to focus on the things we loved about the other, not the things we didn’t; on our gifts and abilities, not on our shortcomings.  It’s always a choice. We chose to be happy.

Here at Lakeside we have such a wonderful mix of people from all over the world, but admittedly primarily Canadians and Americans among the ex-pats. Here, if we’ve been lucky and our brains still work and our bodies are reasonably functional, we have choices.  Let’s not be so foolish that we make harmful ones. 

It bothers me that politically I’ve seen such tribal toxicity. When did a demand for one view become more interesting than several, or one solution to a problem become better than options? When did we find a need to become exclusive in our caring instead of inclusive? 

The age -old question each of us must decide in any situation is how are we going to choose to react. 

The Buffalo Bills are my favorite NFL team on the east coast. Why? Because many have the age old answer to so much in life.

“Choose love” is on the back of their helmets. May it be so.