Contemplating Mortality

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I started contemplating my mortality on the final stretch of my run this morning. Actually, I think all of this started earlier this week. I was called to sub for the Ball Busters on Monday. You remember the Ball Busters, right?

During our practice round I was having a beer and chatting with one of the other members of the team, Alishea. I knew she was much younger than me but I wasn’t sure of her age.  She was drinking a beer and complaining that she couldn’t believe she didn’t get carded. I asked her if she wasn’t twenty-one yet and she told me she was twenty-two. Old enough to drink but young enough to still expect to be carded. I laughed. I told her in a few years she wouldn’t consider it an honor to be carded. There will come a point when she gets carded and she knows the server is only doing his legal duty, not questioning whether she’s old enough to drink.

Alishea’s sister was sitting at a table. She was just there to watch the game and was talking about her upcoming wedding. Somewhere in the conversation the two girls started debating about their mother’s age. The fact came up that their older brother is twenty six, as well as the fact that he and his wife have a three year old child and another on the way. The debate about their mother’s age continued when the sister said that their mom was born in 1966.

1966?

“Your mom was born in 1966,” I asked? They nodded. “She’s forty-two,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” they both agreed!

“She’s the same age as me,” I told them. “I’m the same age as your mom. I could be your mother!”

The reality sunk in. A woman the same age as me is about to be a grandma for the second time. Of course, she had her oldest child at sixteen, so she had a little head-start. Still, as much as I do hope to be a grandmother someday, I’m not ready yet.

As the week went on, I had somewhat forgotten about how easily I could be a grandmother right now, until I saw Chief Rock Chef’s post about similar thoughts of grandparent-hood. And then during a visit with my mom and dad last night, something my mom said brought those thoughts to the surface again. She told me that Jeff and Karen, my cousin and his wife, had gone to Texas to see Elizabeth, Jeff’s daughter. Jeff is a little older than me. Maybe six or seven years. I’m not really sure.

I was confused. Elizabeth is like five years old, at least in my mind.

“Elizabeth is living in Texas?”

“Yes. She has a new baby boy!”

My jaw dropped and my eyes bulged. I didn’t have to say a word. My mom laughed. “This is her second baby!”

(Obviously Elizabeth has grown up while I kept her at five years old in my mind. Obviously I don’t see or keep up with some of my cousins often enough.) Jeff is a grandpa. It seems like only a few years ago I was tagging along behind the teenage Jeff on their family farm, listening to stories of the trouble he got into with his friends and thinking how COOL he was.

I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the age of grandparent-hood had snuck up on me. I guess a lot of people live their lives and reach this age, wondering where the time has gone; how the years could possibly have passed so quickly. Hell, I’m forty-two  and somehow my kids have become old enough to have babies of their own. (Granted, I’ll smack them upside the head if any one of them makes that a reality any time soon, but it could happen.)

All these thoughts were running through my head as I was trekking through a light layer of snow, heading back home this morning. I am forty-two. My kids are nearing adulthood. I have wasted so much time obsessing over things that aren’t really important. I could have a handful of years left to live or I could have another forty. Have I really been living or have I merely been going through the motions?

It occurred to me that life is all about living, yet many of us don’t actually live.We just do what we think we’re supposed to do. We live our lives afraid to take risks and break out of the mold. We (Ok… I…) spend too much time worrying about what other people think and we try to become just like everyone else. Well guess what? Clones are boring.

When I went back into the house after my run, I plopped down in the family room where Mark was working on the computer, half listening to the television. The t.v. was playing the movie Pleasantville. Have you seen that movie? Great movie. The main message in this movie is exactly what I had just been pondering. Live your life. Break out of your mold. Don’t be afraid to take risks. You are never too old to stop growing, learning and discovering. The people in this movie? They learned how to live.

It’s ironic that I’ve seen this movie many times and the message never struck me like it did today. Maybe I stopped growing and living for a while. I think I’m ready to start again.

(And I think I’m ok with becoming a grandma. I just hope the kids give me a few years first!)

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