Still here after all these years

Margie is tired. At 94 and ten months, her radiance has worn thin. She tells me, “I’m glad I can be honest with you. I don’t have anybody else I can say this to, but the truth is, I welcome death. It will be a friend, a gift of kindness. I’ve had a long, rich, wonderful life, and I’m ready to say thank you, I love you all, and goodbye. I can’t say this to anybody else because they always try to argue with me. Thank you for allowing me to say it.”

I hear her, I hold her truth, we hold hands. I said I would text her the Buddhist phrases called The Five Remembrances, which I find comforting:

I am of the nature to grow old, I cannot escape old age.

I am of the nature to grow ill, I cannot escape illness.

I am of the nature to die, I cannot escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. 

My actions are the ground on which I stand. 

“Oh, I love that. It’s the truth. It’s all so natural. Everything and everyone dies, and it’s perfectly OK if you’ve lived long and you’ve been of service. You and I can both say that, can’t we?” Then she laughed. “Why is it that no one wants to hear it?”

She was too tired to bother with her hair and makeup today, so I didn’t make a photo of her this week. Here instead is one of me, on the way to her, reflected in a mirror installed at the streetcar garage, surrounded by barbed wire and fencing. I was in pain from my right ankle and knee when I made the photo, but on the way home from my coffee with Margie I bought a simple ankle brace, and voila! The pain in my ankle went away immediately, and by the time I’d taken 10 steps, the pain in my knee vanished. What a simple solution. I walked home in ease. Margie is 18 years older than I; we’re not in the same place in our aging, but I hear her. I get it. I’m not about to argue. 

There’s an interesting article that mentions Katie Engelhart’s new book on aging and death, Inevitable. The article is long, and the opening few paragraphs about changes in life expectancy are grounding and eye-opening, but the title of Engelhart’s book says it all.