State of disbelief

I am in a state of disbelief. I can’t be this old. There is nothing more jarring than suddenly realizing, crap, I cannot believe I am at this point in my life. It’s not that I didn’t know I was in my mid 50s. I have the usual telltale signs like most who pass through this stage of life, complete with the body changes that comes with it. Aging creeps in as we go about our lives. We notice a few things here and there, but we carry on. Until, BAMM! It slaps you in the face. It jolts you to the reality that you are definitely, absolutely, without a doubt old.

For me, it was a few recent unrelated events that compounded on top of each other that brought me to this revelation. At first it tiptoed in with moving my younger daughter, the baby of the family, out of her dorm. She had just finished her freshman year at college. Her first semester started off a bit rough. She persevered and had a wonderful second semester. When I picked her up after her last final, there before me stood a woman. She still looked the same, but different. Maybe it was the way she carried herself. She had so many experiences and stories to tell me that I didn’t know about until then. She had life experiences now that weren’t a part of central family core unit. My baby isn’t a baby anymore.

A week later, my first born, the one who made me a mom, had her college graduation. She “graduated” high school in 2020. They were the class that missed all the high school traditions like prom and had no real graduation ceremony. This would be her first time experiencing a true graduation. This was a very emotional for me. I thought back to when she first started freshman year. Due to covid, only a small percentage of the school got to live on campus. They all lived in singles and had online classes. She was my shy, quiet daughter growing up. She had just a small circle of friends. I was worried about her when she moved into her freshman dorm. I drilled into her the summer before she had to go out of her comfort zone and put herself out there. Flash forward to her graduation, she flourished in college. She is not the same person I dropped off her first day of college. She made tons of friends. She joined numerous clubs and got involved. She even was on the executive board of a few, she traveled extensively and she excelled academically. As I watched her walk across to get her diploma, I was in shock how fast 4 years went by, how much she had changed. She had become such an accomplished woman right before my eyes.

I have always been lucky to have both my parents still here and fairly healthy. I am their only child and I have a very close relationship with them. Sometime after my daughter’s graduation, we all had dinner together with my parents. That is when my parents shared that my father has cancer. We had known it had been a possibility due to some issues he was getting checked out for. We discussed his treatment and kept the conversation positive; we had a great dinner. A few days later, I started googling his condition and its treatment. That is when it hit me, the reality of it all. I didn’t want my parents to be that old. I didn’t want a world without them. Nothing like frailty of life to make you question your own longevity. You are never quite prepared for it when you hear it aloud about someone you love.

The past few weeks had me deep in thought and I was in kind of a funk. I wasn’t really sure exactly why until my appointment with my ENT doctor. I was going in to discuss and get fitted for hearing devices in the event that we decided that I needed them. I had some slight hearing loss in one ear and was experiencing some fullness in that ear. My doctor wanted to do an experiment with me wearing hearing devices to see if the fullness was due to my ear compensating for lack of hearing or something else. He said I would come in get fitted and discuss it then come back for another appointment to get them. I sat in the waiting room of the office. They called my name. I got up and the woman introduced herself to me as the Audiologist and we went into her office. Next thing I know we are trying on hearing devices. She was doing some sort of tests to get the sound right for each ear. She was then showing me how to put them in, how to clean them, and how the charge them. The Audiologist handed me a bag with the charger and some simple instructions. The hearing aids were now in my ears and I was making a follow up appointment for two weeks later. I was in a fog. I was completely baffled as to what just happened. Was I wearing hearing aids? This wasn’t something that I had expected. I had thought I would have had time to psych myself up for these and mentally prepare myself. I had none of that. All of a sudden, I was acutely aware that I was that old now. I know people of all ages wear hearing aids, but for myself, for some reason, it was something that represented old age.

That night, the accumulation of these events led to a complete cry fest for my sweet husband. I didn’t know it at the time that was what it was. It took some reflection to realize that I was scared, felt old and life was moving forward too fast. I know we can stop it, but I will try to slow it down as much as I can. I am going to savor every split second that happens and be present for it all.

Thoughts, comments or concerns?