TIME - IS IT ON MY SIDE?

A lot has happened since I last wrote a new post. At right, you can see a healthy, happy Matthew as he rides a surfboard on a lake near Dallas on August 12th. One week ago today he was in the hospital in Austin undergoing emergency surgery for appendicitis. As the surgery kept stretching into hours, our anxiety levels raised considerably. There were a few unexpected complications that took more time on the operating table. I'm happy to report that he is at home and recovering nicely. However, Matthew doesn't "do" pain or sickness very well, and that makes for a pretty cranky patient at times. The week before his surgery he played golf four times. Now he's told he must wait 3-4 weeks before resuming normal activities! I spent a few days at his home in Austin to be another warm body there while Amy took care of some of her volunteer activities. I enjoyed being with the grandchildren, but I was glad to get home, as usual.

If Matthew had been operated on a hundred years ago, he might not have survived the surgery. And if he had, the chance of dying from an infection was great. Thank God for modern medicine!

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When I returned, two events had me thinking a lot about "time". My next door neighbor, a frail, reclusive Japanese woman named Kiku had died while I was gone. I knew she was hospitalized in a town near Austin, but understood from another neighbor that she just "hadn't been taking care of herself". It turns out she died of Stage 4 colon cancer. Her nearest relative is a brother in South America, who is in the process of getting an emergency visa to come to the U.S. I thought that Kiku was around 80 years of age. I was shocked to hear she was only 76 years old. (I counted on my fingers how many years older than I she was!)

The day I found this out, a friend told me of a doctor in Denton dying recently. I had been to him a couple of times to be fitted for glasses, but I didn't really know him. When she said his service was held in the Unity Church I used to attend, I searched for his obituary. I never found one for him, but I found myself checking the ages of the ones that I did read. In one day the list of deaths in Plano numbered around 25. Of those 25, only 5 of the persons were 70 years of age or older. The remainder of the deaths were of younger persons. That is just the opposite of the statistics in the small towns I've lived in. It must be the stress of "big city" living that shortens the life spans.

I don't know when I started doing that - noting the ages of those who die - but I think it is a common thing to do as we age. It made one feel safe to see that people who were 20 years older than you were dying. But when you see so many are 5 or even 10 years younger.... well, it's hard not to start think about your own mortality.

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You know, I have been single - alone - more than half of the time since I left home to marry at a tender teenage year. Having failed at more than my share of marriages and relationships, I have often looked with envy at couples who have spent twenty, thirty, and now as so many in my age group, 50 years together. I'm speaking of those who have been "happily" married. Not the ones who have stayed together because they were afraid to part.. the ones who continually gripe and complain about the miseries of married life. And go on ad nauseum about the things that are wrong with their spouses. For years, when I had a birthday, I would calculate how many good years I had left to share with "Mr. Right" when he came along. When I was 50, I thought, "Hmmm, I could still have twenty or even thirty years of wedded bliss."

As I continue to age, I notice how much shorter that time period is. I find myself thinking, "Well, if I live as long as my grandmother (93), or my dad (92), I could still have (mumble, mumble) years to enjoy a compatible partner." I think of all the aches and pains I have now, and wonder what on earth I will feel like in ten years! Then, I get out my exercise mat and directions for getting back in shape!

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A woman who does volunteer work with me recently married. She is a gray-haired lady of indeterminate age, who wears her short hair in a "spike" do, and has a tattoo on her ankle! She is a very funny lady, telling tales of her youth, and laughing about how she once was a "go-go" girl in Dallas nightclubs, and rode motorcycles with a Harley gang - before she "found the Lord" and "cleaned up her act". When I first met her, she told me of her musician boyfriend who at the time was in the VA hospital in Austin. I was surprised when she announced their impending marriage, because he was in such poor health. They went through with the marriage and I saw a photograph of the two of them in the local newspaper last week. I couldn't help but think "he is sooo old"! I ran into her this past Monday at a Community Dinner. She was without her new hubby, as she said he couldn't get out in the heat!

Oh, my! I look in the mirror and then I think maybe I can set some kind of record for being single and happily living alone into my dotage! No, my grandmother and now my dad must have some kind of hold on that record. My dad still goes dancing twice a week! And mows his own yard! At 87 my grandmother was still entering the waltz, costume, and hog calling contests that the Senior Citizens Center in San Antonio held every year. If she didn't win, she would insist it was because the woman who did win had "flirted" with the judges! A picture of her waltzing with Henry Cisneros when he was Mayor of San Antonio hangs on my wall in my office. She was 87 years old at the time, and something of a "flirt" herself!

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All of these things caused me to do some research. Did you know that the United States is 49th on the list of longevity in the world? Yep. 48 countries have longer life expectancies than we do. In Japan, Canada, and France, folks can expect to live into their early 80s. The estimated average life expectancy of Americans is 78.11 years. So much for the theory that "socialized" medicine is no good!

I've got to get busy if I'm going to write that novel (or autobiography - or family history)! And if Mr. Right is on his way, he better hurry up while I am still healthy enough to waltz with him!

Love and peace,
Marilyn