Life Journey...

Physically, going from age 20 to 30 was nothing. I thought I was bulletproof.

Aging from 30 to 50 was still all peace and love.

I thought 50 to 60 could be a problem, but it wasn’t.

It surprised me that 60 to 65 was still all quiet on the Western Front, even though I saw high casualty rates among peers that were falling all around me. I silently thanked my parents for giving me good genes.

I assured myself that I would be an exception.

That’s when the shit hit the fan. It was like living in an idyllic Scandinavian country one day and waking up in Somalia the next. An abrupt transition from peacefully smelling tulips in Holland to being thrust into the middle of a war zone with skirmishes and coups breaking out all over the damn place.

By the time my mother passed at age 94, she had only half a colon, no breasts, and the major veins stripped out of her left leg. Surgery scars crisscrossed her body like so many zippers. Even so, like the energizer bunny, she kept on going. With a smile. Mom even started weight training at age 87. When I visited her a year later, she called me into her kitchen. “Look at this!” she bragged while lifting two bags of groceries high in the air, one in each hand. Then she had me watch her unscrew the top on a jar of dill pickles, just because she could.

My doctor told me that the blood issue I have is not something you die of, it’s something you die with.

You manage it.

Certainly, more things will come down the pike. I’ll manage them too.

Birth to death, we never know where we’re standing in line. We just hope no one taps us on the shoulder and asks us to step to the front.

We all walk a similar path but each one is unique. There may be pitfalls and quicksand just around the corner, but we’ll take on the challenges and, like mom, keep on going, remembering to smile.

That’s the essence of life itself.