old. Yikes!
This past Sunday, hubby and I were in church and prayers of intention were sent up for a woman who had died recently, whom we knew. She was, in fact, my daughter’s fourth grade teacher and a lovely, amazing, loving woman and educator. I hadn’t known she’d died. Since I don’t read the newspaper anymore I never see the obituaries. I used to read through them religiously when I worked to see if my patients had died, but since retiring…not so much.
Anyway. I was really sad to hear of her passing and it got me thinking.
Hubby and I are at that age now when our parents, aunts, uncles, and even our friends, are starting to die. Whether from old age ( parents) or illnesses ( friends), it has made me pause and reevaluate my life as it is right now.
I’ve never been in a place where I have people getting ill and dying on both side of my age group before. When I was a kid, all the people I knew who died were old old, like in their 80s and 90s. Great aunts and great uncles. Elderly neighbors. No one younger that 80. Certainly no one in their 40s, 50s or 60.
That’s changed, radically, in the past 2 decades.
Now, I know people in their 40s who have been afflicted with life threatening illnesses. I know people in their 50s who have succumbed to heart attacks.
It’s enough to give you a few moments of pause and make you reflect.
I had a bone density scan the other day as part of my routine care and it showed I have osteopenia. Not osteoporosis – not yet – but inching that way if I don’t take measures now to prevent it. The upper limit to slip into osteoporosis is 2.4. I scored a 2. I need more calcium, more water, a diet rich in green leafy veggies, no soda ( this one will be the hardest). Calcium supplements with Vitamin D, which I have been religiously taking since my mother broke her first hip 7 years ago have been a staple of my life. But since I have thyroid issues, that calcium doesn’t seem to be gaining any leeway. Strength training, which I already do. All things to prevent the possibility of fractures as I age. And believe me, after seeing what my mother and stepfather went through with two broken hips each, I never want to go through what they did. But that’s only one concern of my aging process.
Cancer, melanoma ( which I’ve battled for years), kidney disease, heart disease, stomach issues, bowel issues. All these things increase as we age. Now, I could just as easily be involved in a car crash and die as from any one of these disease states, but still. The end result is death.
I have friends who, like me, take care of themselves. But that doesn’t rule out something occuring to strip us of the life we have left.
Aside from the physical implications of disease states is the mental toll illness takes on not only the person suffering through it, but the people surrounding them as well. I know from my own experience how depression gripped me in its hold after my mother’s sudden death, when everything, all the responsibility, all the care, all the followthrough was placed on me to care for stepfather, and to manage my mother’s financial affairs. At 63 I had to grow up fast. And believe me, it was hard.
Death makes you grieve. It makes you think. It makes you reevaluate relationships. It makes you take stock of your own, present life.
If something were to happen to me and I would die tomorrow, I would do so with so much still lef tto do in my life. When that osteopenia result came in, the first thing I thought about was my grandkids. I want to live to see them grown, get through school, start careers, find life-partners. I want to be a part of that as a fully functional ( mind, body, spirit) Grandma. And I am going to do everything in my power to ensure that happens.
Take care of yourself, people. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for those you love.
Peggy Jaeger, Author 