The Terrible Burden of Youth

Being young can be an awful thing sometimes.  This morning we received a call that Nate's Grandmother is moving into assisted living.  This came completely out of left field for us, she is in decent health, but there was no forewarning for my honey that this life change was coming.

I have been through this several times in the last decade and it comes as no surprise to me that our grandparents are moving into this stage of their lives.  It is our generation that is going to loose theirs right now.  It is just a matter of time.  And that is the tragedy of being this age at this time.  We are ushering out a generation and welcoming new roles in our lives.  My parents will eventually become grandparents to my children.  I will take the role that my mother has held, time will pass.

When you're a child, you don't think about time in the same way as adults do.  Adults understand the concept of death, of life, of change.  Children watch holidays, they make memories, they think that these traditions will never change.  Then they do, and life is disrupted until the child comes to the understanding that nothing is permanent.  At that point you fight the idea, it bothers you because it is foreign and unpleasant.  Until the time when you accept that death is the mirror of life, that it is perfectly natural for people and things to die, and that you accept that nothing is permanent, the concept will bother you.

I accept that someday I will be the adult taking care of my elderly parents.  I will watch them age, become infirm, do fewer things, and eventually die.  I don't like to dwell on it, but I refuse to ignore it.  I accept that I will have to help my love care for his parents when their time comes.  I tell myself to be strong and to treasure absolutely every second of life as it is right-this-minute-now.

That is why I love the rain, I love hearing the sounds of life; children laughing, birds singing, my lover breathing in the bed beside me.  I let it move through me and I make it part of me and I love it all.  I don't love death, but neither am I afraid of it.  It just means that it is time, that the string of life is at it's end and that is just how it is.  It means that the time has come to move onwards in whatever journey the human spirit takes, whatever there is beyond this corporeal life, regardless of what you call it; heaven, the afterlife, etc, it is something greater.  It has to be.  I believe it.

Sorry for the heavy topic, but it was on my heart.