As Time Goes By

This afternoon, I settled in my backyard to do a little blogging.  When I did, I noticed a middle aged man mowing the lawn of my next door neighbor.  It has been a rental for several years now.  The owner of the house, CK, was in high school when we moved here, too many years ago.  He was the youngest son of my next door neighbors, who had six children. 

CK's wife appeared briefly and waved to me.

My spouse then came out and I motioned to the man mowing the lawn.  Who is he, I wonder?  Another one of the siblings? No, said spouse, who has a better eye for faces than mine.  "That's CK".

That middle aged man?  CK?

Memories came in a flood.  I've blogged about CK's parents a couple of times over the years.  They were a loving family and they befriended my son as he grew up.  CK became a mentor to my son and taught him a lot about computers and home repairs.  

And as for his late parents...here is one of the posts, from July of 2011, updated a little.

From 2011.  Time does go by.

AGING AIN'T A PLACE FOR SISSIES (July 2011)

Today at work, I heard that the mother of a co-worker had passed away.  When I went to the local online obituary, I saw a name I knew well.  Not the co-worker's mother, but a different woman.
It was my next door neighbor of over 20 years.

She had passed away yesterday, unbeknownst to me.  Her death was fall related.

I immediately called my spouse.  He already knew, and, in fact, had just come from the neighbor's house, where he visited with family for 40 minutes.  (I visited tonight, as out of town family started to arrive.)

Her husband....her widower....seemed to be taking it well.   He said to my husband "She died on the 4th of July.  She went out with a bang."

They had celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary less than a week ago.  In the last stages of dementia, she never knew it.

 I don't care what they say about old age.  It stinks.  It robs us of the essence of what we are.  Don't talk to me about the "golden years".  There is nothing golden about those years.  Those years took the mind and then the life of a wonderful woman, who was loved by everyone who knew her.  My neighbor was a deacon of her church.  She was a retired elementary school librarian.   She did a lot of charity work.  She raised six children and at least, tonight, her husband is surrounded by their very large family. (Her husband was an only child and wanted a large family very much.  He got it, thanks to her.)

She loved romance novels.  She had hundreds of them, and she kept trying to give some to me.  She was an avid reader. She loved to have her grandchildren over to visit.

She spent so much of the last couple of years of her life a prisoner of her living room chair.  Her husband, once a telephone lineman, aged at her side.  He told me, tonight, that "I am happy".  We talked to their youngest son [CK], and he talked about her death.  It was a good death.  About two weeks ago, her voice became very slurred. Then she stopped eating. Then she stopped drinking.  She drifted away, asleep almost all of the time.

She died surrounded by the ones she loved, at home.

Her husband has also has a lot of health problems.    I don't want to say it out loud, but I fear for him now.[He passed, in a nursing home, several years ago, after following his wife down the road of dementia.]

They were so much younger and full of energy and love of life when I first met them.  So was my mother in law [who passed in 2018, a month from her 91st birthday] and my spouse's aunt [who passed in 2019 at the age of 107] and my good friend's mother, who passed away in 2013 at age 94.

Like all of us, I must come to terms with my aging.   I may be looking at my eventual fate.  And perhaps that is what is affecting me now, as much as the passing of a woman great in her own way.

As Bette Davis once said "Old age is no place for sissies."

And now, in 2022....I feel it more every day, but I am here in my yard, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and I wouldn't want to be anyplace else.

Wild Roses, June 2022

And with that, I think of my late mother, whose birthday would have been today.