Time is a funny thing. A friend sent me the Beatles song “When I’m 64” on my birthday. It brought me back to the young girl I was when that song was in its heyday. I remember vowing I would never let a generation gap grow between the next generation and me. I’ve been reasonably successful and have some wonderful young friends, but in retrospect the child I really needed to attend to, even then, was my own.

I am one of those kids who grew up quickly and started to ‘mother’ others at an early age. When I left home at 16, with the death of my father just a few months later, the desires of my young self got firmly placed on the back burner. I got a job, became responsible, and was now part of an elite group of people who had lost a parent. I felt different. Changed in a way and there was no going back.

I recently declared 2019 my ‘Year of the Child’. This feels like an essential move. If I truly want to have my own heyday and be happy in love and happy in work, I need all aspects of me on board. I need to coax them out and give them space to find their full self-expression.

I can’t help but notice the juxtaposition here. On the one hand a deep desire to reconnect with the child in me, while at the same time holding this strong intention to be of service in the aging, death and dying world. We all know that the cycle of life often has us requiring care at the end, much like we needed it at the beginning. It’s hard to imagine this when we’re feeling strong and able, but of course infirmity can strike at any time. I used to quote Christiane Northrop’s mantra “Happy, Healthy, Dead”, thinking that was how I wanted to go, but now I’m not so sure. There is something to be said for knowing it’s coming. I mean REALLY coming – not the theoretical ‘of course it’s coming…’ brush off that we all employ from time to time, and taking the time to ensure we complete this life well.

I was helping with registration at a Landmark event last night and got paired with a really lovely woman. Her mother-in-law and father-in-law had both passed recently. They died in hospital surrounded by bright lights and beeping machines. That was not the kind of death she would have wished for them. They were unwilling to plan, mostly because of the strange aversion we have in the western world to talking about death. Hospitalization is generally the path of least resistance in our current medical system.

Even without heroic measures, it is not the kind of peaceful environment that our souls, our families, or friends would prefer for this important and inevitable transition. Her father, on the other hand, died in a palliative care ward surrounded by incredible nursing staff, loving family, and a soothing environment. She felt complete with him and there was no trauma left over.

I’m amazed at how much resistance I’ve had getting my own affairs in order, even with the keen interest and the research I’ve dedicated to this pursuit. It often presents more like confusion and overwhelm and the inevitable requirement to put it aside, at least for a while.  And then we come back to the notion of time…

There is no question that I feel an urgency to wake up, at least enough to face my own death squarely. My blog experiment is in service of that, and also in service of recalling all the things I’ve learned and seemingly forgotten. I hope that through this practice of writing and sharing what’s emerging that I’ll remember and reclaim some critical aspects of myself that I’ve left behind.