Skip to main content

Happy 99th Grandma

Every morning we wake, stretch our bodies and make our way through our days.  Tomorrow my grandmother will do this for well over her 36,000th time.  Just to put that in perspective, if you count all the time you spent in school between kindergarten and graduating college, you haven't spent half that number....in hours.  If you work a forty hour week, you'd have to work for over 17 years to work as many hours as this woman has lived days.  It's pretty amazing.

She's seen two world wars.  Many others.  She's been alive for 18 of our presidents.  She was born in the last month of William Howard Taft's tenure. The Gettysburg Address was only 50 years old.  Harriet Tubman died the year she was born.  Now we have a black president. There were only 16 amendments to the Constitution.  There are now 27.  Stainless steel was invented and the Federal Reserve was created.  Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were born.  Rosa Parks and Jesse Owens were born.  As were Burt Lancaster and Vivien Leigh.  All of these things and people would play huge parts in the world we know today.

The world has changed greatly in her 99 years. Some for the better, some of the worse.  She has lost most of her friends to old age and a variety of ailments.  She herself has seen her share of woes, almost entirely in the past seven years.  A broken collarbone and some other major injuries.  She has emphysema.  She quit smoking at 92, because after 75 years of smoking she admitted, it's bad for you.  She drinks a scotch every day.  She has had various forms of cancer recently.  Melanomas from sitting endless days in the sun as a youth.  Breast cancer in the last few years.  Still, she makes it through the days, with an ease at times that confounds us.  Maybe it's her two loving children.  Maybe it's her six loving grand kids.  Or maybe it's her three great grand kids.  Maybe it's just her.  Maybe it's a secret fountain of youth hidden somewhere in the back of her mind.  She's lived a great life.  She's enjoyed each day as if it's her last. Usually a cliche, it's not.  She was doing outrageous things in the 30's, I'd be proud to claim I had the guts to do in the 90's.  She's lived life the way one should.  Like it's your one shot to do something, so do it.

I'm happy for her 98th year.  In 2010, I spent more time than I ever have with her in any one year. There were times, I wondered if she needed someone to push the off switch, but I learned things about her, I had never known.  We had great talks.  I learned to appreciate her even more.  To understand what it is like to thoroughly enjoy life.

She's 99 today.  She knows that life doesn't go on forever.  She also knows that there is no reason dwelling on the inevitable and there is no reason to live in the past, but make sure to cherish it and all it's taught you.  So many of us, in our 40's or younger dwell on death.  Not ours, but those we lose along the way.  She has lost a husband, she has seen a daughter-in-law pass and she's lost all of her best friends. She has seen heartbreak some of can't imagine, but through it all, she refuses to dwell on it.  She knows we can not control yesterday or tomorrow.  We can only control today and when she wakes up in the morning.  She stretches, collects her thoughts, grabs her robe and sets off into a new day.  It's the only one that matters.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

11 Rules of Life - Bill Gates?

I read this on Facebook this morning.  A friend had posted it and said that every child should have to receive this. I of course read it and started to think.  I immediately wondered who really wrote this, as I rarely see things like this attributed to the proper person.  I immediately found it was written by Conservative Charles J. Sykes when he wrote a book about how America is dumbing down our youth.  I read it twice and started to wonder how true it was.  Below is a link to the actual picture I saw. So let's look at each of the rules and analyze them. Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it! - Life is not fair in that we are not all afforded the same opportunities based on race, creed, color, socio-economic background, but in general, those who are afforded the same opportunities to succeed are very often rewarded for their individual efforts.  Sure there may be underlying circumstances, but hard work is proven to pay more often than not and those who strive for succ

White Privilege

This was a post I wrote on Facebook after surprisingly not seeing any moaning about the Documentary by Jose Antonio Vargas, titled White People Dayyum! I just scrolled my timeline and not a single white person got their feelings hurt by White People. I unfortunately haven't seen it, but the number of fake accounts that popped up on twitter, tells me it was a damn good show. Here's the thing. If someone of color aka non-white says "White Privilege," are you offended? If you said yes, then you are exhibiting white privilege. It has nothing to do with how hard you work or study, how you stayed out of trouble, because here's the thing, that is entirely the point. Somewhere out there, there are 100 Black, Spanish, Native American, Arab, Asian, who worked and studied as hard as you and never got in trouble, but they don't have what you "earned" or achieved. Stop looking at the one person you know who isn't white that achieved as your benchmark. Loo

Quickie Review - Finding Vivian Maier

While I thoroughly enjoyed the film, especially the first 15-20 minutes, I was a little bothered by the way the film played out. The interviews with the clearly disturbed brother, sister and the mother, who obviously, was in for a cut, didn't need to be in the film. Then the woman who suggested abuse, yet seemed to have her life defined by Maier, as she tried to muster every ounce of emotion and fake guilt. Her friend, more than happy to be party of the charade. People who talk about abuse for the first time, usually don't do so on camera. The fact these scenes were so prominent, shows that they felt wronged that they were not rewarded. Maloof on the other hand, seems to disappear from the documentary during this part, almost hiding away from the fact, he went from complete praise, to even making money off of her, to destroying her personal legacy. He almost mentions the family of boys taking care of her rent, as an afterthought. Her burial spot, never shown, yet a video of her