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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.

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