Dying, Not Dying

#50daysofturning50

Feeling sad. This week I am feeling the weight of grief. A classmate has passed away. A co-inspirer has died, even while doing #joyexperiment to the end. Turning 50 is also turning a corner where you know more people who are dying.

I know from Aging Well that one of the tricks of getting older is to make new friends who are younger so you don't get to 80 and feel alone because all your friends have passed away.

And, I keep wanting to learn from my elders as I step closer into being an elder. To those over 60, I am a young thing. Is this what it feels like to be a middle child?

There is this other middle thing in being about 50, of being the caretaker of parents and children simultaneously. I watch younger folks waiting to have children until they are older. I watch peers trying to manage child care, parent care, their own changing health, and trying to hit the highest highs in their careers. Timing is tricky on these big moves in our lives that take decades to unfold.

I am wondering how to engage with life/death differently. We live in such a death cult (Christianity's central object is a man killed on a cross for y'all.) Do things here and now so you can have eternity of... (Any eternity has a monotony that sounds hellish to me).

How do I suck the marrow from life, savor every drop, without feeling the threat of death? I see so few masters of this. I don't want to play with the end in mind. I want to play in the now as now, extending the present in time and space.