Growing Old Together

It's amazing the changes my forty year old self is going through.  It isn't just the obvious things either...the wrinkles, gray hair and sagging upper arm skin.  It's the stuff no one else can see...no one else knows about.  Or maybe everyone else knows but they just aren't talking about it.

For the first time in my life really, the possibility of being 'old' genuinely looms large.  In my twenties, even my thirties, 'old' was somewhere far away.  It was a place I might go when I ran out of things to do or at least the energy to do them.  It was almost an inconceivable land where the pace is slow and demands of this life dwindle down to a manageable level.  A place that seemed to be a million miles away just a breath or two ago. 

I used to say I wanted to grow old with my husband.  Now I realize I already am growing old with him.  But growing old together looks and feels so much different than I thought it would.

Twenty plus years ago, I imagined growing old with this man I have loved in one form or fashion since I was thirteen years old would mean me in a house dress and slippers and he in old man jeans and a flannel shirt sitting on the front porch in our rocking chairs, maybe bouncing grand babies on our knees.  I was envisioning 'old' the way my Aunt Mary and Uncle Billy were 'old'.  That's how they looked.  Old.  And still loving one another. 

I didn't see all the time they put into growing old together.  My memories of  them begin when they were closer to the finish line than the starting blocks.  But I didn't have to be there to know they had spent many years building a life, raising children, making a home.  They had figured out how to get through disagreements and disparities.  They had invested in one another in every way imaginable.  They had shared everything...laughs, tears, dreams, fears...secrets just the two of them knew.  All those things come together and accumulate over time and form the firmest of foundations.  

The love my great aunt and great uncle shared wasn't flashy or wild, but it was palpable.  What do I know, maybe there was a time when it was flashy and wild.  But in the time I knew them, they loved one another in the  deep and abiding way only years of life experience together could produce.  It was a love that didn't fade away even when her physical and mental abilities did.  When she became totally dependent on others for literally everything, he was there.  What he couldn't give her himself, he made sure others did.  And what he couldn't have from her anymore, he still possessed in abundance through his memories.  Even after she was gone, she was never far from him.  

My husband and I bear very few physical resemblances to Aunt Mary and Uncle Billy.  We live our lives in a completely different way than they did.  I doubt I'll ever be in a dress of any kind, and I can't imagine my hot husband in old man jeans.  I doubt our lifestyle is anything like theirs was.  But somehow I think we're probably not as different from them as we are the same.  Our goals and dreams and hopes of growing old together...sharing a past, embracing a present and looking forward to a future together are just the same.  

This past week, as I've been out of commission with a bum knee, my wonderful husband has been just incredible.  He's taken care of my every need.  Gently loving me in word and deed, putting my needs at the forefront of everything else.  When we were younger, it probably would have been my mother coming over to help out.  But now, it's him and me.  That's they way it should be.  That's the way I always want it to be...for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health for now and for always.  I intend to love this man and share my entire self with him...to both grow and age together.  I love you, Dan.