Living Well

As we get older it isn't always easy to like what we see in the mirror. My girlfriend Renee put it into perspective last week in a way that only she can. "Maybe my 'packaging' isn't as nice as it once was, but that's okay because the inside, where it counts, as far as I'm concerned, is still, and will always be, beautiful."

She is so right. The years fly by...it is almost as if it all were a dream! Where have all the years gone and why didn't we use the time for efficiently. I believe that we used the time as we were supposed to. Of course, I am a "fatalist". My belief is that our lives are basically charted out for us when we are born. This doesn't mean we don't have free will. We do. There are many roads in the chart that is created when we are born...our free will allows us to take the different roads. Not always the right one, but the one that brings us to the place we are supposed to be in our lives.

We wake up one morning and discover that we are just a short trip away from Medicare. How did we get here so fast and where was I while it was all happening? I'll tell you where we were. Right here, living! When you are living, you are not necessarily paying attention as the days flash by. The big events in our life, we plan for months and in a few short hours they are over, whether it is the birth of a baby, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a wedding, an anniversary...whatever it is. We plan and then it's over.

That's the way it is supposed to be. These are what make our memories. These are what we take to old age. These wonderful, and sometimes not so wonderful, memories. How lucky we are to have them. How comfortable they are on a cold, lonely night. How loved we feel by our memories.

So, it's not so terrible to get old. The alternative is worse. It is better to have lived our lives as fully as possible and wrap ourselves in our memories as well as the love we have felt and hopefully still have. Of course, our memories are not always what they had been.

Sometimes your mind reaches for a word or a phrase and it isn't there. Our we walk to another room to get something and forget what we went for. That's when we start to worry...is it Alzheimer's? Of course not, it's simply that we weren't concentrating or that we have so much junk shoved into our brains, we don't always remember. My girlfriend Renee told me a very funny story about being forgetful.

She said,"my very favorite forgetful story is about ten years ago Adrienne and I were talking then about how we forget things and can't remember so much. Then one day I found this really great article on Alzheimer's and I thought, 'ooh, this is really interesting' and so I sent it to my sister. She called me when she got it and said, 'I just sent this to you last week'!"

Adrienne is Renee's younger sister and like the rest of us is growing older. Unfortunately, about a month ago her husband, Bob, to whom she has been married forever was diagnosed with lung cancer. We are all praying and Bob is getting wonderful treatment. So once again, life shows us, don't blink. Because in that blink, life can and often will change. There is a saying, "man plans and G-d laughs".

I've heard it since I was a kid. I believe it, for we never know what is around the next corner. So keep living your life. Kick up your heels, celebrate every day and love deeply and strongly. For we don't know what tomorrow will bring, but whatever it brings we will still be beautiful!

Living well,
Neelie