Memento Mori - Remember You Will Die, So Don’t Forget to Live

I was just shy of 40 years old when my optometrist turned to me after my eye exam and said, “Your eyes look great. Your prescription is pretty much the same. Plus. I’m giving your glasses a little bump!”

He said this like it was a little treat. I wanted in on the fun.

So I said, “Great! What’s a bump?”

He kept charting away and wheeling his chair between me and the counter with his laptop.  He said, “Well your vision is great far away, but when you read, you could use a little extra support. So I put in a bump. You can’t see it on your lenses. It’s just a little transition when you look down to read where your lenses have a little extra magnification.”

I said, “Wait a minute, Doc. Did you just give me BIFOCALS?!”

As he spun his wheely chair back to me, he said, “We don’t call them that anymore. It makes people upset.” Then he wheeled back to his laptop and kept clacking away.

I laughed hard and said, “I don’t think it’s the word, Doc, but I’ll take ‘em.”

And that was the day I realized I was aging.

Since then, so much has happened. I immediately left the eye doctor and joined my gym’s version of CrossFit. It’s a rite of passage for some of us moving into 40. I got Botox and lashes. Started intermittent fasting. New makeup. New clothes. One last reach for youth before it slips away…And then COVID came and, well, you know. The world literally ended as we knew it.

Since then, I’ve been processing so much about living and dying, grief and love, meaning and purpose. And I’ve made just about every mistake and error you can make along the way.

When it comes to growing older, I had a full crisis. It wasn’t just about the way I look. It was about my place in society. It’s about belonging and worthiness in a world that currently cares most about image, status, youth, selling yourself, and a personal brand. I tried. I tried so hard to be smooth. And I found that I just couldn’t do it without burning myself to the bone.

So what’s the other option? Fade out of existence? Step away from society? Walk into the woods and let the wolves have me? Become a hedge witch at the edge of the wood offering herbal remedies and transformational experiences in the margins? I considered it. A LOT.

I went full-fledged panic about death and the idea that Chris, my husband of 25 years, will die one day and probably at a different time than me. Full panic for months. I’d wake up in the night and jolt my hand out to feel the warmth of him, his chest rising and falling as he was still breathing. It’s the closest I’ve come to when I brought my son, James, home as a newborn. I couldn’t sleep for months. It felt like my eyes on him were the only thing keeping him breathing, and I was terrified he’d slip away.

Love always ends in loss. It’s a truth that’s shocking and hard to swallow at first. Is there a way to avoid the crushing blow of separation? A way to protect our hearts and souls from the terror and despair of losing what matters most? I’ve tried…I’ve protected myself, I’ve pulled inside, I’ve controlled and managed and demanded and begged and bargained…and all it did is make me feel more afraid and less available to my own heart and relationships that matter most.

Love is worth the risk. That’s what I’ve come to know in my bones. It’s rich and full when we can accept the loss that’s inevitable as well. It reminds me of the Stoic philosophy Memento Mori - remember you will die. It’s a perspective shift. Of course we will die.

Don’t forget to really live.

Which brings me back to aging. I want to grow old. I want to have beautiful crinkle lines at my eyes and sun spots from being outside. I want to have a soft belly to snuggle grandbabies. I want to have silver streaked hair. I want to look like I’ve weathered these storms. I earned every scar. I lived all my stories. This body is a badge of honor. I will care for her for the rest of my life.

What if my weird old crone self is part of the whole alongside beautiful innocent maiden and exhausted caring devoted mother?

Aging is an act of integration. All of me is welcome here, stacked within myself like Matryoshka dolls (see image below). My mother had a set when I was growing up and I think of them often. Each little doll was like the larger one holding her, and yet she was different at each size, too. Aren’t we all scaffolds of ourselves, different, but whole?

What if I allow life to have her way with me? What if Love is surrender embodied?

Let the years come.

Let us love with reckless abandon.

Let us throw our arms wide and welcome it all.

Tribue Honorem.