Why Do People Have to Grow Older?

I just saw an older friend and fellow orchid judge. One arm was in a sling. The other was dark purple up and down and looked like it had been beaten with a club. What indeed could have happened? He said he had only pulled a muscle (a little bit...) but that he was on Coumadin, an anticoagulant typically prescribed after heart attacks and strokes, and that it was likely that the Coumadin caused that little muscle tear to turn into a horrible bruised purple sight. This friend has been asking me to visit his greenhouse to see his orchid collection for years, claiming he wouldn't be around forever. I always figured he was just joking around but seeing him all beat up like that really brings it home that I really can't assume that my older friends are always going to be there. It really bugs me, no make that totally bums me out, that friends and family are slowly fading away, perhaps even more so because I realize that there is nothing I can do about it other than, perhaps, spend quality time with them while they are here.

Now orchid judges are generally an older bunch (myself excepted, chuckle). So, not surprisingly, another orchid judge, this time an elderly lady friend, tells me that she doesn't understand why her kids get upset when she tries to give her things away to them. I told her it's because we don't want to accept that our parents and the people we love will not always be there. Something about accepting something that was treasured by our parents just seems tantamount to accepting their mortality, something many of us are just not ready to do.

I asked an older gentleman about this one afternoon when the whole concept was really bothering me. He said, "Each day I wake up and I'm just happy to still be alive!" Now you could take that in a bad sort of way but I really I think it is the silver lining, if there is one, in having not just your friends and your family but inevitably yourself as well slowly fade away. His point was that mortality gives value to every moment and every friend. Mortality is what makes life and living so precious in all of its fleeting glory. In then end, perhaps mortality is all that we have.

Photo: Scripps Pier on a bright, hot June afternoon