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The Intersection of Grief and Middle Age
Ten years ago I worried about turning 40. I stood at the precipice of middle age and wondered what my life would look like when my children, then 7 and 10, were grown.
I anticipated the next decade with something akin to excitement, looking forward to the year my older daughter would graduate college and my younger daughter would be start her last year of high school.
I couldn’t wait to meet them, my almost-grown children, as they entered adulthood and I entered middle age.
Three years after those hopeful ruminations my older daughter, Ana, was diagnosed with cancer. She died in March of 2017, six weeks shy of her 16th birthday.
I’m no longer approaching the soggy edges of middle age. I’m waist deep in the salty muck of it. This is the year I’d long-ago anticipated. Ana would’ve turned 20. My younger daughter turned 17 in April. It’s hard to believe that I’d once looked forward to this time with optimism and hope.
Ten years was a lifetime ago. Cancer changed everything. Grief changed it again. Aging isn’t what I expected back in those halcyon pre-cancer days.
Merriam-Webster defines middle age as “the period of life from about 45 to 65.” I think that definition is absurd. Taken literally, it would mean that we live (minimally) to the ripe old age…
