I’m 52.  The forties are now in my past, and this blog still exists.  I suppose I’ll have to change the title of it and its intent because I don’t really want to shut it down.  This blog was an outlet for me when my mom was dying, and at other times.  I think it can be an outlet again as I face another epic ending, this time my of father.  No, he’s not gone yet, but people don’t live forever, and he’s 84 and breaking our hearts slowly.

But before I get to Dad.  Let’s recap the forties, or what I remember of it sitting here with a case of COVID for the first time since that pandemic came and went, unable to visit my father in the hospital because I might be contagious, wondering how many others out there unknowingly and knowingly just ignore the virus as a common cold and get on with their lives.  Quarantining feels soooo 2021.

Anyway, my forties.  Let’s see… 

I spent an entire decade of my life with one man.  That was a first. 

I spent an entire decade NOT utterly miserable—I found a job I could enjoy, I got on meds, I even went dry for a period.  The forties might have started out a little precarious, as unmedicated me was always precarious, but the majority of those years were spent in a manageable mood thanks to 10- 60 daily mgs of Fluoxetine. 

I spent almost the entirety of my forties in one house.  I guess I settled down.  The kids grew up.  We took vacations.  We remodeled a few times.  Our income and our savings slowly grew.

I lost a mother.

I lost a dog.

I got another dog.

I took two cruises.  I swam with sea turtles. I traveled abroad alone.

I feel like I should have more to say here, but I guess I’m just not interested in my forties at the moment.  What’s behind me is a tool for perspective and growth when I need it to be.  I will not dwell; I will not spend an inordinate amount of time feeling regret.  I’m too aware of the world and how things work now.  I know shit gets messy.  I know shit is unfair. 

That said, my fifties are shaping up to be something quite different from my forties.  I never had a plan or a vision for any decade over 40.  Thus far, this one has been marked by the legalization of cannabis and the regular consumption of it.  It’s also been characterized by lots and lots of alone time—my husband travels nearly every week for his job.  I still haven’t figured out what to do with myself during these alone times.  Too often, I spend them drinking (Yes, that old friend is still around.) and then regretting time wasted of an already too short life.  It’s my pattern—I waste time, and then I lament wasting time over and over again.  That MIGHT be the only consistency in my life, come to think of it.

But my fifties are also marked by a certain comfort in my skin based on the fact that I only have a few, short decades left on this earth.  IF I am lucky.  My brother and I, killing time as we watch our father die and cynically wait for answers, discuss how quickly ten or twenty years can pass. Maybe thirty, if we’re lucky.  I don’t expect to live past my eighties.  My liver is already eighty.  But I will welcome every day of cognizance that I have until the day I no longer have it.  Hopefully, by then, assisted suicide will be legal it the U.S., and our loved ones and ourselves won’t have to suffer the indignities of NOT BEING ALLOWED TO DIE.  More on that later.