She’d fought the aging for years now. Suddenly, after a night of prayer and healing, she seemed to emerge in a slightly different configuration with her body. Instead of

fighting and warring with the reality, so different than it’s ever been, she explores it with an observer’s curiosity. Why, my forearm muscles hurt because they are shortened. She could feel this.

You are going to die, she’d heard the male voice say strong and clear last night. So yes, she could stop worrying about all these aches and creaks as signs and symptoms of shortened … telomeres. She’d had to look up the word. The searching for words is classic, she understood from talking about it with her women dancer friends, all clustered in ages close to their beloved teacher. They’d all followed her for decades, aging and leaping and whooping together.

And somehow, because they still swooped and defied gravity together she’d lived in the dream of the one long leap, as though the ground would never claim her.

It’s okay to dream, but to fear or fight with what is takes a price in angst worse than the years.

You’re going to die, he said. And so now she could nestle into all the body strangeness of aging. Yes, they are warning signs. Unless we’re hit by a bus we feel the degradation, the diminuendo, the waning. She choked up then, just a little for the first time accepting her inevitable continuum. And yes, there were women her age who still rocked it, sometimes she did too, but other times her face flesh folded into itself like a weathered tarp—even on Zoom with all the correction turned way up.

**

I’m sorry I’ve spent so much time on this subject. It’s just that it’s truly a shock. The young think that young is who they are. And these same whipper snappers still think that’s who we are at 30, 40, and 50. But by 55, which I turned last week, the writing isn’t just on the wall: it’s in our beloved flesh and bones no matter how much we leap or eat greens. The writing is on our faces.

So, a friendly guy leans in toward me at the bar and says: You’re going to die. It’s a fact. It’s okay to go ahead and accept the leading up to death part, where the car slows down, where the clutch balks. If cars had nerves, they’d hurt as they age also.

I feel so grateful. There’s nothing wrong with me. This is how aging works. This is all part of how life unfolds, and eventually, ends.

I feel sad for the young me, sad it has to end. Time felt infinite once, even interminable when we were kids stuck in a car (before cell phones, before videos). And so many minutes I’ve savored. Some have felt rugged, it’s true. I’ve lived through some dark times. But ah, the phases—my road biking phase roaming all the beautiful bike routes of Boulder County. The phase where I’d swim laps at Spruce pool in the summer for up to two solid hours and then float looking up at the blue sky, before walking home. Walking with Chelsea the black flat-coat retriever and toddler Hannah in the jogger to fetch groceries. Talking with the moms in the neighborhood—Lauren and Mariella and Wang Wei and Maria. Being friends with one of my babysitters, Eric, when I was a kid and he was in middle school and now, as we age. My beautiful smart mom and loving father, in their late 70s now, changed, yet still wonderful beyond measure. We’ve lived through heartaches—my brother and I both divorced—yet loves and happiness also. The rivers we used to ford on backpacking trips still run through everything. And I’m sad, sad to let everything go. And I know it’s not my time yet, it’s just, I thought I had longer. I thought I was still a young person.

We’re supposed to play that game where we pretend we’re 80 and look at ourselves now and think how young we are. Age is just a number, as Christopher says. I think though that by fighting and fearing it, I’ve misjudged this aging business. I recognize her in new light today as a different kind of friend I’m making.

It helped when Ilene said at dance on Friday, “there’s beauty in the slowness, too” after I’d complained about it. Old people still move quickly in their minds, I’ll have you know! (Shaking my raised proverbial cane.)

It never occurred to me to accept the way my body feels now rather than responding to each ache, pain, and fatigue with an inner “Oh, no!” Maybe I thought I could outrun it.

I am open to miracles of science and beauty, though I have no budget for these things. But my consciousness has the power to regard what unfolds with wonder and curiosity. To caress my aging arm with tenderness. To hold my thickening body with frank acceptance. To say, yes, I never expected this would also happen to me. But now that it has, and is, I wish to wear it like a beloved coat, not a curse. I wish to make friends with the skin I am in, and the muscles, tendons, organs, emotions, bones.

I love you, body. Thank you so much for all you do for me and all you have ever done. I promise to love you and appreciate you as you are, as we age, together off into the sunset that includes death. My soul lives on. This I know absolutely. But I could cry a mile already because I already miss you, dear sweet body. You, this exact one. Not next lifetime’s, you. Because you have served my healing journey with unending loyalty, willingness, and you have taken what I’ve thrown at you while I was still discovering that you are there for me—sacred, holy, adventurous, and wonderful. I’ve completely rewired everything about how I think about and experience life—many, many times over—and each time you’ve adjusted, making room. Thank you. You are heaven-sent, a gift for all seasons. And may I truly love you as we both enter all that lies ahead, together, until death do us part, my holy companion. I love you. And I will be grateful to you and this Earth forever for all I’ve learned and loved and lived while I’ve been here. It’s priceless. It’s beyond all measure.

It’s the gift of a lifetime.