yup, still beautiful. via zohartal @ flickr
Yesterday was my beloved grandma’s 84th birthday, which was a terrific thing to celebrate after she suffered a health scare last month. At a birthday lunch yesterday, grandma.of.a.lesser.god revealed that my grandfather gave her a card that said “I never thought I’d be sleeping with an 84-year-old crab.” I have to admit that’s cute. But soon enough, the discussion turned to death and a cremation vs. burial debate, which was enough to make me lose my appetite despite the delicious French fries on my plate. I realize that people thinking about their mortality is nothing new, especially when said person is an octogenarian. Still, I wished that my grandmother had been able to just celebrate the fact that she had made it to such an impressive age, and with all her faculties intact.
My mother had done much the same thing last Wednesday, when she celebrated her own birthday. She turned 55, and bemoaned her age instead of thinking of the fact that she’s in good health and has accomplished so much in those five and a half decades. Of course most of the comments that rolled in focused on her appearance. “You don’t look a day over 45!” was a common refrain. It’s true, but it’s irrelevant. mother.of.a.lesser.god is far from a vain woman, but these comments really seemed to make her feel good about herself. Oh, and did I mention that one of my sister’s friends said to tell my mom “happy MILF day”? So the best words of kindness anyone can find for a woman on her birthday is to reassure her she still looks gorgeous.
My own birthday is seven weeks away (but really, who’s counting?) and I understand the impulse to feel that marking another year’s passing is a call to focus on the shortcomings of your life as well as your mortality. SarahMC wrote eloquently about the phenomenon of melancholy colliding with birthdays, and I wonder if it is always more pronounced when one is thirty or sixty years older than we Harpies are. And while I know this is not solely something that women grapple with — father.of.a.lesser.god has great anxiety about this as well, probably in part due to the fact that he has Alzheimer’s disease at 61 — it seems that society does not really do much anything to positively reinforce women as they age. All that’s usually offered are some cursory references to how aging is affecting a body and a face, because looking a day over twenty-nine or thirty-nine or forty-nine is seemingly a mortal sin that every woman should be ashamed of.
I hope that when May 13 rolls around next year, my mom and those around her will be able to think more about the things she has accomplished — a law career, raising two daughters, a very happy marriage, and training some difficult dogs — instead of the fact that her face is notably lacking in wrinkles. And next May 17, maybe my grandma can think about what the past eight-and-a-half decades have brought her. This is not to say that one should never look forward on a birthday, but getting older is as much an opportunity to reflect on the good things that have happened in the past as it is a call to feel terrified about the “horrible” prospect of aging.
I think I just come from a family with a morbid streak. For my entire life, my Memaw has been asking us what of her furniture we wish to inherit, and once we’ve staked a claim, she writes our names on the back/bottom of pieces to ensure we get it. My mother and I have often had casual conversations about the kind of music she wants played at her funeral (“I’ll Fly Away” is her #1 choice if you’re wondering). I’ve even casually talked about my desire to be cremated and other end-of-life things with friends and family members. I have a feeling all this will be worse when I’m in my 80s.
I think I agree with you about your mother, but not your grandmother (man, that’s a weird sentence to type). It would be awesome if your mom was able to concentrate on how much cool stuff she’s done and how much she has yet to do. But somehow I don’t see anything wrong with a person confronting their own mortality and coming to terms with it and birthdays can be good days for that. Of course you don’t like to think of your grandmother dying (nor do I about mine) but I think it’s perfectly reasonable for her to do so.
funnyface, thank goodness, it’s not just my family then. My family are terribly morbid, we’ve all discussed our funerals, we all know what we’re leaving each other and my mum bought us up to know where emergency exits are everywhere we go in case disaster befalls us. Also yes i do prefer to sit with my back to the wall in restaurants….
@baraqiel: It’s not unreasonable to discuss mortality at all, but I wish that birthdays for people who are elderly were seen more as a celebration of living to that age than an approaching crawl to death. Aging is treated as the worst thing that can happen to a person, disregarding all the positives that come along with it.
@s.o.a.l.g. – Yeah, that’s a reasonable thought. I guess so many people avoid even the merest thought of death, as if it just won’t happen to them, that whenever people face their mortality I see it as healthy. But there should be a way to both accept mortality and celebrate age, which is something our culture has definitely lost.
My family has always been fairly straightforward about death and all things surrounding it. My parents asked at an early age which of their houses I would prefer to inherit and so on, and taught me the importance of having your affairs sorted out. Death isn’t something that bothers me. I’ve seen a lot of people I love die, I think it’s healthy to be aware and accepting of the fact that it comes for all of us, rather than being afraid.
i have to say, that while i am not quite as advanced as your mother or grandmother, my 41st birthday a little over 2 weeks ago was the best i can remember. i didn’t think of how old i was getting, or really anything. i went out to lunch, and bought books. i can’t think of any better way to celebrate, myself.
@funnyface, emilyanne: We must be related. My mother is horribly morbid, she is always telling me which of her things I’m not allowed to get rid of after she dies, what she wants played at her funeral, and she sits with her back to the wall at restaurants.
It drives me NUTS, though, I can’t stand the morbidity.
Oh, and when somebody dies, she and her brothers and sisters call each other up and try to be the first ones to let the others know who died. The conversation inevitably starts, very classy-like, with the words, “Guess who died?”.