Some people use the term growing older. I use the term growing up. Age is an individualistic and idiosyncratic notion, and our society is simply not sane or rational about it. My generation built much of their lives around the idea of amassing money, retiring, and living assisted lives. This does not seem to be making anyone happy. I often think of a writer friend who ended her life rather than face a society which trivializes the old, considers them economically and culturally irrelevant, and forces them out of life.

My challenge is to grow up. To understand my life, manage it, learn how to live, and how to protect myself, to stop giving chunks of me away. And to create good stuff. Not to mention handling four dogs. Full plate. I think that after a give age, something hurts all the time. I am aware of my age. It will not define me, and I will not permit others to define me by it. An old friend keeps calling me up to say how sorry he feels for me being upstate on a remote farm in the winter. He says he worries about me.

And he lives in two rooms in an apartment. We are all going to the same place. We will all age and die, just as our dogs will, and hospice has taught me that that does not have to be a grim and horrific experience. It can be beautiful and uplifting. It is something to know, not dwell on. I do not make decisions because I am getting “older.” I make decisions because they involve things I want or need to do.

Like finding love, something I am not supposed to be preoccupied with at this point, but is the joy and miracle of my life. Go figure. Do not live by the expectations of others, or you will shrink and disappear.

I intend to go quite loudly.