At various times in the past month, I’ve described my new status as retired…..or semi-retired.  The one thing that I’ve been very sure of is that I am taking the summer and fall off.  I need time to regroup and decide how I’m going to spend the next 30 years of my life. 

Last August, I and the importance of having a more deliberate approach to creating community as I get older. In the blog and others, I’ve worried about how I’ll get the support I need as I grow older and recognized my need to learn, even at my present age, to when I need help.

Over 10 years ago, I heard about the concept of co-housing and found it intriguing. I want to avoid the kind of isolation that so many of the elderly experience.

I was very sad to hear that Ed Ruland died on September 14.  I didn’t know him extremely well or for very long, but he made a lasting impression on me.

I have never married and I have no children. As I typed that sentence I thought “OMG, I just called myself a spinster!  Surely that can’t be.”

Eager to redefine myself, I went online and googled “define spinster.”

Tuesday was a red letter day for me. 

After seven weeks of being “non-weight bearing” on my right foot, I finally got permission from my doctor to go to “partial weight bearing.”  

He said that I was healing well, following my January surgery for a broken distal fibula. He’d put in a plate, a pin, and seven screws in order to put my ankle back together. I had good range of motion in my foot (at least when it came to pointing and flexing) and he prescribed physical therapy for me.

A month ago, I was intrigued when my friend Sherry told me about this year’s selection for the One Book, One Mesa County program. Mesa County Libraries’ choice for this year’s literary event was Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, by New Yorker cartoonist, illustrator and author Roz Chast. It covers a familiar topic for Sherry and me: aging and dying parents... 

My mother died at the end of October at the age of 87. She didn’t “pass away” or “expire” or “depart.” She died. I’ve never understood why people use euphemisms rather than talk directly about death.

Her death certificate says she died of “end stage dementia,” whatever that is. She died because she stopped eating and drinking (or…she stopped drinking and eating because she was dying). She was tired of living – she was “done.”

It doesn’t seem like so very long ago that my mom was frequently chattering, intruding on my solitude and private thoughts. She was always an extrovert. She liked to talk to just about everyone. I, on the other hand, am an introvert, like my dad. Now she’s 87 years old, living in the assisted living section of a continuing care retirement community in Albuquerque. Our roles have shifted.

I’m too young to need hearing aids! I’m not even retirement age yet. 

Really. I hear just fine!

If only people would stop mumbling.