Tag: late middle age

Big B Day

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...3 Comments

Today is my 60th birthday. Throughout the past few months I have experienced a slow, burning sense of dread about becoming this old. Feeling keenly the paradox of finding life in and of itself a pure win, and yet at the same time feeling inextricably trapped in a nightmarish scenario of decay and irrelevance.

Strangely, yesterday and today I have been covered in a sort of calm. It’s a new feeling, not intense or forward in my thoughts – but instead, running in the background like a maintenance program. I have not experienced anguish or lament at reaching this landmark birthday, but rather I have been feeling a general sense of peace these days. This is new to me, and unexpected.

I am a vain woman, and it would be silly to deny it. But I am also an insightful woman. I counterbalance my vanity with the awareness that I am vain. (Not that it gets me off the hook entirely, but I offer that by way of partially absolving myself of that distasteful character flaw.) But as things feel from where I sit in this moment, I care less than I have in the past. Sure, I don’t want you to see me in full light with a great lens, but if you do – it won’t slay me anymore. Cuz my turn at youth is up. I get it.

It’s not as if I won’t still play the game – I’m still a vain and insecure person – so I’ll play it alright. But somehow, today, it doesn’t feel quite the same. It just doesn’t feel that critical, that urgent. I’m 60, not 40. Not even 50. Nope. I’m older. And it is what it is.

To tell the truth, what I’m feeling is a sense of freedom.

I don’t believe an outlook can truly change in an instant, or on some landmark day, and yet I can honestly say that I’m feeling differently right now than I would have expected. Feels kinda like I just don’t wish to hold myself accountable to standards that I simply can no longer meet. You know, the physical ones. Cuz things are different now. They really are. In just the past three years I’ve felt a decline. I can’t fathom cleaning up my five-acre property the way I did in the past. It’s beyond me now. I can’t reset the stones and hardscape like I did a decade ago. I’m not confident about cleaning my own gutters anymore. I know that I’ll never ride a motorcycle or handle lines on a sailboat again. These things do kinda break my heart, but I also know that I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of great experiences. I can move along without regret.

My son is on his way to China for the next four months, a dream of his come true. My mother and brother live next door, and I am doing relatively ok. I’m poor on paper, but rich in life. I have a handful of dear friends whom I love, I have a beautiful baby grand piano and a huge picture window which faces the distant hills. I’ve got it good. So I’ll just take what I have and hold it dear.

Thank you, mom, for bringing me into this adventure, and for giving me everything I needed to make this life a pretty good one. I hope I’ve done the same for my kid.

Happy birthday to the spring babies of the family, Elihu and me.

Chicago Tribune Commentary Elizabeth Conant: Lin Brehmer reminded me that it’s great to be alive – and a life well-lived is a triumph

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...2 Comments

Photo credit: E. Jason Wambsgans

The past few months have been hard on me and my peers. Our world is changing.

We’ve begun to lose iconic people who’ve always seemed to exist as permanent landmarks in our lives and culture, such as WXRT-FM 93.1 host Lin Brehmer. It’s easy to forget that these people are human and that they’re aging too.

I’m at the doorstep of 60, and in the past year or two, I’ve become acutely aware that this is an age at which maladies appear more frequently and morbid diagnoses begin to arrive. Even in my early and mid-50s, I retained that feeling of “everyone but me” regarding aging and disease — an attitude that prevails among the young and early middle-agers. It’s the sense that one has not arrived yet, that age and its concerns are still far off.

In our modern world, we are very keen on extending life, and we have come to expect longevity. It’s easy to forget that just a generation or two ago, if you made it to 60, that was an acceptable outcome. If you died in your 70s, it wasn’t considered a breach of cosmic justice. It was simply your time. Your glorious turn on the planet in corporeal form was up.

But these days, we fight as hard as we can to survive into years of frailty — and then we consider it a victory. I disagree.

I assert that a life well-lived is a victory, no matter what age it finds completion. It may be heart-wrenching to see someone depart, and it might not seem fair, but a life fully expressed is not a failure or a tragedy. Rather, it is a good outcome.

Last year, I went back to my hometown of Chicago for a visit. It was a thrilling week for me, densely packed with reunions. There was music and food, and there were all those streets and neighborhoods that I knew so well, the sight of which made me profoundly happy. WXRT provided the soundtrack.

The DJs’ voices on WXRT were as familiar and comforting to me as those of old friends. After all, these on-air personalities had been with me for years. It felt as if no time had passed since I’d moved away, more than a decade ago. Lin accompanied me as I drove through the city. I can’t hope to describe how full this made my heart. The sound of his voice made me feel loved; it restored my spirit. It made me feel like I really had returned home. I experienced a moment of true bliss that day.

Lin died on Sunday.

I knew he’d left the air in the summer, but I’d also heard that he had returned this past fall. Somehow, I just figured he’d beat the cancer, and he was back; all was as it should be. The news of his death was shocking to me. Understandable but still shocking. And as I began to think more critically about it, I realized that my generation was at the beginning of its downslope.

It’s begun. The time of goodbyes.

Death is nothing new, and our grief is not exceptional. But what does make the experience far different at this time in history is that we are all experiencing these losses in real time and on a global scale because of the internet. For us, there is no softening of the message through the buffer of time. Maybe it’s a good thing because it is certainly cathartic to be able to share with people all around the world our grief and our memories. I’d even say it’s a kind of privilege. But it’s certainly a new one.

For the most part, a death after 60 productive years on the planet is not a tragedy. It’s a sorrow that will subside as time passes. And as we in the 50-plus segment of the population can easily attest, time passes much more quickly as one ages.

Ten years ago feels like the year before last. Last year feels like just last week. Our end dates are fast approaching. But let us not be made too weary by this; all of us have done the best we can, and we will continue to enjoy the ride as best we’re able. Let’s thank our missing comrades for all they added to our lives, let’s smile at the memories and let’s let them go with a wave and a kiss.

Thank you, Lin, for reminding us that it really is great to be alive.

Elizabeth Conant is a musician and writer originally from Chicago and now living in Saratoga Springs, New York. She played keyboards for more than a decade in the Chicago-based indie pop band the Aluminum Group. She blogs at TheHillhouseinGreenfield.com.

This is a commentary published on January 24th, 2023, in the Chicago Tribune.

It is an edited version of the original post entitled “Liz’s Bin”.