I’m fearful of being called “old.” For some very good reasons.
My mother (yes, this is the mother who was physically and emotionally abusive to me as I grew up) passed away from stroke-onset Alzheimer’s in 2012. Watching her die in slow and fast increments for 11 years was very hard.
Every little telltale sign of the disease, I mentally documented. Some of the darkest days were when I saw that she could no longer remember the names of colors or tell me which one was her favorite. Also emblazoned in my memory were the days she didn’t realize that she had two other children: painful days for my siblings. Both my older brother and my younger sister live far away, so they didn’t get to visit very often. It was only natural that when the larger changes came for my mom, that she would remember the daughter who came to visit her every week and think the pictures of her other children might be someone else’s children.
Also, the day came when she didn’t know her husband of 67 years who stayed with her all through her illness. When we had to move mom into a nursing home, he went with her into a beautiful 2-bedroom suite in a 2-for-1 special.
There were funny times too. Like, “Where is my other husband, Bill, buried?” “No, Coll(een), I’M your husband, Bill and I’m not dead – yet,” he’d laughed.
Or in the hospital, “Well, who in the h*** ordered THIS meal?! I’m not eating THAT!” (She ordered it.)
She never forgot me, though – she might not have remembered she had other children or that her husband Bill hadn’t died, but she never forgot my name – I don’t know how I was spared that.
But there were other scary times too. Like during the phase of Alzheimer’s when anger is the only emotion they know, and they physically strike out at their loved ones or caregivers.
It was a privilege to walk with my mom through those 11 years and then to hold her hand as she took her final breath. My dad was holding the other one.
But I don’t want to go like that.
I’m frightened when I forget something. I’m frightened that I’ll be a burden to my own children. I’m frightened that I won’t remember my children or my loving husband. But most of all, I’m frightened that I’ve given this world my last good thing and that I have nothing else good to give it.
I desperately want to be used still – use me until my fingers fall off from typing or my last clump of hair on my head finally falls out. Use every brain cell up. Use every connection with me as something good I can continue to give to you or our world and its fellow travelers. Let me create stories and posts and articles and give of the good stuff I still have left in me until my dying breath. Let me help move our world forward, even just an inch. I haven’t even begun to write yet! USE ME UP!
And I don’t want to be called “Ms.” or “Miss.” It turns the handle on that door I want to stay locked tight. I just want to be “Margaret.”
I write this because a worker at Costco called me “Miss” today as she was escorting my goods down the checkout conveyor belt. And I set her straight, boy!! I became the crotchety old lady that my mom was. Then I realized this employee was only trying to be kind, and I apologized and explained.
“It just makes me feel old.”
“What would you rather be called, then?” she asks in good faith.
“Nothing, or maybe, Margaret,” was my reply after a moment. “I guess I just want to be called Margaret,” I resigned.
I still have good things left to give.
We all still have good things to give our world. When did we ever decide that we needed to retire at a certain age, as if retiring was the culmination of a life. It is not.
Giving is the culmination of a life. That which we give, that which we receive. That is the goodness we should be giving ourselves as a world. Our little pieces of the giant puzzle of life that is ours, that’s what we should be giving.
But that means that we need to be called by our names.
For we are magnificent and powerful.
We are beautiful and wonderful.
I can’t give the world a piece that is someone else’s to give.
We can only give our own, brilliant puzzle piece.
It’s when we put all of our pieces together that we get a world full of love and joy, that which only a world can give to itself.
Be that which is your name.
Our world will thank you. We will thank you. You will thank you.
You, who are ultimate splendor! You have so many good things still to give the rest of us. And we need your puzzle piece.
As you can tell, this article is the reason that my Substack is called, “Just Margaret.”