New View

So different now. It started with my Aunt passing away in October. Then my 87-year-old grandmother was hospitalized, followed by a brief stay in a nursing home to recuperate before being allowed to return home. Then, just a couple weeks back, my mother was hospitalized for a week. Through the reflection of my aging elders, my own "aging" is sharply in focus.

Lately, hearing an old song brings on a different kind of nostalgia. In the past, I'd hear some old rhythm and blues or pop tune from my youth and fondly remember where I was or what I was doing decades back. I might remember being in the park for a huge family gathering with BBQ, volleyball, bikes and lots of running. Other times a first date, a kiss, a party, a walk with friends or just sitting around my room listing to 45s or 33s without a care in the world would come to mind.

Lately, though, when I hear some old beloved tune, I am struck by the fact that an old world is gone. It is as if there has been some permanent break I haven't experienced before. Before the break, I experienced myself as this continuity of an always-getting-older me that was just a few days, weeks or years away from a younger, care-free, can-get-back-my-high-school-figure-if-I-wanted-to me.

Over these last few months the reality of being mid-forty, headed-to-fifty has sunk in like bricks dropped in a sauna. Or maybe like bombs hitting an island or planes hitting skyscrapers. There's the life before and then the new, different life after. You can't go back. You can't pretend that things haven't changed. An entirely different point of view colors everything.

It isn't that nothing good lies ahead. I've enjoyed a great life and don't imagine that I am less incapable of creating fun, joy, success, love and beauty in my coming-quickly fifties as was done in my twenty and thirties. What is clear, though, is that it will not be an older version of the past. The break is realizing, internalizing that I'm not an older twenty or an older version of me at thirty.

It's a different life.
It's a different me.
Different rules.
Different goals.
Different mind.
Different body.

Shortly, I'll be all excited again about the possibilities and options I get to create for this maturer Robin. Some new impassioned life that invigorates. Right now, I'm appreciating this opportunity to mourn. Maybe even enjoying it a little. A little.

A different mood.
I feel like mourning a while.