When 34 and 90 collide…

 It’s 12:39am…for most people it’s hours of already nestled in sleep. For me it’s hours of thought. Memories running chaotically through the channels of my mind. 

My grandma is 90…but is she? When I hear people talk about the elderly there is such a seperation. A lack of connection bc of the generations of distance that lies between the two of us. But for the first time, I’m connected. I realize that though my grandma is 90, to me she is 56, 60, 63,68,70,75…she isn’t a 90 year old elderly woman who is limited to a bed. 

She is the memories of all those years. She is relatable. She is the walks to the park we took when I was young. She is the nap times on a pallet in the living room floor below the couch while she napped to a soap opera. She is the drives in the blue car with two doors, going 25 miles per hour-slow enough to read all the mail boxes. She is the spaghetti dinner and slumber parties with initial shaped pancakes. She is beach trips and belly laughs that left us gasping for air. She is the downstairs neighbor I had for 6 years who made sure I was always taken care of. She is the many deep conversations about life, culture, and faith. She is the visit to my apartments and homes every time I moved. she is the hugs to my step son when he came into my life at the age of 4. She is the first stop and person I went to the day I found out I was pregnant with my son. She is the countless hugs and holds of my boy on regular weekend visits.

 She isn’t an elderly woman who is experiencing the pains of age and frailty. She is all the memories and 34 years of life that I have lived with her by my side. 

I sit and ponder and wonder if this is the closest I will get to comprehending the reality and existence of time in the eyes of our Creator God.

2 Peter 3:8

But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day

It is in this moment as I sit in a room with my 90 year old grandma alone, surrounded by noises of the tv, oxygen machines, the air condition, countless checks by nurses and techs and the noise of other residents…..it’s in that mass of chaos that one of the many mysteries of my Heavenly Father, somehow makes a little sense. How can one day and a thousand years ever be the same…

I guess maybe in some way as 90 years and 34 years can be the same. As I watch my grandma I settle in the memories of times and years before. I see 90, but I feel and breathe in 3 decades ago.

 I reconcile that what is 90 and frail is still in my heart-soul-and mind 70 and thriving. I find it inevitably hard to separate the two. And maybe that’s the  rain in the desert. Maybe that’s the beauty in the pain. That, as real as those moments and memories are in this moment at now 1:02am on November 5, 2024…the realness will remain in the days, months, and years to come. That the 34 years of treasure I have tucked safely away in my mind and soul will boldly overshadow and scream louder than the pains and cries of these present days.