Carpe Diem

Happy 80th Birthday, Karen

I used to think only old people got older. We young ‘uns didn’t age, we just got better, more independent and, of course, smarter. Grandma turned 80, but she was always pretty old. When our Moms turned 80, well, we figured parents do get older. They just do.

The other night we celebrated David’s older sister’s 80th birthday. 80th! Wait a minute! A sib turned 80. How could that be? Though she’s 7 years David’s senior, she’s still a contemporary… and she’s 80. That’s a hard fact to get our arms around. She wanted to spend her birthday in Las Vegas with family and she did. Two of her three daughters drove in from Alabama and Missouri, picked her up in Colorado and then made the 12-hour ride to Vegas. Her three sibs and I joined the visiting threesome and celebrated in style at a local restaurant. Younger sister, Mary, made matching Happy Birthday masks for all of us… a sign of the times.

Though we talk at least once a week, seeing Karen in person was great. We hadn’t seen our nieces in years. It was a fine reunion. We chatted and joked and laughed, poked fun at each other like family members do and generally enjoyed the evening. We ate, drank and made merry and all too soon it was time to part ways. The younger folks were heading Downtown and the Strip to see the sights and gamble. Karen, exhausted from the day, was heading back to her hotel and we headed for home.

It was somewhat sobering when I realized the fact that all of the sibs were together again and at our age, in these tenuous times, it’s hard to predict if or when we’ll all be together again. When did we start to realize the reality of our mortality? Is that a sign of getting old?

Oh, I figure we’ve all got a few more years left to kick around, but now there are many more years behind us than in front of us. Funny, how 80 used to be old and now it really isn’t, right? Carpe diem!