Living on Borrowed Time
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
— T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
It’s the middle of November and there’s a familiar ache growing, the depths of December approaching. Each year, the window between my birthday and the day my mother died feels like a netherworld, an in-between of what could have been and what will never be. I was 14 when she died. I had been 14 for less than a month. There was no warning, no impending doom. I was 14 and pre-occupied in my own world, oblivious to what was coming in hers.
Now I am 44 as of last week. Just looking at that number stuns me. I don’t know where all that time went. I don’t feel 44. Well ok, I feel it — in my knees, in my back, in the inexplicable ways I hurt myself just by getting out of bed (now I just sound old too). But I don’t feel it emotionally. In some ways, I still feel 14. The big difference between this birthday and all the others is that I am now the age my mother was when she died.
My last birthday while my mom was alive was memorable and obviously not one I thought would be the last we would celebrate together. She arranged for me to go horseback riding for the first time, an experience that turned into one of those examples of things going horribly wrong at the time that become a cherished memory later. I was given what was described as…
