In The Middle-Years

PenniD

In youth, we see years and years ahead of us, to always be able to have time. Maybe, not immediately. But, we feel that we have plenty of time to live those dreams.

The path starts out on soft quiet land, where every tree has singing birds and the sky is sunny and high. Then, reality hits. The children are born healthy, we all hope. The jobs are aplenty and the bills get paid.

Vacations are frequent to Disney, the beach, the relatives in Colorado. A new car when needed. Medical bills are small, as everyone is always healthy.

Yet, still plenty of time for those dreams to be accomplished. Life is good.

It stops, when all of a sudden grandpa dies and grandma has to leave the old house. Too many repairs needed on the home that grandma and grandpa raised their four children in. Grandpa's medical care was expensive and depleted the savings. Grandma is devastated.

Now, grandma is moving into live with that young family of six. Maybe, now grandma can babysit?

Tyler breaks his leg, at the age of 8. The dog dies. Mac at 15 begins to get into trouble with his pals. Grandma is having a difficult time sleeping. Life begins to change.

The bills start to mount with one extra person to take care of. Someone loses their job. The stress mounts.

The kids find that it is easier to hang out with their friends than to go home. Dad finds out that the cute young girl at work appreciates his humor. Life will never be the same as it quickly races year by year.

Then, it becomes time for the young ones to take-off and fly. Dad is gone and grandma lingers in bad health.

The kids do not call from college. They do not visit, after they marry. Grandma now needs help walking and eating. The dreams are past.

Life is a cycle of the young getting to be old. It does not change...the names do...the times become more intense with more advancements. Our loss for all of mankind, is that each person involved in this living on earth forgets that we are ALL here together trying to move forward as the years come and pass.

The test is for how well we care for each other no matter what the obstacles become. How we extend a hand...a smile...a hug...sharing what we can. The sad part is that there is still hunger. There are children lying on a mat being scared and cold, forgotten in a building. There are old people sitting by an open fire trying to stay warm and remember their dreams.

There are wars and more to come. There is still hate adamantly so for "them", whomever "them" becomes. The times are sad. Those that do have the means, seem to forget that the gold is meant to be spent.

If, you struggled across the boulders and slowly trudged through the hot sand, you might have reached the pinnacle near the river and enjoyed the end of your journey. You might have looked down the mountain and across the desert and wanted to send out a message to those at the beginning of the trail.

Trying to help them avoid the boulders that would tear at their knees and make the blood run down on the hot skin. You would have tried to tell them where the clear water ran on the side of the path. You would have sent them the food that they needed to make sure that their journey did not fail because of hunger.

Our children sometimes feel that our words are not of a history lived. That we do not know of pain. That we are not wise enough to speak the truth. That as we age, we somehow lose those years of experience that we learned by.

Our parents turn yet to us, knowing that they need our hands to hold them steady. That they need our words to soothe their tremors and fears in the night.

How sad that we leave life with open ends and not a complete circle. How sad that we find ourselves with silent tears flowing down our faces, as no one stops to listen to our words.

For many years. I have visited facilities for seniors in all stages of life at all costs to their savings accounts. The facilities where an old man wanders in the dark into the main room in a wet diaper. He sits on the couch and waits. He has no memory of what he is waiting for, nor where he needs to be then.

I have seen the young man sit in a room surrounded by books on the walls, waiting for someone to sit beside him and read the words from the white pages. He grunts with pleasure that he has a visitor. Unable to speak. Unable to understand how to extend his hand in thanks.

We all have so much that we need to share. The old back to the youth and the youth in turn back to the old.