terrific comes from terrifying

On aging, death, and identity + a couple of good things

The other day I had this thought: I can say 40 years ago and be referring to something from not just my childhood but my high school days. I was a teenager 40 years ago [technically 42 as of this past August, says Pedantic Me]; I off-handedly mentioned this to a student. Wide-eyed, he wondered if I was serious and I assured him I was. He blinked then asked, “Is it terrifying?” His friend gasped and punched him but he barely flinched, kept his eyes on me. “It is,” I said, and he nodded.

It is terrifying. Not the real kind of terror that comes with facing violence, of course, but a kind of mental terror involving thoughts of moving closer to death, and further from one’s sense of self. But it’s also terrific, because we all know the alternative to growing older. Decades ago, in my mid-thirties, I had this same thought using 20 years as a reference; it fascinated me in a way that I can barely recall now. Then I was ten years married, a new mom, already a ‘former’ teacher while staying at home parenting & being a neighborhood organizer/Bunco-player. I felt Very Adult but in a self-assured way, with none of the premenopausal nonsense yet. Considering my 10-year old self was usually cute and not, well, terrifying.

In the past few years, a number of my classmates have died. Meaning people barely into their fifties. I remember when anyone over 30 seemed old to me - when a high school teacher turned 40, we all acted like he was ready for a nursing home and that the party we planned for him might be his last. And it takes a minute to realize that our perceptions - reality for us, but not entirely accurate - are so skewed about aging. When I found a beloved teacher on Facebook, I was surprised she was still alive. Because even in my grown-up/ought-to-know-better-by-now mind, she was “old” when I was in high school. She was probably in her thirties. So as my actual peers die, I revisit our relationships, my perceptions, my own identity. And I’m having to do this more often lately. The terror.

Last night a friend messaged to let me know about the death of someone I last remember interacting with in 5th grade, though she did later graduate with us. This is of course terribly sad regardless of her age, but my brain could not shake the image of her at 10; I have no teen or adult version of her in my mind. And foremost in my memories of her at that time is how my so-called friends bullied her, while I stood mutely next to them. Though I didn’t actively participate in the meanness, I can’t recall a single instance of being overtly kind to her. Ten-year old me was not so cute in this case. This has haunted me for decades and now there is nothing I can do but hope she never thought about any of us since that time. I hope she was able to surround herself with better people throughout her life, as short as it ended up being.

I think of other classmates who have died young and consider how we might have seen each other later in life. Some were older than me (two years, which might as well be 22 when you’re in junior high or high school) and again, they were trapped in my mind as teenagers because I hadn’t really encountered them since the 80s. A few I had mingled with at reunions, which was great for reminding me that they weren’t [only] the Popular Ones or the Farting Boys or the Afterschool Catfighters or the Stoner Metalheads. It’s fascinating how even as presumably intelligent adults/parents/teachers we forget that the stereotyping shorthand we used as kids was ridiculous. And, potentially damaging.

I try not to think about my own death very often except in tangential ways, which is to say I do a version of the “Wear clean underwear!” thing our parents always admonished - I wash all the dishes and tidy my house whenever leaving for a trip, partly because I want to enjoy coming home and not immediately have chores after a vacation, but also because in case I die while away, things will at least look nice. I occasionally imagine what people will remember most about me, especially when listening to news reporters asking neighbors & friends to talk about victims of crimes or accidents. Everyone always says generic positive things, which is obviously kind, but I wonder if the reporters ever have to edit honest accounts like “He really got on my nerves” or “She was kind of a pedantic jerk.”

We are always a little bit who we were at 10, but most of us have become so much more since then. Experience and distance and a change of perspective does that for us. We contain multitudes; let’s address them and then introduce them to each other. Let’s be terrific more often.

Song of Myself, 51 by Walt Whitman

The past and present wilt—I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?

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On a final-not-final note, please let us live not like each day is our last but like it’s our first. And stop saying “bucket list” - it’s a Life List, for living out loud, not trying to beat death (because we never can, but we can still feel terrific within the terrifying).