living with the dead.

I will be 70 in 60 days, give or take a few hours.  

Am I old?

I will not say I'm 69 years young, or a look good for my age, or I'm in great shape for my age or any of those things intended to soften aging. I AM WHAT I AM.  Me, God, and Popeye.

It's been a ride, though not much of a match for my 14 year old dreams, and definitely nothing like my 7 year old expectations.

But it's been a life and I'm not done.

I'm no more social than I was at 7, still prone to reading books with more delight than window shopping, and more fond of other people's second hand junk than new designer fashions.  You start buying new designer threads for making quilts and collages and jewelry and people will know you are both rich and crazy.  

Estate sales are my favorite---and I love the sales of those whose families are mystified, for i suspect that my own children will be in a similar strait cleaning out my home.  I usually skip the collectors of fancy stuff, the giant houses full of fine art, fine jewelry, fine furniture and doll/glass/belt-buckle collections.  But, if they saved every tool they ever used, saved those fabric scraps, couldn't part with a flower pot or kept weird hats, too many t-shirts, or extra wide and short (flintstone feet) shoes, I'm going. Wandering through their stuff, sometimes wishing you had a chance to get to know them before it was too late.  

And that is just the beginning. 

I spend most of my time alone, but have long conversations with those I no longer can see or call, maybe dead, maybe long lost in the past.  

Long conversations, and frequently both filled with self-illumination and a path of research to learn something about something I don't understand.

One such conversation went on for more than a year, finally resulting in my recognition that the entire loss of that friendship was actually my own misunderstanding.  It was never an actual friendship, I just had wanted it to be.  It was, in fact not much of anything.  The local preacher had asked the person to watch out for me, as a "young christian" at university, and that was taken seriously by a very devote classmate. I was a disappointment.  Sometimes it takes years to gain clarity.  Everything we ever learned we learned at a certain age, so sometimes our understanding has to be reconsidered from our new perspective of, say 65.  Insight is good, though sometimes ego-blasting.

I still talk to my parents gone 26 years and my grandmother gone 31. I occasionally still complain to my long deceased ex-husband, but also apologize for just not really getting who he was.  Romance, where we create prince charming from whole cloth, then are disappointed when we discover he doesn't exist.  He was not a good person, he was flawed, selfish, filled with anger and even rage, and all that was understandable, I just didn't get that I was a perfect whipping boy.  At least we didn't kill each other.

I hate cemeteries, that is no place to talk so i frequently talk, in my head or outloud while working on some project or other.  Some projects remind me of people I've known and loved, or liked, or occasionally, learned to despise. It's like they keep teaching me about me, about the world, about themselves, long after they have moved on. 

And yes, I was always a little weirdo, daydreaming, reading, wondering and wandering.  Though I try to not talk to myself in front of anyone, that would be too much.