“Speaking of pterodactyls, I’m about as ancient.”

That’s how she introduced herself.

A greeting like that from the 91 year old woman who seated her brittle, fossiled bones in the chair across from me was pretty much all I needed that early May morning at an outreach I do for poor senior citizens.

“In paleontological terms, I’m a dinosaur,” she badabumped, and I slapped the table in unison as a drum in agreement like the bad sidekick in a vaudeville duo.  Together, our timing was damn good, and I miss her terribly.

She continued the schtick with a brief lesson of the Mesozoic epoch from which I’m now convinced she came, and told me how she expected to be just as extinct very soon.  In her era, she was a geography professor, but that was decades ago when she had a much larger wing span, the memory of a great Mammoth, and didn’t need a walker to get across her territory.  And indeed, this was her territory.

As much as I needed us to get down to the business that brought her to me, I gave her the stage and she earned every enthusiastic applause. She was masterful at mixing her dino-metaphors with the stories of her life.  She told me how she was deposited in the desert several years ago by loving family members whom she has neither seen nor heard from since.  A pittance would be a generous description of her social security income which pays the rent, keeps the lights on and buys her fewer groceries than she deserves.  This dinosaur had a story to tell.

It’s not unlike most I hear every day among the poor senior citizens who spend their final years scavenging to survive and fending off predators.

We sat and talked for at least an hour that morning. The stories she told me have since–like the dinosaurs–been buried for several months now.  She was one of my most entertaining mornings in recent memory and taught me to be a better storyteller because of it.

There are some people who come for just an hour,

and live with you for the rest of your life.

This one still has me at pterodactyl.

I lost his phone number many years ago while in the throes of an 8 year Meth addiction I forgot to stop.

Desperately owing him a fourth step apology, my Facebook friend request went unacknowledged for the past three years, until yesterday.

He messaged me to say he was happy I finally got my life back together and would like to have lunch when he’s in town.

Recovering the worst mistakes of your life are rarely given such fortunate opportunity when you give up too soon or lose the humility that brought you to it in the first place and keeps the door to it always ajar.

I’m Don Miller, a grateful recovering addict for life.

At this very moment, she’s next door deciding how her father will die. Just over the wall, I am begging insurance companies for a better way to help my mother live. Fourteen miles across town,  my 89 year old neighbor who, last week, I serendipitously found dying on his living room floor, is flanked by two sons in town to decide which of the two procedures Dad will get and doing high school math on the survival rates of each. None of us are doctors but each of us are involuntary enrollees in med school crash courses, playing God to save the lives and what’s left of them for the ones who gave us ours.

We’re out of paid time off, low on hope and tired. Hospital dining rooms are our kitchens, Googling medical terms are our Friday nights and everyone asks when we’ll be home again.

We’re not alone but that’s the way it feels if we can ever find the time to.

Life is a killer.

None of us are surprised by the fact. But none of us are prepared for it either. Helping our aging parents through their last years, months and moments is a part of being 56 that we hoped would come much later or not at all.

Some adult children in denial drop parents off at nursing homes and retirement communities far away to play bingo and spend their “golden” years apart and alone which are, at best, aluminum foil. But for the others who know that family is everything, they accept the challenge and fight for every last second of time to spend with the people who spent decades preparing us for hard times just like these..

For Lori, Todd, Vance, Shelly and the thousands like us in the world, we know that this is what life is all about. It won’t last forever. And when they are gone, we’ll be next in line. And like our parents who have come and gone before us, we will be comforted that we taught our own children differently.  And like us, they will have learned:

God knows, love’s decisions are the most painful.

It’s been so long since I was two

I’ve forgotten exactly what couples do.

Hold hands in bed?

Watch the other one poo?

I really don’t know what couples do. 

Do they talk all night?

Is their love still true?

Now it’s all so different,

I wish I knew,

The kinds of things that couples do. 

Do they spend their Saturdays in the park?

Do they cuddle closely in the dark?

Do they still snuggle and coo

Like I used to?

Now I’ve no idea what couples do.

Spend their last red cent

Showing all that they’ve meant

To each other all of their years?

Do they know how they’re feeling?

Pray together while kneeling?

Do they still wipe away their tears?

Do couples still do what couples did

When each one was just one?

Or are coupling folk

Of which I’ve spoke

Now just one without a sum?

I’d like to know what couples do

Because one day it may be,

That again I become one

With another someone

And getting it right is important to me.

Don’t call her an old woman,
for she’s lived longer than you with more experiences at more important things in life than you have yet to even consider.
Don’t call her forgetful,
for she still remembers every birthday, anniversary and holiday with a handwritten card while you forget to even make a phone call.
Don’t call her stubborn,
for she’s a wealth of opinions years in the making and voiced for all the right reasons while you still worry what others will think of you.
Don’t call her old-fashioned,
for she can recite decades of memories by heart as though they were yesterday while you rely on Facebook reminders and smartphone photos.

This Mother’s Day, don’t call your mom anything,
just call her.
She’s absolutely worth it… while you still can.

Leave it to me to experience something so ordinary yet so awesome…
When the cardiac surgeon came out with the good news about mom’s open heart surgery just now, I found myself staring, entranced with his hands, while listening to his family report.
All I could think of as he concluded and left was that I had just shaken the hand which, minutes before, had held the very heartbeat of the woman who had made mine and touched it so many times since.
Those who know me know I never use the word awesome unless something truly is.
The news was great today, but staring at the hands of a surgeon who had touched her fleshly heart and then shook my hand with it minutes later was truly an awesome and unforgettable few moments

I Love Lucy.

We could have said goodbye,

Lost track of one another

And gone on with our own

But we couldn’t.

We could have lived the lie

That said it was done and over

And time heals all things

But it doesn’t.

We could have asked why

We didn’t make it or fake it

All these years apart

But we didn’t.

We had so much yet never touched

The friend we called our lover.

Now time has passed and we might last

Enough to soon discover…

That goodbye isn’t all there is

When things just don’t work out.

We’ve shared too much and now as such

We’ve learned what love’s about.

I’m glad we took the time today

To talk it through, make it okay

And be the friends that were in our stars

Closer now, and not so far.

I wonder if this will be the last time I flip her calendar, change her sheets or pull the weeds from her garden. Buy her groceries, get her lunch, or pay her back for all she’s been to me. Run her errands, walk at her side, or hold her hand during one of her spells. I’ll miss playing my jokes on her, winning her smiles, and losing every hand of gin. But the day will soon come when I empty her closets, filled with fond memories and a deep void for all the days I remain. But as I laugh through the tears and chuckle at the moments, I will always smile because while something is now missing, nothing is ever lost.