Midlife Illustrations

the curve. the circle. some more crows.

For a small family, we sure do pull our weight in crisis.

Last summer, I had two uncles and three aunts. I now have two uncles, one who underwent major brain surgery a few weeks ago, and one aunt. I’ve also already lost both of my stepparents.

Part of grieving is mourning the people themselves. Part of grief is also mourning what the losses mean for you, individually. This is one of the rare instances where I can express myself better in pictures than words, so, here we go.

Illustration 1: The curve

You start eager to climb to the top. In my case, I wanted the house, the husband, the kids. I got it all. My mind is the wisest it’s ever been; my body is still in great shape. I’ve peaked, so to speak. Nowhere to go but down.

From here, it’s more funerals than weddings. More physical ailments, more friends losing their parents, a gradual separation from my kids. I’ve loved aging and am excited for the greater mental and emotional stability and peace it’s brought. But damn, there’s a lot of downsides.

I’ve heard of being “sandwiched”, taking care of parents while still raising your kids. There’s a similar sandwich in my life now. The one that tries to allot 9:30-1:30 for feelings of heaviness and grief, while both kids are out of the house. The one that makes my kid’s Halloween costume even as my uncle enters into an operating room.

Illustration 2: The Circle

My readers in their 20’s and 30’s are probably skimming this post, thinking how heavy and/or dull it is. Things like death and grief happen to old people, not the invincible young. That’s at least twenty years away from now. To you, I say:

Enjoy it. Revel in the bliss of never having lost a parent. Feel lighter in your heart because you haven’t yet shifted into emotionally supporting your parents, instead of the other way around.

You don’t even need to think about this circle yet. But, think about it or not, you’ll still travel it.

At the outer edge, it’s subtle. It looks like knowing how to place a catering order or deal with hotel staff so your parents don’t have to. It looks like financial independence from parents. It looks like beginning and sustaining a family of your own.

I see though, how one day I will be leaning on my kids’ arms, weak with grief at the death of a parent or sibling. How my kids will, in tiny inches, lose the sense that I’m taking care of them. It will dawn on them that they’ll be responsible for me someday. This is family in its most basic sense: the people that see you into old age and death, the ones who hold your hand so you don’t go alone.

Illustration 3: Aging

Christmas 2022 and October 2025. And yes, I had freshly showered and fixed my hair in both pics.

Who is this young lady? Her hair is thickly black, her eyes still seeing 20/20. That was only 3 years ago.

My stepfather passed at 54. My aunt a few days shy of 65. My other aunt, a few days after turning 70. My stepmother, nearly 74.

Aging is a privilege. It doesn’t happen for so many of us. I’ve been indoctrinated enough by the multi-billion dollar beauty industry that I feel the urge to Botox and Ozempic myself to look approximately 25 but with weird lips.

The thing is, I’m not 25 anymore. I’m not blissfully ignorant of the curve or the circle in life. The greys come from the stress of becoming a mother and family leader. The wrinkles are from too many hours at the pool. I earned it all, and I don’t want to pretend I didn’t. Next year I’ll be a little greyer, hair a little thinner, skin a little saggier.

I have this vision of myself as an old lady. White hair, skin creased into innumerable wrinkles, a little chubby like you want your grandma to be. Not gonna lie, it’s pretty cute. For now, I look like a middle-aged frumpy mom because, well, I am one. What a gift.

More Crows¹

I haven’t cried much. Last night, something in me told me to put on my first favorite album. My stepfather introduced me to it in 1991. I was 7 years old. We played it on repeat during a West Coast road trip, and it’s a core memory of childhood.

I had a lot of chopping to do for dinner, so I cranked up the volume.

“Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog

where no one notices the contrast of white on white

In between the moon and you, the angels get a better view

of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.”

Ok, first of all, can we acknowledge that “Round Here” might be one of the greatest lead tracks of a debut album, ever? Wow.² These lines are from Counting Crows’ debut album, August and Everything After.

Second, those opening chords opened something in me. I wasn’t crying, but I might as well have been. My body allowed the grief to roll in, finally.

When I was 7, I didn’t yet know my aunt who just passed away. When I was 7, my dad had just married his wife, who would become my stepmother of 33 years. When I was 7, I was the age that my older child is now.

I grieve that so many people in my family didn’t get to be old. I grieve that my parents, and now my uncles, are widowed. I grieve for 7 year old me who had no idea that life would someday require a standard funeral outfit. I grieve for my own 7 year old, who doesn’t know yet that every single person she’s ever loved will die.

Fall used to be my favorite season. The last two have been pretty tough. The curve and the circle both indicate that tougher years are still to come.

There’s a wild freedom in midlife, knowing that it’s all about half over. It’s a kind of glee, like riding your bike downhill and not caring if you go over the handlebars. It’s also deeply sorrowful, an abyss that’s hard to peer into without looking away. From the peak, you’re better able to see the magnitude of the valleys you’ve yet to travel.

1. This section title is a callback to Smoke and Crows, which I wrote shortly after my stepmother passed away a year ago

2. Another opening line of a debut album that will live in my head forever is “She was born in November 1963 / The day Aldous Huxley died”, from Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club