“Seventy, who… me?!”  I’m finding it difficult to absorb this numerical fact though I was offered a seat on a bus recently!  I  feel the necessity to recap on my life to make any sense of it.

I’m torn between feeling rather depressed knowing that I haven’t achieved a fraction of the things I wanted to do in life, versus celebrating having reached this age. Tragically, many of my contemporaries haven’t made it anywhere near this milestone, so I am indeed blessed and continue to hold a candle for them all.

Whichever way I fall, I am terribly grateful to have been brought up in a loving family. I lived with my parents and older brother and had numerous aunts, uncles, eleven cousins, great aunts and uncles and knew all four of my grandparents. We lived in a great city in a sizeable house with a garden, had two cars, entertained quite regularly, enjoyed occasional meals out and holidays abroad. I’ve never had to worry about the next meal, experience homelessness or had to duck bombs in a warzone. Sadly, now my husband has no family left now and mine are well scattered throughout the UK resulting in a mere couple of reunions a year. Family Christmases are but a treasured memory.

Job wise, despite not being a scholar, I managed to keep my head above water in three university posts and 22 years in the pharmaceutical industry. These enabled me to earn enough for a reasonable lifestyle, and I purchased my own flat in Edinburgh when I was in my mid-twenties (a rarity these days).  I’ve always had a reasonable number of friends, and I married and had children.

I’d like to say life has been good but there are several experiences I would not press the repeat button on. I could have done without seven slow miserable years of existence away at a grim boarding school where the only thing I left with was ‘strategic survival personality’; enduring a devastating stillbirth loss in the third trimester; watching our beloved eight year old daughter succumb to leukaemia over a rollercoaster period of nine months, followed by wrestling with our traumatized son’s poorly controlled epilepsy over 20 years; and of course bearing the weight of great grief for the last 25. The loss of a child does indeed change everything.

By this stage of my life, I’d hoped we’d have experienced a fair amount of travelling but if you have a disabled adult in your family, your life is restricted in numerous ways.  They are often discriminated on the work front, financially disadvantaged, socially isolated and parents are rarely free to just drop everything and go – welcome to my world.  By now I’d hoped for our both our children to be lapping up life’s experiences, in secure work, pursuing various hobbies, have a comfortable circle of friends, globetrotting, be in healthy relationships or married. Our daughter’s cataclysmic departure reduced this dream by half in December 2001 and the frontal lobe epilepsy traits our son developed are a major obstacle to a normal life, so I listen to my friend’s tales of exhaustion with grandchild duties with envy and deep sadness as it seems very unlikely we will ever reach this milestone.

Healthwise I’ve been very fortunate… so far. Other than poor circulation and arthritic joints (two hip replacements and an imminent shoulder replacement), I’m still ‘holding it together’! I’ve attempted to keep reasonably fit over the years and eat in moderation. Numerous WI events, my book group and the joy of my rambling club keep me sane, plus my weekly swims, whizzing about on ‘Nippy’ (my e bike), and more recently, my weekly brisk walk at the local parkrun.

The nub of this reflection is how do you measure the quality of your life?  As most of us spend much time as work it is easy to consider and measure those achievements along with wealth and the associated benefits that provides. Surely, what is more important but difficult to assess is the connections you’ve made with other people. What difference have you made to other people’s lives?  Were you there for them when they really needed support or did you shy away from the discomfort?  Were you as good a listener as you are talker?  I can only hope I occasionally made a little bit of difference.

I won’t mention any names but thank you to those family and friends who’ve propped me up in my life when the ground beneath my feet gave way. Thank you to those who cried, laughed and hugged me when nothing made sense.  Hopefully, you know who you are, and that you made a difference to me.

I’m not sure where the rest of my life will take me. There are certainly challenges ahead but I intend to plod on as best I can and am very grateful to those of you who have simply been there as I continue to negotiate life’s twists and turns, (if you need a reminder, just glance into my website scribbles at www.cathyscatharticcorner.co.uk !)  In the meantime, I leave you my favourite quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

 

What lies behind us,

And what lies before us,

Are tiny matters compared to

What lies within us.