Ageing

My memories of my Mother – who has been gone now for 16 years, are of a hard working, tired woman, who spent her entire life devoted to her family. She was a shy women, with few friends outside of the family, by she was loyal, honest and kind.

We would fight, as I think may be normal for those Mother/Daughter relationships, and argue, and disagree – especially on issues that shook her conservative way of thinking. (Oh how many times have I pictured what she would say if she was still here and found out I married a Catholic!). Anyway, she also came from a time when women wore themselves out, caring for everyone before themselves. Her mother had done it, and her mother before her. They all died from heart attacks, their lives shortened by the poverty and lack of health care that was the England of yesteryear.

So here I am – mid forties, going, am I going down this track? No. For me, the future doesn’t hold a slow wearing down, I’m going to age as disgracefully as I can. So that’s going to be allowing my grey hairs to shine through, their evidence of some hard won battles against Ovarian masses and tumours. I’m never going to get plastic surgery because my face is the road map of my life, I have a lot of laugh lines, but you know, they’re evidence that I often don’t take life too seriously, and that I can still have a laugh with my son and partner. I want to be me, not some caricature of what an older women must look like. I want to enjoy what the future holds, without worrying or panicking about perfection.

Because that’s my lesson, life isn’t perfect, and even though I may want to control it, it’s out of my hands most of the time. I need to accept this perfection and live the life I am living now…..