50 Years Later…

A lot happens in fifty years; more than any twenty-something can predict.

There are all of these ups and downs. It’s a wave that ebbs and flows.

You lose people you thought were your forever, and you watch the world go on relentlessly.

I think about the love of my life.

Nothing hurt more than watching him fall in love with someone new. All I could do was love him from afar. Accept the reality that I couldn’t love him the way he needed to be loved.

But it’s not all bad.

My family continued to grow.

After my older sister’s wedding she didn’t wait long before three new additions came along and I became an aunt.

My brother and his wife moved back home after their wedding. They’d been talking about it for so long I thought it might not ever happen.

My youngest sister made it through college and into law school which made sense. No one was better at arguing than my sister, in my opinion.

My best friend who had twins in the middle of her college years, graduated with honors and a teaching degree to support her family. It is hard not to be amazed by a mother of two.

My cousins said “I do.” Not to each other, but a lot of them said it to their partners in the same year.

Another friend of mine conquered med school and then moved back to Canada. She always said she’d go back, but I was selfish and didn’t want to lose her. Fortunately, nothing much changed when she left.

I lost my grandmothers. They passed away a few months apart. The loss was hard on the family.

The decision to continue family reunions and the matter of dealing with the will became a burden of its own. But my family was okay in the end.

What’s one more loss?

The world really does go on relentlessly.

This was just ten years later.

The next ten years was all about the next generation.

More of my friends got married. Careers were taking off, everyone was passed their entry level job moving up the ladder gradually.

Teammates of mine began having babies. Every week for a while seemed to be a birthday or an announcement about a bun in the oven.

Miscarriages happened, and I would mourn the loss of a child that never lived.

The love of my life married that other woman. She reminds me of me, but I might be a little narcissistic. She has my hair color. Well, she has one of them.

To be an onlooker in your own life feels a lot like living it sometimes.

I would say I’m far calmer now than my younger self.

I could watch on as my friends and families accomplish all of the things they desire.

A friend of mind managed to achieve her goal of going to every continent at least once.

My parents celebrated their fiftieth anniversary, once again portraying my favorite romance. Their unconditional love for each other has been the example I spent my life working towards.

A love that is confident, and full of compromise and sacrifice, and in the end it is worth it, every single day.

My best friend found love. She became the woman she hadn’t known she wanted to be. She began to love herself in a fashion similar to the love she held for her babies.

Her babies were not babies anymore, but they certainly held her likeness; in attitude and in physical features.

I watched the love of my life become a father, and an incredible father he is.

I watched him hold his baby for the first time and couldn’t help but feel joy and love for him.

Another thirty years flew by and I could hardly tell you what happened.

The cycle repeated itself.

The babies grew up to become young adults who blundered until they fell in love with another person, their careers or themselves. They found a purpose to guide them to the next generation.

The world moved on relentlessly, meanwhile I haven’t moved much.

I still hear from my friends on occasion, but only in their prayers.

You can still find me in the same place I’ve been for the last fifty years, if you can find my name etched into a stone in the ground.