One day closer

A bit of an odd day today. Odd few weeks. Am doing all sorts of insanities at work, coupled with planning a rather large party, coupled with my great-aunt in the hospital due to die pretty much any minute now.

So the great-aunt thing. We went to visit her in the hospital this afternoon. She's out of it. Rather comatose, looks nothing like herself, etc. In hospice, for all practical purposes. I forget exactly what they called it at the hospital - palliative care, I guess. Extremely caring, professional nursing staff. Nice room. Which takes nothing away from the fact that she's quite obviously down for the count and the ref is right around 9.

It's not like we were terribly close. I mean, I've known her all my life, of course. My grandmother on that side had 11 brothers and sisters and she's one of the ones I saw the most of. But a great-aunt is different than an aunt. Or a grandmother, for that matter.

Thing is, it's occurred to me that she's the last one of that generation left. Both sides of the fam. She dies, we all move up the conveyor belt one notch.

That's a little unsettling. OK, a lot unsettling.

See, the older I get, the more I understand one of the wisest things a teacher ever said to me. She told me she felt perennially 16, because she taught 16 year olds. That's who she saw all day, every day. Lesson learned, of course, is the old saw about how you're as young as you feel, blah blah blah. Still, wise, really, especially the way she put it.

I feel the same as I've always felt - perennially 16, one could say. That's an exaggeration, but I don't feel like I used to think from a 16 year old perspective that people my age should feel. Aren't I the same person I've always been? I haven't settled down, I haven't - God forbid - settled. I refuse to settle.

But yet, somehow, I've gone up one more notch. Without me quite realizing it, that time, it keeps slipping. How on earth did this happen when I haven't gotten any older? Why do I feel like I have so much left to do and so little time and so little accomplished so far?

As some smart dude once said, "Watch out, then, because you do not know the day or the hour."