I don’t like to encounter any of life’s mileposts, at least
not the later ones. Turning eighteen met with my approval, and graduating from
high school still ranks as one of my favorites, but I did not like turning
fifty, and that was over ten years ago. When I turned fifty I started getting
“old folks” mail, and it did not amuse me. I received something from AARP about
two days after my fiftieth birthday. It was as though the organization was a
shark waiting for me to fall into the water at age fifty.
Many of the standard mileposts I did not get involved in.
I’m speaking of fatherhood, divorce, grandfatherhood, etc. I’ve been a bachelor
all my life. I do have a “significant other” and we recently passed our 25th
year together. I guess that’s kind of an unofficial milepost. I’ve been waiting
for her to ask for my hand, but so far she has resisted. That would be a big milepost.
Anyway, I’m now going to get to the point of this long-winded
blog entry, and that is; one of my previous girlfriends died recently. She died
of natural causes. I consider the deaths of friends and family members,
mileposts. I now consider the death of an ex-girlfriend a milepost too. It's kind of an overlooked milepost, and it’s a milepost that does not come along expectantly, like a
birthday or an anniversary.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know quite how to take this particular milepost. I haven’t laid my eyes on her in thirty years, so I’m
not about to cry. But it is a little unsettling. It wasn’t a “going steady”
high school-like fling. We had a full “adult” relationship that lasted about
eight months or so. We did some traveling, spent a Christmas together, etc. Over
the years I’ve thought about her on occasion and wondered how things were going
with her.
When I heard that she had passed away I did an internet
search using her name. I found her obituary, of course. I also discovered that she
had recently done a brief interview for a small, local newsletter. There was no real
reason for the interview. It was kind of a “meet you neighbor” thing. Anyway,
she mentioned her kids, her hobbies, and where she had worked. And she
mentioned a long-ago camping trip when we slept in a tent in a state forest. Out of her sixty years of life, she mentions that
one excursion, spent with me.
Like I said; I don’t know quite how to take this milepost, and yeah, it’s a little unsettling. I guess that's why we notice them when they come.
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