Woke up feeling excited

As my children will visit me

Spent my first minutes listening

To the music of the past.

While I read the newspaper

Sitting in my rocking chair

I wait for breakfast to be served

And when the time came, I stood up.

Guiding myself to the dining room

I walked slowly, but steady with my cane

And when I came to the dining room

I see decorations, a surprise party for me!

I was the oldest among my friends

In the nursing home that I lived in

While I waited for my children to come

I celebrated my birthday with my old friends.

At the age of 86 I hoped to still be married to the man that I fell in love with at 16.

To have experienced with him the good the bad and crisp of what life had instore.

I want my home to be decorated by my children with their husbands and their children...possibly my Grand childrens lovers.

Most of all I still want to be the same annoying, stubborn, strong willed, moraled woman my husband fell in love with the same humor that come unexpectatedly. I want to grow old next to him with on the porch listening to the silly jokes he makes that no one but I get. I want to exchange stories of the chapters that lead me to him, and him to me. Stories of the good and the bad. I still want to wake up in he's arms and feel my heart flutter, and my belly turn when he kisses my forhead. I still want to have silly arguments and then be mad for days until one breaks the silence and can't remember why we fought in the first place. I still want to have silly trips where you sing the lead and I the chorus. to have late nights where we still sip on wine and talk to each other without making any sence yet we understand each other.

And all in one. I want you to still be my first, middle and last in every espect.

23 years to go

Until I’m 86

Or will that be

86′d

as in out of it

over with

done

8 feet long

6 feet down

Descriptive dimensions

dug dutifully

deep

The number has been

endowed

with innuendo great

and I’ll

celebrate with a poem

on that

fateful date

When you are fifteen, you can't imagine ever being 86. When you are 86 you can't imagine being fifteen, having now lived almost six lives of fifteen years. There is perspective in longevity. A comfort in reaching a certainty that nothing is forever both good and bad. You can live with that. You can live with and through anything, as you always have and will.

You are not who you were. The changes come slowly, outside in. Crusted with experiences. Layer upon layer of people, places, love, losses and beneath a steadiness of self. The soul never changes, but like a soup simmering in the kitchen thickens with depth of flavor and nuance, never quite done and perfect.

Priorities change. Activities are replaced by thought. You have no one to impress. No one's opinion matters. The bickering and tumbles a waste. No one cares how you earned a living or what school you went to. So much time wasted trying to fit in, finish first with those who now have passed before you. Time has separated the interesting from the important.

Love a photo album to be flipped through fondly. The last pages cherished most.

It is good to be 86. It is good to reach this place. Solid, sure, satisfied.

I smile at the decisions I did not make

for every time I faked, flaked, and snaked

I cry at the will of the world

it takes and breaks without remorse

and didn't see

what was inside of me

from lost potential a life was formed.

In a stringent form, a fleeting storm

farewelled my sense of freedom

The earth never bent when I walked upon it

Furiously unchanged

it remained

when I bulldozed my parents world with my whirlwind decisions

skills that I lacked and a knowledge unfinished

I tried what I could to move a single pebble

but if a saint couldn't do it, then neither could a rebel.

I wanted to live till I was 96

now 10 years doesn't feel like a guarantee

But all I wanted was to see

the change of the century

from 99 to 100

A numbers difference, a monumental deliverance

Why does it matter to me?

Can life be measured in how many

heads up pennies you found?

Or how many times we

scoured the ground

for a clover

so we could win the lottery?

How we won big in Vegas

and lost bigger back home?

Either way, we are here.

A past not forgotten, not forgiven, nor loved.

Not appreciated

Didn't shake hands with it, didn't give it a hug

The past cannot be changed

but the future isn't certain

Here's to 10 more years,

if the years are worth livin'.