Ryan is 20 years old (but doesn't look a day over 20 months!)

 

My grandson Ryan is twenty, tall and lanky, charming and mop-haired and dark-eyed and looking remarkably like my brother Arthur, who died accidentally in 1980. It's an eerie thing, genetics, and resemblances echoing down the generations, but even stranger is the ever-accelerating passage of time. Yes, it's true as you get older it all goes by in a blur. Our 53rd wedding anniversary is coming up next month (yes, we've been married 53 years!), and as I was saying to Bill the other day, "No. It's never next month!" But it was an entire year ago were eating roast lamb and spanokopita in our favorite Greek restaurant. And it's even stranger that the less time you have left, the faster it goes. 

Ryan is 20, but he was an adorable baby and a very sweet, smart, funny boy, always playing with Lego and toy cars and drawing things and making complex origami figures, getting a black belt in Taekwondo, playing soccer, and generally just excelling at everything he did. Now he's a pastry chef in his spare time, and made an incredibly professional-looking Yule log at Christmas, like something out of a magazine. Meantime he's studying to be an engineer. What a catch!

Having serious surgery changed everything, including my perception of time. Never have I had to rely so much on my 12-step conditioning to live "one day at a time". Sometimes even that is hard. I've never had to deal with so much physical pain, and sometimes it hits me in some primal  deep part of my soul, right in the bread-basket, that I may not have much time left to live.

Part of me is terrified beyond measure, with an awful sinking feeling, but at other times I'm sort of relieved. I will be able to lay my burden down at last, and yes, having struggled with alcoholism and bipolar disorder for my entire adult life, it has been burdensome along with the many blessings.

It's a cliche to say it, but family has been the best, and remains the cherry on top, the finest of the fine. The generations move ever forward, and everyone will do just fine without me. I guess. Or  not?

But Ryan is thriving, and the other three grandkids seem happily engaged in a multitude of activities and relationships. It's called "life", and it will go on long after I've been burnt up and  placed in an urn, or (as I want to be) scattered all over Burnaby Lake to meld with the wild birds and the sky.