The Fifth Year

Four years ago I - we - started our five year plan, to live our lives as if we had only five years left  to live, as if every day was precious.  We started with a train trip from New Mexico to Oregon to New York, then a trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, then a rental car trip from Southampton to Crail, where we lived for a year in a three  hundred year old house on the harbor.

Crail was great, the perfect little seaside village, and from there we explored the rest of Scotland and parts of England, and when we weren’t traveling we were reading, writing, hiking, and taking classes online and in St Andrews, classes in writing, film, and history.

But, as they say, life happens.  Nonnie’s dad was hospitalized repeatedly in Oklahoma.  Colin and Sarah had a son, Oran.  So, instead of moving to Hong Kong as we had planned, we moved back to Albuquerque, and helped move Nonnie’s dad to San Antonio.  We spent lots of time with our new grandson and his parents, and with our other son Derek, including many memorable days and nights in our cabin in the hills south of Chama.  Then Derek died, and our world dimmed, and so much hope and love and joy was lost.

A year ago Colin, Sarah, and Oran moved to Seattle to start new jobs, and a new life.
We followed, and now we live in a rental house in the University District and Colin and Sarah are buying a house in north Seattle, a 3 bedroom mid-century modern home with a large fenced back yard.

The fifth and final year of our five year plan is beginning and there is no chance at this time of us moving to Hong Kong as we once planned, and life suddenly seems so finite, so limited, as if every day is valuable, and I feel bad when I waste days, as I often do.

My Parkinson’s Disease is there, like a dark shadow, stalking me, taunting me, frightening me.  But fear motivates, and when we are afraid we are alive.  Life to me seems ephemeral, un-solid, unpredictable, uncaring, unkind.

The question I struggle with everyday is simple, “what next”, but the answer is anything but simple, in fact it is frustrating in its complexity and terrifying in its importance.  

Kindness matters.  But what is a kind life, how can I be kind, can I plan kindness, can I change my character at my age?

In the coming years compromise will have to do, compromise in the sense that no one can live a perfect life, no one can be in multiple places at the same time.  I can’t be with the family I love in Seattle while I am hiking in the highlands of Scotland, or riding the Star ferry in Hong Kong.  Likewise I can’t visit my stepmother and my aunt in Oregon, both in their nineties, while I am working in New Mexico or visiting our projects in Thailand.  It’s impossible.

Maybe my life is now like an extensive menu in a Chinese restaurant, with week long choices, and I need only to plan and choose, arranging the weeks in a pleasing order.  I want my next year to be interesting and also helpful to others well as to myself.  I want to be kind.

Last night I read this quote in a book by JM Coetzee:  “…like sitting in front of a clock all day, killing the seconds as they emerged, counting one’s life away.”

That I want to avoid at all costs.

So let the fifth year begin!