The Secret to a Life Well-Lived // Guest Goddess Mariann Aalda
May has been designated by the Administration for Community Living as “Older American’s Month.” This year’s theme for 2023 is
Aging Unbound. Webster’s Dictionary defines unbound as: having no limits or borders; unrestrained, as in unbounded enthusiasm. Sadly, many of us are shackled to things we aren’t even aware of…invisible, emotional chains that bind us to past history, negative thoughts and bad habits that stifle our joy and keep us from experiencing the unbounded enthusiasm that is rightfully ours.
I turn 75 on May 7, this year…which makes it my Diamond Jubilee Year! In celebration, I want to share an excerpt from the book I’m working on and the lesson I learned from my young son when he was four and I was 30, that has gotten me this far and has me joyfully looking towards the future.
The Secret to a Life Well-Lived
My cousin Angie was the saving grace of my childhood. For the first four years of my life, her family and mine shared a two-flat building on the South Side of Chicago. Angie was a teenager at the time and I was her little mascot, entertaining her and her friends by mimicking the popular television performers of the day She championed my youthful longings to become an actress and paid for my classes in ballet, piano and drama at Roosevelt University’s Children’s Program.
She was the first one I can recall who truly made me feel special. But in the time it takes to say “God, help me, I just can’t take it any more,” she was gone – just like that. Kaput. Finito. Asked and answered…outta here. Dead at 43 from a brain aneurysm. It was four forty-five in the morning when I got the call. I slipped my arm out of one of the sleeves of my bathrobe and tried to muffle my sobs with it…a trick I’d learned very early in life.
Wiping the sleep out of his eyes, my son Christopher shuffled into the living room in his powder-blue onesie pajamas with the yellow satin bunny rabbit embellishing the right side, and white plastic feet that were all crackled from too-numerous washings. He stopped in front of me and stood very still, waiting. He had just turned four years old.
Finally, I stopped crying long enough for him to ask:
“What’s the matter mommy?”
“Remember Cousin Angie?” He nodded.
“Remember when she came to visit us last summer with her boys and we all had such a good time?” He nodded again.
“Well, she…she’s… (I was at a total loss for words)…gone.”
“She’s gone?” I nodded.
“Where did she go?”
My heart started pounding in my chest like a tom-tom. I wasn’t ready for this. How do you explain death to a four year old? I proceeded with caution.
“She’s up in (pause) Heaven. See, Heaven is the place you go to when you (pause) die.
Everybody goes there eventually, so it’s not a bad thing, it’s just that (pause) I know I won’t get to see Angie again until I get there, and (gulp) that probably won’t be for a very, very long time and…and…I’m really, really going to miss her.”
I prayed that that explanation would satisfy him. I held my breath.
Christopher stared at me with those big dark eyes of his that -- because of the way they were being illumined by the light of the breaking dawn -- suddenly looked like two big chunks of glinting coal. Slowly, Chris walked over to me and very softly placed his left hand on top of my right one, which I had unconsciously been clenching into a tight fist.
“Don’t cry, mommy.” he said gently.
“you have to die so that you can live, because if you didn’t die, you wouldn’t live.”
And then, like a little Buddha, he turned and walked (not shuffling this time) to his room and went back to sleep.
THE LESSON:
I’ve often heard that we come here knowing and that the longer we live, the more we forget. This was my experience of it. Chris was reminding me of what I had forgotten. His little hand was electric when it touched mine. And his words jolted me into questioning the negative thought patterns and toxic relationships that had to die in my life so that I could truly live.
Getting into therapy was the first of many changes I made. Learning how to say “NO” was the second, and deciding to seriously pursue my dreams of an acting career was the third. I won’t enumerate all the rest of them, but trust that there were many. I tackled them all with the “How Do You Eat An Elephant?” method -- taking one small bite at a time.
Whatever it is in your life that you “just can’t take” any more, GET RID OF IT or it will kill you…either abruptly, like it did with my cousin, Angie; or slowly, as what had been happening with me. But what would be an even greater tragedy is that you come to the end of a very long life and realize with regret that you had never truly lived…as what happened to my mother at the age of 91. So, whatever has to die in your life so that you can live with unbounded joy and enthusiasm, let it go NOW…you have no more time to waste
Blog Entry: Mariann Aalda
Mariann Aalda is an actress and pro-age activist.
You can check out her TEDx Talk at AgeismIsaBullyTED.com and follow her on Instagram @mariannaalda_ageingshamelessly.