Chapter 25, Ojai, 2015

I HOPE I GO FIRST

When I look at Carolyn move now I have glimpses of how my Great-Aunt Mary and my Grandma Vi walked when they got old. I tell my mother this. “Maybe that’s a gift,” she says.

“How could this be a gift, Mom?”

“It’s the gift of getting to see what she would have been like if you had lived in your old age together. When you are old and moving is a challenge, you will remember her now and picture her still with you.”

Before Carolyn is diagnosed, she and I always joke that our husbands would probably not outlive us. Our female Scandinavian ancestors lived tremendously long lives. My Great-Aunt Mary lived with us in her final years until she was ninety-seven years old. My Grandma Vi lived to almost ninety. My Great-Aunts Toto and Alice lived to be well over one hundred. Carolyn and I envision ourselves at this age, sharing a three-bedroom apartment at a fancy assisted-living facility in Santa Barbara. We’ll have our own rooms and a spare guest room for our old lady friends who’ll visit. We’ll learn to play bridge, and Carolyn will teach me Dominos or Pitch. We imagine that the best dinner seating in the communal dining room is given to the ladies with the best jewels, so we start our “need-for-when-we’re-old ladies” collection around 30. We “geek out”, buying many almost identical pieces – the same ring, for instance, from my jeweler friend, Brooke-Carolyn’s in topaz and mine in garnet. Carolyn makes matching rings for us out of a pair of my Grandmother’s jade and diamond earrings, and I make us matching sister rings out of my dad’s turquoise bolero ties after he passes away. We vow to be ALL about the shuttle at the facility; concerts, beach days, drop offs at exquisite shopping destinations, to maintain our communal dining room fashion credit and social standing. We won’t date in our old age. First of all, we determine men are scarce in these places. Secondly, we’ll have already “done that.” We’ll merely enjoy one another’s company until the end of our time…

“I hope I go first,” I say. “I’m much more emotional than you, and I don’t think I’d be able to eat alone in the communal dining room without you.”

“Bullshit,” she says. “You totally would, AND you’d wear all of my jewels!”