So very many dates on my calendar these days… now that I’ve passed into my 70th year.

Birthdates of my siblings and parents and big holidays are the first dates I permanently memorized, planned for, celebrated with happy anticipation.

Then friends birthdays… selecting gifts, attending parties or sending cards when we moved away.

Then husbands and new acquired family members’ birthdays … and weddings .. and anniversaries

And the new birth dates, precious newborns growing more precious every day.. and friends precious newborns joining the precious circle of young growing littles enriching our lives in ways we could not anticipate …

Then growing realization of how very special and fleeting is our time with our parents and grandparents and great grandparents and godparents and remembering them on birthdays and anniversaries and holidays – being careful to enclose in cards a chatty letter and snapshots and keep up mailed correspondence between times … when traveling to visit greatly anticipated then went by too fast and long distance phone calls were too expensive except in emergencies or big joyful announcements or…

Death. Sad dates become a growing list, sparse at first, of anniversaries of dearly loved moving beyond our touch our hearing our sight…

And then suddenly I’ve become matriarch… oldest living cousin, oldest living descendent of my grandparents, my parents…

So very many dates now…. Tied to so many precious precious memories of dear ones… and a life so preciously full.

Sometimes the tears just leak out

Roll down my cheeks

Obscure my vision

Get my neck wet

I didn’t even know I was sad

Just tired

So tired