Not Quite Old

"Getting old is hard," my mother said, matter-of-factly. I was sitting across from her in a window-side seat in a seafood restaurant in Rockport, just off Bearskin Neck on the North Shore outside of Boston. It was Spring 2010, and we'd just walked halfway down the neck, my mom carefully scanning the ground beneath her feet, looking for cracks and potential hazards as if they were landmines.

Just a few years earlier, she had fallen and fractured her femur, which led to a two-month stay in rehab and intensive physical therapy. But despite her appearance—she tipped the scales at 100 pounds on her 5' frame—Mom bounced back.

Now I listened as she told me about her friend Mary's failing health, of her slide into kidney failure and her need for dialysis. Mary was a neighbor and a college friend of my mother's; they had been connected for over 50 years. I knew that several of my mother's close were sick with a variety of illnesses, the ravages of old age.

At the time, I was just past 50 myself, and though I'd had my own health scares in recent years—(I birthed a kidney stone, suddenly lost most of the hearing in my left ear and had a spot of melanoma removed from my chest, all at 49)—I was still moving forward in my life. I had always considered myself a late bloomer and by 50 I was writing, working in higher education, and developing my first one-man show, a dream long deferred.

Today, 15 years later, my mother's words echo through my mind and carry weight, a vivid flashback. Soon, Mom would have another medical crisis—a ruptured appendix—which led to emergency surgery and the anesthesia drugs that saved her life but took her short-term memory. My mother recovered slowly but steadily, but she was never the same; "mild cognitive impairment" became more significant dementia as time went on.

But when my mother talked about getting older all those years ago, she wasn't reflecting solely on her own physical decline, but on what it meant to be a survivor/the one left behind. By then, several of my mom's closest friends had passed away, and soon more would join them, while my mother held on and bounced back, each time a bit weaker, frailer.

Now at 68, I understand what she meant on a deeper level. Since January of last year, I've lost two of my closest friends—one my age, another just shy of 60. Those losses, coming after my mother's death in early 2024, have taught me about the terrain of late middle age/early "Seniorhood," or whatever one calls life in this strange period, when I'm not quite old, but getting there.

As a single gay man of a certain age, my friends have always been my second family, often more dependable and accepting than my first. I had always imagined that my closest friends—especially those younger than me—would be around to usher me into old age; if I was lucky enough to get to my golden years, my friends would be here to ease the transition.

Another lesson: People and long-term relationships are not replaceable. In the past five years, I've developed some new friendships with younger folks, including several of my former housemates from the Beacon Hill Friends House in Boston. Still, I miss my old friends, the loss of relationships of 40 and 10+ years, respectively, of the shared history and life experiences we shared together.

Today, I'm sitting with layers of loss, missing my mother and our lifelong connection, my bond with friends now gone, and the preciousness of life, which I no longer take for granted.

Judah Leblang is a writer, teacher, and storyteller in Boston, and the author of the memoir "Echoes of Jerry". Find out more at judahleblang.com