In the middle of our celebration of life, all 34 four years of it, with Tessa I received news that a colleague from my early days at MSH had stepped out of life while he still had plans, hiking up Mount Denali. That left his wife alone with those plans. Poof, no summit, not ever again.
I remember, when my parents were in this phase of their lives, hearing from them that this or that friend or family member had died, some suddenly, some shortly or long after being diagnosed with this or that terminal illness. Now this is happening to us. Mortality playing peekaboo, now you see me now you don’t.
I am thinking about all those people left behind with plans that included the person who left. These plans now need to be re-fitted for solo adventures or thrown out. I think about people who moved or re-modeled their houses to be able to live out their final days together, more or less independently but without having to do stairs, hard chores. Now what, live there alone?
We have many plans that include both of us. One of them we hope to get started this fall: to move our bedroom downstairs and turn the G&T porch with its heavy winter windows into part of that bedroom, with a summer porch attached. No more removing of the weighty windows in June, but yes to the G&T (winter and summer). Would that still be fun without my life partner, I wonder. The line in John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy (“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans,”) comes to mind. And here I am, with a suitcase full of plans for two.
Sylvia's Journal 
Oh, that rings a bell. I remember having conversations with my mother years ago that started with “Hi, Olya, how are you, do you know who died?” My brothers and I found it curious/ morbid, and yet, here we are, talking with our kids and friends about people that they know, who are doing fun things, sick or, as you so eloquently put, stepped out of life. We compare knees and other aching parts and commiserate. We have entered that phase, if seems, quite suddenly.
Still, we plan things and have goals — a half century on our tandem, visiting the rest of the states that we haven’t been to, setting up some chairs on the porch and take the time to enjoy a morning cup of coffee or a cool drink as the sun sets, and catch up on the big picture and the minutiae, or just in companionable silence.
Hi Olya, nice to read you. Yes, we are there now, but still full of plans for 2. We are off to Scotland for a two week home exchange adventure. My departure from our longtime employer was one of those things that looked bad at the time but turned out to be a very good thing, for me, for us. Life is good.