The frailty of aging has been brought home to me once more. At the age of 93, Judy’s mother fell out of bed and broke her left femur. It was a complicated fracture, requiring surgery and extensive rehabilitation. Also, this incident is the one that will require a life-changing living situation for her. Her life is closing in around her; her world is in an ever increasing smaller sphere.
The frailty of aging has been brought home to me once more. At the age of 93, Judy’s mother fell out of bed and broke her left femur. It was a complicated fracture, requiring surgery and extensive rehabilitation. Also, this incident is the one that will require a life-changing living situation for her. Her life is closing in around her; her world is in an ever increasing smaller sphere.
We live our lives in a wide expanse of the world. We see the horizon, wonder what is beyond it, travel to it, and see the ever reaching horizon yet further away. As we look at the world, there is always a horizon. Sometimes the horizon is the grandeur of snow-capped mountains; sometimes it is the green of the fields or the gold of waving grain in a warm summer breeze. Sometimes the horizon can be a stand of majestic pines reaching high for the heavens. Our eyes are drawn to it, and we wonder what is on the other side.
Gradually the horizon gets closer to us. Our world sphere is growing smaller. Perhaps when we have seen what is beyond the horizon we can now be content in our smaller world. Perhaps the horizon is now our memories of those distant places we have visited. The horizon is within our minds and as expansive as ever.
We look within our minds and see as far as we can, as if we were standing high on a mountain top. We see beyond the small sphere we live in. We close our eyes, lower our head, and still see beyond our small world. No one can take away our horizon. It is never ending.
It is sad, to be sure, that eventually we cannot take our bodies beyond the horizon, but in our minds we can travel on all those roads we set foot on, to explore what was beyond the furthest reaches of our eyes.
We have two horizons, one we can travel to and see what lies beyond. The other we can travel to and see where we have been. Our world may be ever increasing smaller, but our minds can make it as big as we want. Our horizon is only limited by our imagination and our memories.
Perhaps, when we can no longer see beyond the confines of our last home, we can close our eyes and see the beauty of all the horizons the world has bestowed upon us. And so, we continue to travel within our minds, perhaps reaching further out than we could ever imagine, and finally seeing, and arriving, at that last beautiful horizon that has no end to it.
