Cumulative Age

I'm not a numbers person. But like it or not, age is cumulative.

On a landmark birthday, it hit me:  It’s all adding up.

Like all the things.

The good, the bad, the mundane, the forgettable and the memorable.

And even though I have been fully conscious for every one of my years, this new number hits me with the shock of:  How did this happen?

I never expected to be this number. And yet here we are.  Or here I am.

Don’t get me wrong: I am completely grateful for these years, and fully aware that the alternative to another birthday, is, well, dismal.

And evidently, though somewhat wistfully, there is no going back.

Only adding more to this already heavy-feeling number -- and that’s if you’re lucky.

If there were an alternative, I’d select and delete some of the years, like deleting emails, to reduce my storage space.  And put them in a separate column, move it to a different folder on a different drive, not to be added on to the principal number.

Because while some experiences added to my life, some subtracted. Several years took more toll than their fair share. I even think removing them altogether from the memory bank, “Severance" style, could give me back several years. And who knows, maybe that’s a silver lining of the silver-haired years of Alzheimer’s.

But I would like to think it all balances out. And that in the final tally, the undesirable parts get overwritten with the unforgettable parts.

Bottom line: My cumulative age is an integrated whole of all of my eras. With no subtractions or deletions allowed. Everything is accounted for.

And I know that this whole is greater than the sum of her parts.