I greatly value your contributions, wpainterw. Anyone that can take the Beast by the throat and stay sober for almost 30 years is someone I will listen to. And I can't imagine anyone not valuing so much life experience. We are all vessels, filled drop by drop over the years of our lives. I'm not sure we can ever be completely filled, there's always room for a few more cups of wisdom. But when we pass all that wisdom can pour out and soak into the ground, lost. It's great to pass your cup around while you're able, while you're still filled to the brim.
I'm quite a bit younger than you are at 46 but sometimes I catch myself feeling a bit like your wife does. I think to myself maybe I should buy a new house but then I think
I'll probably only live another 20 years at best, why bother? Of course, 2 years or 50 more it's all the same- a lifetime. My lifetime.
The Universe is around 13.8 billion years old, give or take. Scientists say the sun has another billion, billion-and-a-half left as a friendly star before it begins to swell into a red giant, incinerating the Earth. The smallest stars, the red dwarf stars, are light enough that the hydrogen inside them forms convection currents which keep fusion going on at an even rate. Those stars can burn for several trillion years! Think, even though they're billions of years old they're basically still infants! Yet one day, even those stars will die. In an unfathomable yet still inevitable span of octillions of years even the last black holes will have dissipated, evaporating through Hawking radiation. And maybe in the octillion years to follow protons themselves will decay and the universe will be completely dormant.
Forgive me, for I'm the one repeating myself now. I return to this theme occasionally in my posts for a reason. In all the wide Universe we're the only thing we know to be sentient. And as small as we are compared to the wider Universe we are possibly unique in it. Our ability to simply draw in our breath and marvel at it all is a gift that may be our alone. Even in my darkest times, on my worst days, I still cherish that ability to process experience. To smell, to feel the tacky plastic of my keyboard, to taste the effervescent fizz of the flavored club soda that had become my replacement for wine- all these things still manage to spark a little bit of wonder in me. I am willing to do anything- within reason and the bounds of decency- keep living on for another day. I have untold octillions of years to be dead and only this short span of years to be alive! I want to cherish this time while I can.
So there you sit, 89 years old. Old for a human yet still a speck in the eyeblink of just our little corner of the cosmos. As you say, carpe diem! If you a year left or ten you are still breathing the same air and sharing this unique experience of life with all of us.
I can certainly empathize with your wife. I have a few aches and ailments collected in my four odd decades of life. It will probably slow me down more and become a source of frustration as I get older, especially if I let my current lifestyle continue (I work as a chef, too many hours on my feet, I work too much and eat too much that I shouldn't). But I think you're 100% right, her grandchildren will value having her around a lot more than any money they might inherit down the road. I hope you'll indulge one more rambling story from me!
When I was a kid I had a great aunt. She had been very old for as long as I had been alive. She was nearly blind and had lost a leg but even at 93 her mind was sharp as a tack. We didn't get to see her often but we always want to visit at the holidays. She had been born in the latter part of the 1800's and had seen so much. She was in her early teens when the Wright's flew at Kitty Hawk! And she lived to see men on the moon. As a child I couldn't get enough of her stories of "the good old days". Even as a child I had a sense of how much her vessel held and I felt a sense of responsibility to drink in what I could, lest everything she had seen be lost to time.
I do ramble on! Let me just say that if you repeat yourself it's the pattern of the Universe recurring again and again. You're a rock for many of us in early recovery. Now at about 3.5 years sober I still feel like a newcomer and perhaps I always will.