The blessing of ageing

By Denise Scott – sub-editor of The Catholic News For Women’s blog.
To read more blogs CLICK HERE. Email us at forwomen@catholictt.org

In January, I started a new job.

It was weird for me because for the past eight years, I had been self-employed.

At some point in my entrepreneurship journey, I felt called to go back to the corporate world. And for over a year I begged God to lead me back to a path in which I would be of greater service to Him.

Long story short…

One day in December, I got down on my knees and cried out to God that I wanted something new. That said evening, I got an email from my present employer telling me I was required to start in January.

The job, right up my alley, brought me joy and I shared the same office with the Head of the Department who was in fact someone with whom I had worked previously. I enjoyed working with her. We fought a lot and we laughed way too much. She soon booted me out of her office because apparently I talked too much. Truth be told, I was glad to leave because I thought that she talked too much, too.

In April this year, I turned 50. In the four months building up to my birthday, all I did was moan and cry and complain about turning 50! While many people were planning ‘fifty and fabulous’ parties, I was dreading this day. I was planning to come off social media and hope no one remembered my birthday. I was definitely having a midlife crisis. It was also because, at 50, I felt so unaccomplished. Here I was starting over my career and many of my friends were celebrating thirty-three and a third years in the teaching service; some of my friends were already grandparents; and my boss was in the middle of completing her Doctorate. I was nowhere near any of that.

Every time I complained, which was often, she would berate me and say, “you real dotish yuh know, nothing you saying making any sense to me. Yuh supposed to thank God. You know how many people never made it to 50?” and sometimes when she realised how distraught I was, she would say, “Denise, growing old is a blessing, you need to thank God”.

In July this year, while we were making plans for an event in August, she passed away.

It was, and perhaps still is, the weirdest grief I have ever experienced. Life goes on for me who wished to die before I turned 50 and yet she is gone. I never really talked about her passing because I feel like saying she is gone would make it real.

And then today I woke up and decided I wanted to celebrate her wisdom. And embrace being 50. So I decided to sit with my grey hairs, aching back, and the whole sound effect system that seems to follow me when I am getting out of a car and belatedly say, “Thank you”. And in that process, I had to thank God too for waking me up and keeping me alive. Thank you, Jesus, for the blessing of coworkers who become friends and then family. I thank God for placing me in a beautiful family filled with loving parents and oh-so-amazing siblings and my one hundred cousins and aunts and uncles………. The list can be very long. And if I begin to tell you about my friends, you will doubt that such kind and wonderful people really exist on Earth. I thank God for my simple pleasures too, like the ability to drink a chai latte every morning and feel like the black Carrie Fletcher of downtown Port of Spain (you have to be a certain age to understand that joke).

Today I sat with my 50-year-old self and just said, “Wow! This woman has lived! And I am so grateful to have walked so many roads with her”.

God has given me the grace to accept each day with all that it offers and the ability to go to Him often to ask forgiveness when I know that I have done wrong. At 50, I am trying to mend fences, give more love, be kinder than necessary to each person I meet, and be my most authentic self. More importantly, I am doing what I begged God for the opportunity to do, which is to build a better relationship with Him.

I will confess to you now, that I am not a mature 50-year-old yet (I hope to get it right by the time I turn 70). I mean, I am still going to use more mascara on my hairline than on my eyelashes, and I am still never going to tell my little cousins my age, and I will still laugh too much at a funny joke, but I am going to embrace it with an abundance of gratitude.

And all though this is a whole lifetime late, I can still say, ‘Thank you, Fran, for showing me that ageing is a blessing.’