Teach Us to Number Our Days
My maternal grandmother died at the age of 29. Her kidneys failed her and she left behind my mother and my uncle, neither of whom had even started kindergarten. I felt her absence all my life. My mom had no stories to tell me about her – Mom barely remembered her. I grew up feeling a space where there should have been warm memories. I have one photograph of her – standing on the porch, my tiny mom standing in front of her, cocking her head at the camera. She looks a bit like me.
I used to play that game kids play where you hold your breath when you drive past a cemetery. Then when I was in elementary school, on a trip to West Virginia, mom took me to the carved out space in the holler where my grandmother is buried. It was jarring to see her headstone, bought by my mom’s brother when he received his first-ever paycheck. I never played that breath-holding game again.
So maybe it was for that reason that I found it odd when adults would joke about being eternally 29. It was one of those curiosities that seemed to be a recurring joke which would make all the adults laugh while the children scratched their heads.
I turned 29 on November 4, 2012. I suppose it’s a significant year for most of us, as 30 looms off in the distance. But I remember determining that I wouldn’t be ashamed to turn 30. It would mean I had outlived my grandmother. As these things go, 13 days after my 29th birthday, mom died. Most of my 29th year was spent trying to figure out which way was up and who I was now.
I turned 30 in a beachfront hotel on Virginia Beach. (They are alarmingly cheap in November.) I cried for much of the day. It was my first time waking up without a text message from her, without a phone call. It was one of few birthdays that I wouldn’t eat poached eggs from her or have her squeeze me for too long in the kitchen.
But I didn’t cry because I was 30. Turning 30 meant I had outlived my grandmother. I imagined her in her 29th year, dying, wondering what would become of her children. I thought of how she must have been desperate to live, even as she became increasingly sick. I wonder how she must have pled with God to save her, how she must have grieved knowing she would not see her babies grow. Rosaline Joyce Hurley would have given all she had to turn 30.
I am okay with being 34. I don’t want to be mistaken for a college student or a 25 year old. I want my skin to look nice, I want to look young, sure. But the older I get, the more contributions I have made to the world, the less I care about looking younger than I am.
I don’t know who you are or were at 20, but I like myself more at 34 than I did at 20. I am figuring out what my core values are. I know myself better now than I did then. I am more confident – I can value other people for their contributions to the world without feeling jealous or bad about myself. I know what I like. I know that while I love to look at doughnuts, I don’t particularly like to eat them. I know that I prefer wearing solid black to wearing color. I know who I like to be around and I know how to excuse myself from the company of people who are toxic.
I can express myself better now than I could then. I am a better communicator than I was at 20. I can thank people for their contributions in my life, to their face. I can tell someone they have hurt my feelings, and I can do so in a productive manner. I am able to own my space in the world, and somewhere along the line I did indeed give myself permission to take up said space.
In Psalm 90:12 Moses pleads, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Numbering our days doesn’t just mean considering how long we have left until we die – it means looking back over the years and seeing how far we’ve come. It means appreciating our days for all they are. It means looking back over our life and loving the sum total of the joy and the pain because we have been afforded the gift of life.
So no I don’t really want to be 20. Or 29. I like who I am now. I like having some stuff about me figured out. And I love being able to pour out of that.
How we are robbed of gratefulness for this life by our shame in growing older. How my grandmother would have loved to turn 30. How my mom would have loved to turn 54. When someone dies before they are old, we often think of all they are missing, how old they would be now. When someone dies before they get to ride a school bus, before they get to go to college, before they get to raise their children, before they get to meet their grandchildren – we think constantly of how they would have loved to be here for this. And yet in our own lives we disdain the years afforded to us.
It is shocking to see our skin begin to wrinkle, to see our hair turn or begin to disappear. We may miss the waist circumference of our youth or the way our legs looked in shorts. But may we not disdain the days we have been afforded. May we not walk forward into our confident future with dragging feet. May we number our days with gratitude and live into our age with glad hearts.