59 1/2 years old

When do you decide you’ve been given enough time

This frog sculpture is in my front garden, right outside my office window. It reminds me of my friend every time I see it.

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Warning: Ideation theme below. If this is a trigger for you, proceed with caution or stop reading, whatever you need to do to stay safe.

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“59 1/2 years. That’s enough.”

That’s what the hand-written note said when they discovered her a week or so after she scribbled it out, a cord around her neck, the other end attached to the plumbing. It’s a marker that lives in my head every day, something to gauge myself against.

“59 years, six months and I’m still here. I’m doing ok.”

“59 years, six months, one day and I’m still here. I’m doing ok.”

“59 years, six months, two days and …”

I’ve done this calculation almost every day since she was discovered. Over and over, it pops up randomly in my head. I’m well past that 59 1/2 point — into my 60s now — but not by enough where the memory of it has faded. I still calculate almost every day.

She was the first “solid” family friend we made since moving from Minneapolis, unlike the party crowd down my street. She had three kids, was married to a boring, inattentive man with a stable government job, bought a house in a cul-de-sac and was curious about the world. She had an “almost” college degree and was a voracious reader. She had strong opinions on pretty much everything and was the first to start researching what she didn’t know. Old school style researching. The kind where you go to the library and take out books, journals and periodicals. She hated tech and wouldn’t text or receive texts from anyone.

“59 1/2 years. That’s enough.”

Her dad was abusive and her mom was controlling. She lost both too late in life. Her siblings didn’t like her all that much because she would challenge their conservative beliefs. She was an atheist and could argue religion with anyone because that’s what being raised Catholic does for you; a deep understanding of the tenets of faith and an unbreakable bond with atheism.

She could not cook but loved having a huge Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner at her house. I would get up at 4am, prep all the food at her house, start the turkey and go back home, coming and going back and forth from my house to hers when things needed to be rotated in and out of oven. Her house was just one subdivision over, so it was a nice walk.

Dinner with both families was a big, noisy affair.

“59 1/2 years. That’s enough.”

Eventually, her kids all left, one by one as kids do. Her home fell quiet and lonely. The marriage fell apart and she bought a cute little house into the city with the settlement money. My kids also grew up and out, so it was a bit easy to lose that frequent touch

When they were cleaning up after her departure, another note was found, unopened, slid through the mail slot in the door. She had not “healed” from trauma the way her kids thought she should and they told her.

But she had already arrived at that conclusion in her own time, in her own way.