My mom turns 90 today.
Ninety.
There is something remarkable about simply being able to say that. To have been on this earth for nine decades. To have witnessed all that has changed since 1936. To have watched the world transform in ways that would have been unimaginable when you were a child.
Think about everything you get to experience if you're fortunate enough to live that long.
My mom has been a daughter, a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. She raised three children and watched her family grow through generations. There have been birthdays, holidays, vacations, friendships, celebrations, disappointments, laughter and probably more than a few arguments along the way.
There are 90 years of stories.
And tomorrow, we're going to celebrate that.
We'll have a little party. Family will be there. We'll eat, laugh, tell stories and recognize something that deserves to be recognized.
Because you don't turn 90 very often.
But I've been thinking about something else as this birthday approached.
We talk a lot about the gift of a long life.
We don't talk nearly enough about what that gift can eventually ask of the person who receives it.
Because if you live to be 90, you don't just get to experience an extraordinary amount of life.
You also experience an extraordinary amount of loss.
Think about that for a moment.
If you live long enough, eventually you start watching the people who traveled through life with you disappear.
Parents are gone. Brothers and sisters may be gone. Friends you've known for decades are gone. People you grew up with, worked with, laughed with, raised children alongside and thought would always somehow be there begin disappearing one by one.
The circle gets smaller.
And smaller.
Until one day you look around and realize that very few people are left who remember the world the way you remember it.
And sometimes, painfully, longevity means outliving someone you never imagined you would.
My mom raised three children.
Today, only two of us are still here.
She lost my brother unexpectedly several years ago, and I know that loss affected her deeply. There are some losses that time may teach us to live with, but I don't believe we ever really get over them.
Years before, my grandmother experienced that same kind of loss. She had two children, and one of them died at a very young age. I can still remember her saying something that has stayed with me all these years:
"You're not supposed to lose your children before you die."
It wasn't something she said about my mom or the loss of my brother. She was speaking from her own experience as a mother who had buried one of her children.
Years later, my mom would experience that same unimaginable loss.
Different circumstances. Different generations. But the same heartbreak of a mother having to say goodbye to her child.
No matter how old your child becomes, they are still your child. And I don't think any parent is ever prepared to outlive one of their own.
That's another side of living a long life that we don't think much about.
Longevity gives you the opportunity to welcome new generations into the world—to hold grandchildren and great-grandchildren and see your family continue.
But it can also mean saying goodbye to an awful lot of people you loved along the way.
That's a side of longevity I don't think those of us who haven't reached that age can fully understand.
There is another part we probably don't understand either.
The gradual loss of independence.
It rarely happens all at once. Instead, life seems to take things back a little at a time.
Something you have always done for yourself becomes something you need help doing.
Then something else.
Then something else.
Eventually, your world can become much smaller than the one you once knew.
I see that with my mom.
These last few years haven't been particularly easy for her. She's in pain. She doesn't sleep well. She's tired. Things she once did without thinking now require help, or she simply can't do them anymore.
And as her son, that is difficult to watch.
Maybe the hardest part is knowing there isn't anything I can do to fix it.
I can help.
I can show up.
I can make sure she knows she's loved.
But I can't give her independence back. I can't take away the pain. I can't make her body work the way it once did. I can't make everything better.
There are some things in life that love simply cannot fix.
And that's hard to accept.
What makes it even more remarkable to me is that while Mom struggles with her own limitations, she still worries about my dad.
She watches his hearing decline. She sees the changes in his memory and cognition. And even when she isn't doing particularly well herself, she is still trying to make sure he's okay.
After all these years, she's still being a wife.
Still worrying.
Still caring.
Still trying to take care of somebody else.
If Mom were completely honest about where she is today, I don't think she'd tell you she's excited about being 90.
I think she'd tell you she's tired.
I think she'd tell you she's ready.
Her faith has always mattered to her, and I think she would tell you she's ready to go home and be with her Lord.
That's difficult for a son to hear.
But perhaps part of loving someone at this stage of life is not insisting that they feel differently just because we aren't ready to lose them.
Maybe sometimes loving someone means simply hearing them.
I don't know what it feels like to be 90.
I don't know what it's like to wake up every morning in a body that hurts, after another night when you didn't sleep well, knowing that many of the things you once enjoyed doing aren't possible anymore.
I don't know what it's like to have outlived so many of the people who shared your journey.
I certainly don't know what it's like to have buried one of your children.
And I don't know what it's like to recognize that you're nearing the end of your own story.
Someday, if I'm fortunate enough, maybe I will understand some of it.
So tomorrow we'll celebrate Mom.
There will be family around her. There will be food and cake and stories and laughter. And hopefully, for a little while, the difficulties of being 90 can take a back seat to something else.
Because maybe a 90th birthday isn't really about asking the person turning 90 to be excited about getting another year older.
Maybe it's an opportunity for the rest of us to say something much simpler.
We're glad you were here.
We're glad you're still here.
And look at everything that exists because you were here.
Children. Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. A family. Memories. Traditions. Stories. Relationships.
Ninety years of moments, most of which probably seemed completely ordinary while they were happening, but together became a life.
And perhaps there's a lesson in that for the rest of us.
When you see someone who is 80 or 90 years old, it's easy to see only the person standing—or perhaps sitting—in front of you today.
But you're not looking at just an old person.
You're looking at every age they have ever been.
Somewhere inside that 90-year-old woman is still the little girl who played with her friends.
The teenager who dreamed about what her life might become.
The young woman who fell in love.
The mother who raised three children.
The woman who experienced the unimaginable pain of saying goodbye to one of them.
The wife who built a life with her husband.
The grandmother who watched another generation arrive.
The great-grandmother who got to see yet another.
All of those people are still there.
We just don't always see them.
So today, Mom, I see you.
Not just the 90-year-old woman you are today.
I see the other 89 years, too.
The people you've loved.
The people you've lost.
The family you helped create.
And the life you lived in between.
Happy 90th birthday, Mom.
I'm glad you were here.
And I'm very glad you're still here.