Dealing with growing older

Since Colin was born, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my time left on this planet. Having a kid has expanded my love for life multitudes over. With that, I’m also now thinking about my own death in order to try to maximize my time with my son.

Watching him grow over these last 5 months has been amazing but it’s also made me realize just how fast life goes. It feels like yesterday that we were just taking him home from the hospital. I reckon that I’ll be saying the same thing when I’ll be dropping him off to college in 18 years.

Separately from Colin, there’s a lot of other things going on in my life that’s making me realize just how old I’m getting. Dealing with Sophia’s Dad's health scare in 2023 was an eye-opening experience that our parents are getting older and won’t be here with us forever.

More recently, we’ve found out that my childhood nanny who lived with me from age 5 until 15 or so and has been part of my life for 30+ years is now leaving to go back home to Indonesia in June. She is in her 70s and has been in the United States for 30+ years without going back to see her own family.

We knew that time would come eventually as it would make sense for her to spend the remaining years of her life back home with her family. But she has built a great life here and presumably delayed the process as long as possible as she loves it here.

Given the dynamics of visas and her age, I highly doubt that she’ll ever get the chance to come back to the United States again. And knowing that, we know that this may be the last time that we’ll see her.

It’s a surreal concept thinking that someone who has been in your life for 30+ years will be saying goodbye for the final time. She was instrumental in taking care of me and my sister when we were young and we’re forever grateful for that. She was part of the family and I’ve been really sad at the thought that I likely won’t see her again for the rest of our lives.

Fathertime is real and finally starting to hit me hard in life for the first time. Unfortunately, this is part of life and just the beginning of a lot of sad things that will happen. It’s yet another reminder to enjoy the time I have and be as present as possible with the friends and family I have.