The thing that sucks the most about growing older is death

This year, I learned that love is not enough. Love is not enough to keep innocent children — babies — safe from war. Love is not enough to keep young fathers alive so that they can watch their children grow up and grow old. Love is not enough to keep disease away from the people you love. Last year, a week before my birthday, my cat Kuih — who I loved with all my heart — died. He crawled up to me and I looked into his eyes, and I knew it was time to let go. Maybe it was time years ago to let him go, but I couldn’t. I’m so sure that he loved me with all his heart and wished he could have stayed by my side forever, but he couldn’t. Because love is not enough. Though I wasn’t as close to my cat Teh, I loved her, too. I loved her for years — some really terrible ones where she was so angry and required repeated visits to the vet and peed all over my house — but that wasn’t enough to cure her. She died in her sleep last week. My heart broke. I yelled at my kids as I heard them come down the stairs that morning when I found her dead: STAY UPSTAIRS! We panickedly took care of everything before they came down. In my head, I thought: No, I don’t want them to be staring at their dead cat. I want to wrap them in a bubble where death doesn’t exist, where endings don’t exist, where possibilities are abound, for as long as I can.

This was a really long, slow-burn lesson for me to learn. We tell young children that love is powerful, it can move mountains, do things, that it’s this unbreakable force, that it can change the world. And in many, many ways, I still believe this is true. But I’m also realizing that in many other cases — it’s simply not enough. It cannot solve everything.

I’m 35 now and I feel like grappling with the very real force of death — my eventual own death and those of the people I love around me — has truly sucked. I told my husband this last night and he said: But we all die in pieces, Melati. We die slowly.

What do you mean?

As we age, if we are lucky to get the chance to age, there are things we can’t do anymore. There are “lasts”. Last time I ate this food because my body can’t take it anymore now. Last time I took a rollercoaster because despite the fact that I used to love them, I get too dizzy and pukey now. Last time I had this experience, last time I met this person, last time I blablabla.

Growing older is a series of “lasts”. It is a blessing that many don’t get, but it is also fading away, piece by piece.

(Hope you weren’t expecting a sunshine post this week)