WHAT DAPPER “80” LOOKS LIKE
Next month, the now large and prosperous Mennonite colony of Fernheim in the Chaco of Paraguay is celebrating the 80th anniversary of the nurses training program that my parents, John and Clara Schmidt, founded back in 1943. And Tres Palmas, the Mennonite colony they helped establish in east Paraguay thirty years later, is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Both are markers of the passage of time.
Last week Ed and I lit a candle at the graves of his ancestors in upstate New York, thanking them for leaving Ireland over 150 years ago and immigrating to the U.S. during a period of disease and starvation known as the Great Potato Famine.
Another marker.
And a month ago, my beloved Ed turned 80, a powerful marker that our time together is scarce, finite, and the end in sight. This last marker poignantly highlights for me the mixed “gifts” of the passage of time in our lives. Blessed to have had 32 years together. Cursed that our time will eventually come to an end.
“I blinked my eyes
and in an instant,
decades had passed,” wrote the poet John Mark Green.
In German, “Gift” has two meanings: It means “gift or present.” More commonly it also means “poison.”
But even the poison of time as scarce and finite can be a blessing, inviting me to seize and cherish every moment we have together. As William Martin wrote in his latest blog, may we all “experience for [ourselves] what life will be for [us] by engaging it directly, fully, in all of its joy and sorrow, wonder and beauty. What a pity to reach the end and find [we] had not actually experienced this wonderful cosmos.”
And as Achilles boldly said in the movie Troy:
“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
We are together on this journey!