Movement

A life lesson I try to keep in mind:

Six years ago was the last time that my grandparents (on my mother's side) came with us on our family beach trip. The 5-hour drive from the Piedmont to the Outer Banks was getting to be too much, their bodies were slowing down too much for the beach activity, and my grandfather's laryngectomy gave him a hole in his throat that meant that he couldn't get close to the water, which, as a lifelong fisherman and swimmer and former naval officer, broke his heart.

On the morning of our first full day there, my grandmother slowly made her way down the stairs of the house to the beach, where we had already set up our towels and umbrellas. She got herself into a beach chair only to realize that she had left her book back up at the house, and asked me to go get it for her. I jumped out of my chair to go get her book, bounding up the stairs two at a time. No big deal to even a 30-year-old. Standard, even. But I looked back down at my grandmother who had just watched me leap up the stairs and she had a smile on her face, a smile that said that she was almost amazed at what I had just done, that said that it had been years since she could jump up and go running up a flight of stairs. It was a simple act for me, but that kind of movement was foreign to her; a language she couldn't speak anymore.

I've thought of that moment often this week. Home for Christmas, we've spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They're both fully lucid, have lived blessed and full lives and are still in reasonably good health for their ages, but their bodies have only slowed more. My grandfather is using a walker, and suffers from intense back pain and usually needs at least one person to lift him out of a chair or help him into the car. My grandmother can still move pretty well for an 88-year-old, but she still has to slowly ease herself into and out of chairs. They both have sicknesses that come and go, but that linger longer than they used to. And the days of running or moving quickly are gone and will never return.

I try to get these lessons through my head. I'm reminded to use my body while I still can, to take the stairs and go running and dancing. It's trite and cliche, but yet as many times as the sentiment is repeated, we still can't truly grasp it. We tell ourselves that we're too tired, that we'll do it tomorrow, that we just can't. But there really will be a day when we just can't, when the ability to move quickly and with ease is gone and will never be back no matter how much we promise ourselves that we'll start a new exercise routine or eat better. There will be a day when we look back and be amazed that we ever took the stairs two at a time.