For my birthday last year, as I teetered on the edge of a potential mid-to-late life crisis, I bought myself, not a Mazda Miata, but a memento mori.
Literally "a reminder of my mortality," this was simple: a poster with little boxes, arranged in columns, with 52 boxes in each column. There are 90 columns.
Each box is a week of my life.
The instructions are simple. You fill in all the boxes/weeks you’ve lived. Then you’re invited to fill in the remaining boxes as you live them, and remember to make the most of the time you have left.
What the instructions don’t include are what to do when, after you fill in your lived boxes, you see how few are left (and that’s if you live to be 90) and it jolts you, just like when you get your credit card statement after Christmas or you weigh yourself the day after Thanksgiving, only this time with death.
I figured that, like weighing myself daily, I could lessen the shock if I framed the poster with no glass and hung it where I could see it every day. On Saturday mornings I color in the next empty box and plan an accomplishment to lessen the weight of those too-few remaining boxes and all those weekends I spent streaming "Great British Bake Off."
I’m sure that you’re reading this and wondering, “Hey, how can I get my hands on this kind of morbid, self-absorbed fun?” and the answer is: you can’t swing a wasted week of your life without hitting one of these on Amazon. Some offer to take your birth date and fill in the already-lived boxes for you, but that would deprive you of hours of reflective fun as you time travel from your birth and remember every moment you blew watching "Frasier" re-runs.
It should be noted that your knees may be a more affordable and dandy reminder of your mortality. I know mine talk to me constantly!
Of course, it’s not all regrettable. The first box? I’m in a hospital as a newborn, getting a transfusion to combat the fact that Rhogam didn’t exist yet. That box? Missing a trip to the national spelling bee by *that* much. Another box, I’m reluctantly moving to Arizona with my parents. That box over there, I’m graduating from high school. A few too many college parties later, earning my degree and starting my career. Wedding. Having a baby over here. Having more babies over there. Changing jobs. Meeting my grandson. Certifications. Travel abroad.
I’d tell you about the other boxes but I’m not clear on whether the statute of limitations has run out yet, and I’m embarrassed to admit how many times Netflix has asked me if I’ve gone out and gotten a life yet..
If you’re going to take any piece of advice from an old woman on her birthday; if you are going to choose for once to believe something before you have learned it yourself, listen now: At the bottom of my memento mori is the saying: “The only true luxury is time.” If you’re not going to listen to a me or a poster, listen to Netflix and your knees.
Elizabeth Evans is a local mother, wife, daughter, sister, former stay-at-home mom, former work-outside-the-home mom, former work-at-home mom and a human resources consultant.
