By Edward H. Garcia
When my grandmother reached her sixties, she stopped buying nice shoes. By nice, I mean (and she would have meant) something at a department store. Instead, she bought her shoes at Pay-less and discount stores. She explained that she wasn’t going to live long enough to wear out nice shoes. When she died in her eighties, she had worn out racks of cheap shoes. I used to laugh about her thrifty habit, but now that I have reached my seventies, I think I understand her attitude. I still buy my nice Rockport shoes, but I do find myself wondering if this is the last car I will buy, if I’ll ever have to replace the new 25-year roof, if there’s another refrigerator in the cards for me.
Other than her cheap-shoe peculiarities, my grandmother lived her life fully. She wasn’t just waiting around to die. Even with her shoes falling apart on her feet, she otherwise lived as if she had a lot of years coming, even when she didn’t. She would pack up her stuff in brown paper bags and hitch a ride to her children’s houses with a friend who delivered meat to groceries stores around the Valley. She’d stay for a week or two until she got to worrying about her house in Mercedes and then hitch a ride back home
At our house, one of her main jobs was to catch me up on what was happening on As the World Turns. We’d sit together at noon watching the soap and discussing what we thought Penny and Ellen and Bob were going to do. (She also made great flour tortillas and a cabrito en sangre which is still the culinary high point of my life.) Then she’d be off to my aunt’s across town or my uncle’s up the Valley. She continued this routine even after a stroke left her half blind.
That’s one lesson I want to take away from her long life — live as if. As if this is not your last birthday. As if you will get the good out of that new car. As if it’s worthwhile to learn a new language or a new art.
On the other hand, it makes sense to me to live with the knowledge that this won’t last forever and there are certain things that shouldn’t wait. I don’t mean the bungee jumping and parasailing kind of bucket list items, but making amends where needed and repairing old rifts where possible. When I was about 20, I had a falling out with a close childhood friend over something that seems silly now. He had been my fishing buddy, the guy who taught me how to ride a bike, my ride when he had a car and I didn’t. After a number of years, I thought I should call him and rekindle the friendship, but way led on to way and I didn’t. Then one day my mother told me he had died — way too soon. I had always thought there would be time, but there wasn’t.
Somehow, I want to live as if I am never going to die and, at the same time, as if I am going to die tomorrow. That’s like walking a tightrope, not easy to do, but, for me, better if I’m wearing nice shoes.
