On the edge of not knowing

My dear friend R. declares to the room"We're all on the edge of not knowing!" At almost 94, she is facing lots of change and lots of letting go. Soon she'll move out of state to live with her son and his family. She's lived in Rochester since 1946 they tell me. Physical activity is difficult these days. Walking hurts, she needs help putting on her stockings. Balance is precarious and she uses a 3-wheeled walker to get around, very slowly. Her mind is slipping a little, sometimes a lot. She can't remember words, names, or the activities she used to love. Often she is disoriented, wondering when she's going home. Looking around her living room she'll say, "So many things here look just like my things." The hardest thing is that she knows she doesn't know.

Somehow she stays really positive and present in all this , when her world is muddling up and folding in around her, she still wants to hear about what is going on in politics and the rest of the country. She gets up and walks every day, despite the pain, because she does not want to stop walking. Even though she can barely see, she points out beauty to me all the time: a certain tree that stands up just so, a cloud or rare shimmer of cold late winter sun, the orchid that still holds its bloom.

All of this is just fine, and sweetly painful: the kind of things I love to comment on. There is something deeper in the time I have with R. that is difficult to articulate. I feel like she's transmitting lots of serious information about how to live life. It comes and goes quickly, like a little razor cutting through the fog. She'll say: "It is very important to know what you can do and what you cannot do." or "I've always been most interested in learning about my own self, how and why I do what I do. That is what has been most important, don't you agree?" or "You have a wonderful nurturing self, you are so competent and kind. You MUST do this for your self too." I'll ask her to say more about it and she'll respond, "Now, what day is it? Have we had any dinner yet?"

I'm walking on the edge of not knowing, taking one step and another; listening carefully.