Getting older is like being in a boat and leaving the shore.

You keep looking back at the land slowly disappearing, getting farther and farther away and you feel like you are losing something.  You are losing a connection with your past. You are losing all the people who made up your childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and adulthood.

All the “grown-up” who guided you and you looked to as the guiding stars are leaving.  One by one they die and you are left with a hole in your rolodex that cannot be filled. 

Social media can make it creepy, too.  There are names in your contacts list that you cannot call or text anymore. New names have been added, but the ones that are not back there on the shore, cannot be replaced.

Getting older also means that the elders in your life have been replaced by… you.

Your kids look at you as the “grown-ups” now.

If you turn around and look forward at the open water, you hope that you see some land in front of you. Right now there is none in sight.

But, maybe that is what heaven is.  When you start to see new land in front as the land behind you is out of sight.