Driving home from Silver Pine and my visit with Betsy is somber. Seeing Betsy facing the challenges of old age is& unnerving? She`s always been the lady who`s got her life together. Betsy Finley met Michael Cornwall the summer after high school. She went to Hestinia State University to get an associates degree and graduated one month before her wedding. She played on the HSU women`s tennis team and won some sort of national championship both years she played. The local newspaper, The Raesport Journal, picked up the story about the local girl on the championship tennis team and filled nearly a full page with an interview they did with Betsy about her life, career plans, and experience as a star athlete. I remember Betsy being super embarrassed any time someone brought the article up. She`d say things like "I was just playing tennis for the scholarship money" or "I don`t know why they are making it such a big deal" or "I was just lucky enough to be the runner up on a star-studded team". Her humility just made everyone like and cheer for her more.

　　And then she married Michael and instead of making it big in the city, Betsy convinced Michael that Raesport was the ideal place to raise their family. Michael was a lawyer and could set up shop anywhere, so, wanting to make his young bride happy, he accepted Raesport as home. Then the Cornwall couple proceeded to multiply and replenish the earth as the Good Book instructs in the book of Genesis: Nicholas, Robert, Donna, Samuel, Philip, and Walter. Five boys, one girl. Walter was born in 1989, same as Thomas. Betsy and I were thirty-seven when the boys were born. We raised those babies together. Walter and Thomas grew up best friends until personalities and differing interests caused their inevitable drifting apart.

　　Thomas turned thirty-four this year&. It`s been a decade since he cut me off. It doesn`t seem like it`s been that long; it still stings like it was yesterday. And yet, I`ve missed nearly a third of my son`s life now&.

　　Where was I? Ah, yes. The Cornwalls were the type of family you aspired to be like. Six kids, Betsy stayed out of the workforce to raise them while Michael served as a foundational pillar of the community with his legal practice, she kept a tidy home, kept her children busy raising a yardful of livestock and weeding a garden that ate up nearly an acre of land. They baked fresh bread as a family every week, played sports, and cultivated artistic talents. I`m remembering that one of the boys had an exceptional singing voice and joined the U.S. Army Chorus almost as soon as he joined the military. Was that Robert or Samuel? I can`t remember now. One of the other boys played minor league baseball for a few years while going to college part time to become a lawyer like his father. He`s now combined the two things as a lawyer for some major league baseball team in& some city up north. New York maybe? Or maybe Pennsylvania? The point is, her children all grew up to be successful adults.

　　You know, it`s interesting, Betsy and I hit a lot of milestones together. The difference is that everyone followed her progress with expectations that were never dashed. For me, there were no such expectations. Betsy was the daughter of a physician. I was the daughter of a miner.

　　I haven`t thought about my father much in recent years. He died in 92 when pneumonia settled in his black lungs and got misdiagnosed. He went quickly, at least, and he lived long enough to see his grandson turn three. Honestly, the events surrounding father`s death feel a little morbidly funny. He got sick with what we now know was pneumonia, went to the doctor where they took a chest x-ray and diagnosed the suspected black lungs. He was treated with oxygen and steroids, but he kept getting worse until he almost couldn`t breathe anymore. Another doctor`s visit, another x-ray. Side-by-side, the two x-rays showed unchanged black lungs and threw into sharp relief the progression of his pneumonia. The doctor looked my father in the eyes and said "you should be dead" before starting him on an aggressive antibiotic treatment. Well, father apparently took that as a personal challenge and was dead two hours later. It was almost like he was waiting for the permission to die, and once he found out that he should be dead, he was like, "you`re right. I`m not ok." I don`t know that the story is particularly funny, but I guess it`s funny to me because it just suited my father so perfectly.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it`s taken without the author`s consent. Report it.

　　Where Betsy was the golden child, I was& forgettable. It`s fine. Truly it is. I`m not resentful or anything, and it was nice to not have the pressure of public scrutiny judging my every life decision. Betsy was the perfect child who grew up to marry the perfect man and mother the perfect children who all grew up to be successful and start their own perfect families. Betsy is the kind of person whose obituary will say that she is survived by her many children, their spouses, her dozens of grandchildren and the few great-grandchildren as even her grandchildren go on to have perfect families. And in Betsy`s case there will be no question that her excessive posterity will "survive her" by happily propagating stories about her life and holding her up as an incredible ancestor.

　　 It`s strange how two lives can follow a similar timeline but still be so different. Betsy and I graduated high school together in 72 and both went on to pursue associates degrees. I went to a smaller community college where she went to HSU, but we both graduated in 74 and married our college boyfriends that summer, moving back to Raesport shortly thereafter. What I can tell you is that while Betsy went on to start her family almost immediately with Michael, Fred and I were trying to start our family too, and while Betsy was wrangling four small children, I was working two jobs to be able to afford my visits to fertility specialists and struggling to accept the reality that I`d never be able to have children. And then I had my miracle baby right as Betsy closed out a very prolific childbearing era. Betsy and I sent our babies to school together and then reentered the workforce at the same time. Down the line we became empty nesters together, lost our husbands a couple years apart from each other, and now we are facing growing old at the same time. And yet, for all the parallels, our lives look nothing alike.

　　Nothing alike.

　　Before I left Silver Pine, Betsy expressed good-natured jealousy that I was still healthy and independent and working on projects. I am spry for my age, but I guess it hadn`t occurred to me that I was unusual in that regard before her comment. She wants me to visit her periodically with updates on the house. Apparently I failed her by not bringing a phone loaded with gazillions of pictures of the house. Actually, I haven`t taken a single picture of the home since I did that first walk through when I took pictures so I knew where all the walls and furnishings were supposed to return once I`d finished "blank-slating" the house.

　　I`ve never been good at taking pictures. It`s never been terribly important to me. I try to simply absorb the moments as they come, and stopping to take pictures interrupts the flow of the moment. I say that, but now that I`m older, I wish I`d taken more pictures. At a time in my life when there is more to look back on than there is to look forward to, having visual reminders of what was is a joy that is difficult to understate.

　　Preserving memories.

　　Hm.

　　Maybe that`s why people journal. They want to be remembered. Or perhaps what was intended for their eyes only becomes preserved quite by accident. When no one is willing or able to "survive you" the burden is left to records like journals and photographs to keep your legacy going.

　　Sarah Atwood is a perfect example of this. If she had children, which it would appear that she was at least pregnant once, they didn`t pass on her story. Sarah, a name in the blip of public scandal and rumor is speaking from the grave with her own version of history. Perhaps she will rewrite it.

　　Which reminds me that I need to read her third journal the rest of the way.

　　Maybe I should keep a journal? But then, when would I write in it? And who would even want to read it? My life is mundane, my existence insignificant, my influence inconsequential. I am forgettable. Neither the golden child nor the troublemaker, I exist in the blind spot of people`s interests. A mere cog in the wheel that performs its function adequately and without complaint. My name will one day be but a blip in the history books.

　　I`m trying to decide if I`m ok with that. My whole life, I`ve been satisfied with mediocrity so complete that no one will remember me when I`m gone. And now&.

　　I don`t think this is even something I`d be considering if I had children interested in surviving me. Maybe I`ve been given spry golden years so I can make up for seventy years with nothing lasting to show for them- a redo. People like Betsy don`t need a redo. She will fade from now until the end. She`s already accomplished a legacy worthy of surviving. I`m playing catch-up.