Numbered Days:

A Meditation on Being 84

Photo by Stephanie Klepacki on Unsplash

The approximate human lifespan is 30,000 days. I heard that on NPR. The major stages of life, the man said, fall into three equal 10,000-day segments: childhood, work life, and old age. Think of it shaped like the letter M, with 10,000 and 30,000 at the top of each leg and 20,000 at the bottom middle point. Apparently, some people celebrate their 10,000th, 20,000th, or 30,000th “dieversary” (from the Latin dies, day).

Like most people my age, I sometimes read the obituaries and look to see if the deceased made it past my current age of 84. Life outside of the jungle is not a competition, so does it matter? Why should it feel like an accomplishment? Perhaps because my grandmother and my aunt each died at age 84, an age that seemed very old to me when I was 50.

I’ve always been a numbers nerd, enjoying the symmetry and relationships of numbers and the sense of control that numbers evoke. Mathematics gives us identifiable proof, absolute truth, certainty. Solving number puzzles like Ken-Ken is rewarding to me when the right numbers fall into their boxes, conforming to the rules and satisfying arithmetic constraints. I even like doing tax returns, seeing the income and expenses, the credits and debits, add and subtract, until the final Refund Due or You Owe is revealed. And measuring makes things tangible and knowable. Time is the big one: where did it go and how much of it is remaining?

Obviously, I had to find my number and I’m well past my allotment of 30,000.

Calculator.net told me that when I turned 21-years-old I had lived 7671 days, barely a quarter of my life. My 21st birthday was just days before leaving for a new job (and it turned out, a new life) in America. In the remaining 2329 days of the first 10,000 I leapt from childhood to motherhood, working in the US, marrying, and bearing two children. My younger daughter was born ten days before my 10,000th dieversary.

By the time I’d been alive for 20,000 days, I’d had a successful and rewarding career. Our daughters were grown and independent and my husband had received the gift of a new young heart after years of cardiac problems. We were at the middle point of the imaginary M, heading into old age, and we were heading up.

I’ve always been a numbers nerd, enjoying the symmetry and relationships of numbers, the sense of control that numbers evoke.

The next 10,000 days were in some ways the best, and in others the worst, of my life. We were lucky to be retired with our health and enough curiosity about the world to seek out new experiences. My husband deepened his avocation for painting, and I became more serious about my writing. Best of all, we became grandparents, which gave us the gift of seeing life through fresh young eyes. But the worst of that time, the pain that never goes away, was losing a daughter to cancer. She never reached her 20,000th dieversary.

Before my 30,000th, I became a widow. I was married for 20,393 days. Time felt endless during my married life. This was my family — wouldn’t it be like this forever? But since becoming a widow, life seems like a mere blip. Weeks fly by. Here it is, Saturday again already. The timer is running, and the days are ticking off.

I shall reach 31,000 on August 10th, 2026, when I’ll be about to embark with friends on a train trip across Western Canada. The adventure is in progress but not endless. We must pay attention.