Ready for the baton?

“You can’t be 50 and still be adulting,” I thought. I asked myself whether my parents’ generation had a term similar to adulting or if they just got on with it. By the time they were at this big age, I was getting into adulting, young, anxious and yet ambitious with a crisp degree and trying to build a career for myself.

I’m doing life just the way they did. You take every day with its highs and lows. And if you are past 40, are you surprised how life has just crept onto you? Some of my friends’ kids who were toddlers, just juzi juzi, are now finishing high school or university. I get a lot more shikamoos, and I’m addressed as Uncle Kevin off the bat. The phrase I dreaded as a child when my folks introduced us to their friends is now being directed at me. “This is your uncle. We went to school together!” I cringe when I also find myself saying, “I went to school with your parents,” which has now become an almost constant introduction. My! How have the tables turned?

I’m here now, on the other side of the half-century. It has come with many fun times, memories, milestones, memory lapses, frequent trips to the loo, long-sightedness, questioning, wondering, crossroads and inevitably, grief. For some, this doing life has delivered the aspect of being a caregiver or parenting a parent or two.

I’m fond of using the word ‘seasons’, because it is the most apt word to describe the journey called life and its unpredictable twists and turns, highs and lows, tears and cheers. We, the Generation Xers, are in a season of transition, as we are seeing our parents either dealing with a sickness or also passing on.

This month alone, four individuals in my network are mourning the loss of a parent. I recently lost a dear aunt, and my cousins and I were the uncles and aunts knee-deep in the harakati za kupanga mazishi or deathmin — the planning around bereavement’ as my friend Brooksy calls it.

We are now those aunties and uncles meeting and organising, being called to advise that particular ‘niece or nephew’, using parables and sayings that we may have previously scoffed at, or looking for the flask of tea in addition to the booze and making sure that there is a jacket, hoody or Maasai shuka on standby once the sun sets.

We saw our folks do these things and now find ourselves following suit.

This season of transition dawned on me as soon as I buried my dad three years ago, and I remember looking at my cousin Willy and telling him, “We’ve only just begun.” He answered with a nod that acknowledged the period we had entered. There are now more WhatsApp invitations to funeral planning groups than to wedding committees or for weekend away trips.

However, it is interesting that this season reminds us that we are still someone’s child, even with newly worn, ‘seasoned-ness’. Children see their parents, aunts, and uncles as children. Love and loss are openly being shared intergenerationally. I remember during that recent funeral that I mentioned earlier, one of my nephews came to put their hand around my waist and leaned into me as I cried and reassured me that things would be ok eventually. A few hours later, I offered comfort and hugs to the same young man. Thank you, Gabriel.

As we navigate this season of transition and the tears and cheers that come with the baton being passed on, I can’t help but be grateful to be in this season. Why, you may ask? Because, unlike our parents, we have better tools to deal with its unpredictability and challenges. We are much more cognisant; I’d like to believe we can deal with the challenging emotions and decisions that come with the autumns and springs of life. There are books, podcasts, YouTube videos, posts, support groups or therapists to hold the other hand as we grasp the baton that we are having on the other hand.

We have crossed over into another year, and a season best navigated with honesty, authenticity, vulnerability, kindness, fortitude, care, utu, and, more importantly, love. A love and appreciation for life that has given us a treasure trove full of lessons, memories, moments and new normals.

This season of transition calls for more than adulting. It calls for an appreciation of the baton in the hand and what we can add to it so that those behind us will also be ready to receive it in the way they know best.