The years between us.

As we grow older, we start to see aging differently. What once felt like the slow fade of youth begins to look more like an opening—a time rich with clarity, depth, and choice. At Furthermore, we often talk about how this chapter of life isn’t about decline; it’s about design. It’s about how we care for ourselves, what we make room for, and the stories we’re still writing.

That shift in perspective—how we see age, health, and time—is what came to mind during a conversation I had with my mom recently.

Mom and I were reminiscing about my dad. I asked her how old he’d be now if he were still alive. When she told me, I did the math—and for the first time, it landed differently. He was only sixty-five when he died.

All these years, I had never thought of his death in the context of age. To me, back then, he just seemed… old. Worn out. Tired in a way that made his passing feel—if not expected—at least appropriate somehow.

But twenty years have a way of shifting your perspective.

Because now, I’m not much younger than he was when he left us. And I see sixty-five in a new light.

I used to think of sixty-five as “old.” Now, it feels like the beginning of something richer—a season of wisdom, clarity, and hard-earned self-understanding. The kind of age that has stories to tell and plans still worth making.

Which makes his death feel so much more tragic now. Not just because he was gone too soon, but because I can finally see how much life there still was to live.

These days, I find myself mourning him differently. Not as a daughter who lost her father, but as a contemporary—someone who understands the exhaustion, the striving, the private doubts he must have carried. With age comes empathy. And with empathy, a softer kind of grief.

I wish he had taken better care of himself. Maybe a few extra years—just a handful—would have given us more time. More conversations. More shared laughter and small, ordinary moments that now feel like treasures we never got to collect.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how perspective stretches with time? What once felt inevitable now feels like a choice he never got to make. And I find myself wishing, not for a different ending, but for all the quiet, beautiful chapters we could’ve written together—if only there had been more time.