Ready For The Urn
Ready for the Urn. It’s a phrase I’ve heard that the kids like to say these days, but I’m gonna be transparent with you, I don’t hang out with many younguns, so the fact that it’s now a stable part of my vocabulary is solely down to my personal love for the phrase.
There’s something to be said for feeling old and decrepit at a saucy 34 years of age. Maybe it’s the fact that I can still use the words ‘saucy’ and ‘decrepit’ in the same sentence. It might also be that I’ve just signed up to the TikTok, and most of the kids on there are doing moves and adventures that cause me to pull a muscle…
…in my thumb from swiping past them so quickly.
When jumping off the couch too quickly means twisting an ankle or pulling a muscle, requiring two weeks of care and restoration, one can start to feel a little worse for the wear. Many times during Summer Camps this past season I threw out the phrase ‘Ready for the urn’ after throwing out a hip or scraping up a knee trying to keep up with cool kids in the Gaga ball pit.
However, there is a freeing side to this phrase that I might be leaning into, and I’m going to share it with you now. By admitting how much closer I am to the urn than other younger and nimbler people, I am also somehow freeing myself from some of the constraints of youth. Doesn’t it seem strange that youth is not all it’s cracked up to be sometimes? Like, yes I would pay for fewer wrinkles and for gravity to not have such a hold on certain undulations, but the maturity and the way I am free to be myself is not something I would give up quickly. In some ways, I would like to stay as close to youth as possible, but in other ways, I’m more than happy to let go of it and see it in the rearview mirror.
The value in this phrase is in how much mental space is freed up when one knows that old age, or even death, is inevitable and in fact, getting closer every day. The people I most admire, and have admired since my teenage years, are the ones who looked death squarely in the eye and weren’t afraid of it. They were truly ready for the urn in the best way possible. They were not hunting it down, but they were also not fearful of it. They had a purpose, they knew that purpose and it took away the sting of death and led them to walk steadily forward, whether to old age or to death.
In that way also, I hope I am also truly ready for the urn.
And hopefully next year I’ll get through the Gaga ball season without needing medical attention.
