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Seven years in the Sunshine State and I have had to let go of a lot of friends. Some for Floridian-level reasons, but many, given the again state, to time and nature.

It’s not unheard of to be hanging around with friends in their 40s, 50s and 60s and feel like we’re the young folk of the town. We have a lifetime ahead of us and we know it because it doesn’t take long before your circle of friends include someone in their 90s. And with my small stretch of seven years, I have witnessed aging on many levels.

My partner didn’t age a day in six years. Spending this past year beating cancer…twice, he said he finally felt old. And it showed. Yet, these past few months I have enjoyed him returning to his old self. The younger old self that he was before he went to war with the Big C. It’s been wonderful to see my soldier returning to his strongest self, but there is a pall of PTSD that came with his war. It shows in his face, though in no way is it physical: he brushed a bit too close with his mortality for his comfort. Something in the eyes. He’s been places. Yet, the light is back and he’s most certainly postponed his dotage.

Today, we visited a friend, pushing 90. She lives alone on what used to be acres of land, sold off over the years and now surrounded by million-dollar housing developments, she resides on only a few of those acres now. She and her husband had been in the nursery business. He died decades ago but the remains of their hothouse still stands, albeit bruised from the last few hurricanes. Plants had been left there and unattended due to our friend’s slowing down. She wanted us to take what we could, knowing we both prefer plants and animals to people.

We couldn’t take it all, only what we thought we could care for. Strangler figs had volunteered themselves in a few places. Two of them that were on plant risers had sent roots through the plastic shelving and into the ground two feet below them, ensconced. Most of what we took has almost no dirt left in the pots. Roots having devoured everything they could as they were left to fend for themselves for a few years now.

As we left, she came out onto the balcony. Traversing the stairs would have been too much. She couldn’t talk for but a minute as she wasn’t feeling well. As we drove out, day laborers were scrambled along the edges of her property line adding the most boring of landscaping right up to the line because that’s the landscaping you need to move a million-dollar home in Florida. I’m sure as they grow, they will begin to block out the sun rays to her unique and rare tropical plants, just on the other side of the line. Progress.

We joke that she went from zero to Maxine (the greeting card icon) in just a few months, because (1) it’s true and (2) we want to distract ourselves from the conversations about her rapid decline. We all get there at some point if we don’t manage to check out too soon. Yet, septuagenarian that she is, she managed to stop drinking, cold turkey and no programs, about three months ago. Her decline stopped and her biggest ill right now is sinuses. She remains frail and cautious, but she’s more coherent and happier than I’ve seen her in years.

On other fronts, I met a pair in their 90s just yesterday. It was like watching a couple from the 1960s, but with more modern clothing and moving in slow motion. When you live in Florida, you know a lot of old people. Odd to me is when I think about how much more I know about what they’re going through than their own families, even though I may see these people only once every month or two.

Which led me to my “hmm” moment of the day: Books on aging? You couldn’t cover it in an encyclopedia, even if we still had those things (like they did back in my day). It’s subtle and it’s not. It’s terrifying and it’s beautiful. And there are so many nuances to it, particularly when you look at one persons experience and compare it to another. Like my friend Richard, 98. He walks a mile every day, now with a walker, and shows up at every event they have at the residential community where he lives and when the event is over, he’s the one putting up the chairs–usually because he helped set up the room to begin with because for the last 98 years, that’s been a thing: showing up early.

I try to learn what I can from each of these people, if I am to honor them as friends. Maxine reminds me that I need to take care of myself first. But if I want to stay young, I need to show up early.