On aging

I am 67 years old. I don't feel old, but each month it seems that I know someone else who is now dead, and I don't like that at all.

I'm all out of uncles and aunts. The ranks of cousins are slowly diminishing, and parents are long gone. High school classmates are going, and friends from Air Force days are dying - some older than I, and some not.

I guess my uncle's death got to me more than I realized. I knew he was old and had lived longer than anyone expected, but it was still a shock to know that he was gone - particularly a few days after talking to my wife about taking time for a trip to California to visit him, deciding that I had to do it before the year ended. In the past year I have sung at more funerals than in the five years that came before this past year - and it is a trend that disturbs me greatly. The only up side is that none have been for any of my kids....

As I was riding my motorcycle in to work this morning, I was thinking about my next high school class reunion, which is being organized now and should occur next year sometime - and it will be our 50th. I don't want to miss it, and I hope that we get a really good turnout. I volunteered many years ago to get a database of the members going, and have located a good number who were missing - but there are still ten or fifteen members that nobody has seen since graduation - and nobody knows if they are alive or dead.

The motorcycle seems to give me time to think about stuff that just never comes to mind when I am elsewhere. I'm glad I still have one and happy still to be able to ride it and hold it up, although I've reached the age where it is really hard to pick up if it is laying on the ground. I hope I can continue to ride for more years - it's almost the only solitude left to me, and gives more pleasure than I can explain, and I don't know why, because I go to work the same way whether in the car or on the bike - but on the bike I arrive more cheerful and relaxed.

I digress - it's late and my brain wants to shut down. I think my own mortality is beginning to impinge upon my sense of self. I mean, I know we all have to go sometime, and I am sure if my health goes to hell in a big way I would prefer to be gone rather than to stay around and use up resources and space - but I am still working full time and no way ready to consider that that might be all there is. There are too many places I've not seen, too many interesting people I've not met, and too many memories neither written nor shared, and, of course, too many amends unmade. I guess maybe I am getting old, but I sure don't have to like it, and I don't.

Maybe I ought to just hang it up and go to bed for today. Tomorrow is another day, there should be no rain, so I can motorcycle tomorrow, too, and I'll feel better when I've done that. So I'm gonna take this train of thought and stuff it under a pillow, get on my CPAP mask, and sleep.

G'nite, all.