Note To Self; Don't Get...Arrgghh!!!

How many times has the comment "Note to self; don't get old" been spoken? Either by you or by some other elderly dude/dudette?

In fact if you are over 65 (heck, over 55) you have begun to notice odd little things that never bothered you before.

Like intriguing aches and pains suddenly rear up and bite you in places you thought were safe from harm.
Liver spots once condemned by you as icky and ugly on others now bloom with ease on your skin.

Eeee-you!!!

Or when you notice for the first time that your hands look like the hands of an old person.
What the heck!

Oh yes. Lest we forget (something else we do on an hourly basis), as we age, our peers appear very old and wrinkly.
Except us, of course.

What a joke we play on ourselves. And we never see it coming.

Speaking of which. I am reminded of a Far Side cartoon. Of course that in itself is a conundrum. Many things remind me of a Far Side cartoon.

However, what I wish to discuss is the odd manifestation of thoughts and memories of our life.

Places and things we had forgotten suddenly come easily.

In the morning as I lie in bed, not fully awake and still wearing that "Darth Vader" CPAP mask. I think, only briefly, that it's sixty-five years ago in my attic room in Wilmington Vt. I sense the stairway in a place where it shouldn't and a window that drifts through the frosted distance of time.

Music wrenches at my being as I hear my mother, dead now these many years, singing "Marzey Doats".
Strange. Very strange.

If I slumber in my recliner during the day and suddenly awake, all my colors are suddenly monochromatic. Usually shades of green. But only for a few moments.

Or if the family gets together, our children  perhaps, (although I'm not certain about this) will discuss the "old folks" when my wife and I leave the room for a moment. Of course she is ten years my junior....but still.

Our children. Grandchildren. Their significant others from years ago.

Memories, names of people you thought were lost forever in that vast jumble of a lumber room we call our minds, suddenly pop up with ease and greet you with vitality.

My God.

Mrs Perkins from 20 Monroe St. where you lived in Concord NH. seventy years ago. And whose large body caused a wooden chair in our house to splinter as she sat down to a visit with my mother and I.

She fainted, and my mother, ever the nurse, asked me so calmly to fetch a glass of water while she gently helped her up.
Why would I suddenly remember a name from decades past and forget the name of someone I met only a few moments ago?

I also find myself checking over some ridiculous thing on the internet with the heading. "How To Know If You Are The First Stages Of Alzheimer's Disease"

And cancer. That disease that shows no partiality. Every time I feel a twinge or behold a lump. my concern goes into overdrive.

I also sense that computers and electronic gizmos and folks calling from Pakistan to let us know there is something wrong with our computer are playing us false.

Sharp as a tack?
You bet.

Hate getting old?
You bet. But what you gonna do?