PATCH, PATCH, PATCH

Patch, patch, patch! That's all you can count on in these latter years of our lives. My little sweetie had to have a capped tooth pulled today and will be needing a small partial to fill in similar to the big one I have on my lower jaw. She's having to use the pain pills she was given and won't be eating anything too hard for a few days.

That shadow of the former me gets longer and darker as time goes on. I'm seeing my father's fading very personally now. We all know it's going to come, but it's still shocking as it creeps up on us. I know that a couple generations previously, Phyllis woud already have departed just due to her heart condition. Modern medicine brought that under control and it's helping me stave off the inevitable too. Still, there's only so much that can be treated and thwarted. I'm sure Shirley Temple Black had medical care second to none, but she's gone and she was only six years my senior.

I'm not really fearful, just resigned. Overall, it's been an OK ride, at least for the past 4 decades. No deep regrets either. I feel I did acceptably well considering the hand I was dealt and some of the dumb ways I played it early on. Of course, in hindsight, I could have done better numerous times, and I'm sure Shirley would have said the same thing. It's futile to dwell on that.

I like Truman's quote of the old tombstone which said, "Here lies ____. He done his damnedest." Whoever scatters my ashes can say something like that about me.

AGE -- IT WHIPS YOU

Age! It's something I've grown accustomed to but my attitude toward it has shifted. Really, it's made a one hundred eighty degree turn!

When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to become an adult. The thought was magical in itself. I chafed all the time between 18 and 21, waiting to be free to follow my new found religious fanaticism and immediately hauled my rear end off to Pasadena and enrolled in Ambassador College. Nearly twenty years later, that all came crashing down around my ears. My marriage ended a short time later.

I eventually found my way into a new career and the independence of being self-employed, remarried, moved to Arizona. The whiplash-like changes of direction in my life kept on until I'm now here in Cottonwood, semi-retired and still evolving.

Now, with the end approaching, I have an entirely different view of accumulating years and, especially, the physical effects. What energy I used to have! I had a long stride and was so full of dynamic energy that people huffed and puffed to keep up with me on a walk. Stairs and escalators were too slow! I walked up escalators and ran up stairs. Quite a contrast to how I shuffle along now and guard against things like steep slopes that could cause me to lose my balance. I now love elevators. So far, I don't need a cane, and I cringe at the thought of a walker, but I know that if I live long enough, both are in my future.

I tried hormone replacement to reverse the trend. Didn't work and was costing a mint. My body now converts much of any testosterone I do get into a female hormone, and it takes a special expensive drug to reverse that, and who knows what damages that drug is really doing to the body? Not a real problem as there is very little testosterone to convert, but it may contribute to less skin aging than many other men seem to experience at my age.

Unlike in my youth when aging was anxiously yearned for, I now wish I could find a viable way to turn back the clock to the bull of a man I used to be. I remember exactly when the dramatically noticeable energy decline set in. It was my 58th year. I had all my life been so uptight with energy that I constantly chewed my fingernails to a nub. It all ended that year, and I haven't been a nail gnawer since.

It's now twenty years later and I'm content to sit for hours and basically do very little physically. The intensity has ebbed. Love is still there, but not the old physical passion.

I try to take it all philosophically and realize I'm much luckier than many others my age -- many of whom are no longer among the living. Others have very debilitating health conditions from which I have so far been spared. I'd like to fight back and whip the enemy, but this old fighter knows when he's outflanked, outgunned and out everything else.

So, I'll just take life in the best stride I can muster, but I do wish there were some way to make that clock run a little slower. Funny thing. It sure seemed to way back then.

SO SOON OLD

I was very young.  So young I don't know when it was that I first heard the famous saying attributed to an old German, "So soon old undt so late schmart."

How true that famous saying is! 

I turned 78 in the wee morning hours of October 10.  It's been a long and stormy journey from that inauspicious beginning in the guest bedroom of my grandparent's home out there on those wide-open North Dakota plains.  It's had it's joys and fulfillments and it's pains, turmoil and sorrows. 

I've known the bursting energy and forever optimistic soarings and passion of hormone-fired youth.  I've also known the insecurity of aged legs that feel insecure on a downhill slope and have wondered, "where did all that testosterone get off to." 

I've known the despair of having a career come to a crashing end along with a marriage to which I had given my utmost dedication and faithfulness.  I've experienced the overwhelming joys of second and third loves.  In addition to divorce, I've known widowerhood after several years of marital separation. 

I've experienced soaring joy and devastating depression.  I've known lack and the joy of financial prosperity brought about by my own dedicated labor. 

I've known so many things, so many emotion-filled tumultuous times.

Mine is a unique story mainly meaningful only to me, but so like what every other human faces and goes through on this journey we call "life."  The details of each life are different, but we all travel a similar path. 

We start out with a wail as we are suddenly thrust forth into this strange, cold and insecure realm.  We travel our path and experience what comes our way and what we bring upon ourselves.  And, every day, the end draws more nigh.  The days become even more precious, and often we even reflect on what could have been but wasn't.

The "soon old" has arrived. 

The "schmart?" I hope so.