Joe Bowyer
July 18, 2008 07:40 pm
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Growing old means different things to different people. To some, it means retiring from work and taking a well earned rest from getting up every day and going to work. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Often people find they can’t get along on their retirement and have to have part-time work to make extra money. Others can’t stand the idleness after a time and look for part-time work to occupy themselves.
Nothing is certain, and in old age, we find ourselves more vulnerable than when we were young, and things go wrong. Rheumatism or arthritis often creeps into our joints, and takes away our strength and mobility. We develop aches and pains here and there, and it seems we spend a lot more time at the doctor’s office. The doctor in turn gives us prescriptions for pills which we are obliged to carry with us to take at certain times during the day. If we ever had any idea that old age was when our worries would be over and fun would just stick to us like glue, well, we were soon disillusioned.
Some say that growing old is a state of mind, and that you are only as old as you think you are. That is a lie, because if you act like a young person when you are over the hill, they will call you an old fool. When you get old, you are going to step out of bed one morning, and when your foot hits the floor, it’s going to hurt. Yes, and if you haven’t forgotten, it’s the same foot that got a cramp in it the night before when you stretched it to relax. Oh yes, and those golden years only look that way because you are developing cataracts, but don’t worry, they are easy to fix nowadays.
But don’t get me wrong here, there is fun to be had in old age. It just doesn’t come around quite as often as it used to, and it doesn’t come from the same places, because your spouse is getting old right with you. It’s helpful to have friends to play euchre or pinochle with, because that’s not too strenuous.
Old age does have its good points, though, if you can still remember the good times you enjoyed as you meandered through life to the point where you now stand. I look back with laughter on the time my brother, Garth, tried to knock my dad’s hat off with a green plumb and missed. It wasn’t funny to Garth at the time, but even he laughed about it later. My brother and I enjoyed many memories together before he passed away. I miss him a lot, but Garth and I got along as brothers should, so there are no regrets, only very pleasant memories. Many of them so funny even now when I have to remember them alone.
Old age is a good time to look back over your life and take stock of what you have done. All of us have done things we wish we could undo. I know I have. If only we could have the wisdom in youth that we now possess, how differently we would live our lives. By now, we all know what it is to lose. We know what it is to be lonely, what it is to want something we can’t have. I look back at my high school days and remember the girls that weren’t so pretty as the others. No one took them to the movies or the county fair. I am sorry for that. Too bad we didn’t know that when the right one came along it would be like getting hit by a bowling ball. Then we would have hopefully taken some of the girls out who didn’t get to have the fun the prettier ones did, knowing those pretty ones weren’t for us anyway, no matter how bad we thought we wanted them at the time. I still don’t know how Janie settled on me the way she shops around when buying something.
In old age we have many to remember who have gone before us. Friends and relatives we loved and long to see again. In youth, death is a terrible thing, and in a perfect world, everyone would be allowed to live their lives to maturity. Unfortunately some are not allowed to. This is always tragic, and I had friends who were lost in their youth. time when we think about reunion with them.
Most older people have no fear of death. They fear being left alone, they fear losing their memories, or even perhaps their minds. There are many things to them that are worse than death. The older people get, the better friend death becomes, and the more we realize how truly short the life that once seemed so long as it stretched out before us has been.
Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com
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