.....As the great Mark Twain said... "Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." Well, that is a very nice sentiment, and I'd like it to be true in my case. But at the present time, I do not have an undertaker. So, I suppose I'll have to go and find one and make a friend of him--or her. Then there is a chance that it will help to confirm Twain's advice. The other thing is that there is no point in having an undertaker without your having lived so that he'll (she'll) be sorry you have gone. Twain does not explain the kind of living he has in mind. I don't think Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer meet the criteria. And I'm not sure that I do. Besides, I'm not going to be taken "under" when I have completed my allotted time in this world; I'm going to be taken "over"--that is, I'll be taken and and laid to rest in a wall. I could use the rest. I gather that it's an attempt by the funeral home to emulate the Kings of Egypt who were "buried" in a pyramid. However, in my case, I'm not a king, merely a Baron.
.....It's been 30 years since I retired, and at the moment I don't feel any different from that day. I know that I am 30 years older, but I have had my wife as a companion since then who keeps me feeling younger. If I did not have the physical ailments that require my using a cane or, at times, a walker, I could still be playing golf and running marathons. But those days are over. Nevertheless, I don't feel that I've "aged". The real sign that you have aged is that your toupee has turned grey. But, thankfully, I don't own one, and my hair has not turned grey. My problems are that I broke both hips and I'm dragging around a pacemaker. These do not prevent me from doing xword puzzles or from writing a blog for the last five years, or for unjumbling the Jumble in the newspaper. Other signs of aging are that one does not own an ipad, or an iphone, and you have no idea what an "app" is. My white Malibu is 12 years old and has not changed color; I still drive it, and I've yet to be told not to. When the time arrives that my keys have to be taken away, it will be done with me kicking and screaming.
Dear Baron, I don't want to seem unsympathetic, but you're not the first to undergo the trials and humiliations of old age, and regrettably you won't be the last. You're lucky that your mind's unaffected!! Think of the poor people with Alzheimer's, what they and their relatives go through. And I don't think that Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) is a good model for us all. His ending wasn't due to old age, but due to being murdered "avec un piolet" (with an icepick) at the behest of his appalling ex-Comrade Josip Djugashvili, aka Stalin. Don't waste any sympathy on Trotsky, however: with murderous ferocity he put down an entirely reasonable revolt by sailors at Kronstadt, mm, in the 1920s, I think it was. Maybe a little later.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, my sympathy and support in your trials, but the human body (or so my son the surgeon says) was not designed to last 80 years or more.
Much love, Cuzzin Ruth