Birthdays, Aging, Reunions

I turn 58, this coming weekend. While many hitting this age might lament the aging process just a bit more with each successive year, I welcome it. I enjoy growing old. Perhaps the operative word, here, is “growing”. There’s a process involved. One of learning, one of growing comfortable with whom one is, accepting this, celebrating it. There’s a freedom connected to aging that appeals dearly to me that’s akin to what was once felt during my childhood. Only the toys have changed. The times. My knees. It’s not the same era, most certainly. Nor might it be as good a one in many ways – though, perhaps, are those old days better than my present. Things change, pass, fade away with the progression of time. But, just as this occurs, also does something new and exciting present itself, something fresh and promising and life continues. This morning, I’m reflecting on a number of things once dear to me that no longer exist for me as they once did, if at all, now. Places… People… And the people who remain, are they who I remember them to be? No one is – especially the ones who seemed to have not changed at all. They change, pass, fade away. Leaving me with the now and what is to come. I look upon the precipice of it as a kid on Christmas morning, gazing upon the bounty beneath the family tree. Only when time seems to have stood still does that scene wither and my heart, then, sinks. There’s no life to it. It’s a wax tableau vivant in which its performers are dead, a scene reminding its beholder primarily of loss, of what once was but is no more, a symbol of a memory that can only bring pain in its bittersweetness.

“Are you going to the reunion?” I was asked, the other day. Jesus Christ, no.

I once dreamed of finding adventure, of finding love at some point in my life, but I’m beyond those things. I look forward to shit like being able to take advantage of the local seniors’ center in two years. I look forward to easier rides to my ass doctor, chicken and gravy lunches, taking up cribbage. Meeting new old folks with whom I’ll set upon replacing the old young ones lost to time and distance. Regular naps. During one of which I may slip away, losing myself to time as had those departed souls of long ago. Maybe I’ll go on in someone else’s memory, though I hope they let me rest on occasion.