13
May
Didn’t write the JNY update I wanted for today, so here’s one from the archives to make up for the missing post.
I am aged. I have known it for quite some time, but it has only occurred to me now to put it down into writing. My mind is not so clear as it was in the days before, and it has taken me longer to frame these words than I would have liked. Still, I felt it imperative that I pass them down to those who would come after, as a word of warning and a word of council.
And please, do not speak false platitudes to my face. I am old, and I know it in no uncertain terms. The first blush of childhood is merely memory for me, while the robust good health of youth resonates only as a pleasant dream. Even the compliance and comfort of advanced middle age is denied to one such as I. It is apparent in my very skin and bones, for they are mottled and loose, hanging where they once stood firm. Thin and frail muscles now command the body of what was once an expert swimmer, and hair that was the pride of my ladyfriends is grey and straggly, and most has long since departed my pate.
As you can tell, I have lost nearly everything, and, although I put these words to the paper with good form and proper diction, it has taken me longer than it would have even five years ago, both because of the physical act of grasping the pen, and the trouble that I take to shape the words. My mind is still active and healthy, but it is declining, and the lucidity is gnawed upon at the edges of the day, slowly shrinking as it takes longer and longer for me to fully arise and come to my senses. There is a suspicion of Alzheimer’s from my doctor, but I tell him it does not matter. At this age, time will claim my body well before that particular disease can claim my mind, and so I do not worry, although I do regret the loss of the memories I make today. I will not be able to hold and cherish them as I would those of five or ten years in the past, ones that are firmly rooted in my head.
That is what they do not tell you about old age, and the blessing and the curse that comes with it. Everyone knows of the body becoming weak and the mind slowly failing, but there is one, and only one, aspect of life that grows sharper and clearer with each passing day. Where once I would have struggled to remember what I had done some two weeks in the past at a particularly exciting dance, I can now recall the events of that evening with perfect clarity, down to the names and the faces of the women with whom I danced.
Unfortunately, this holds equally as true for the days that were bad as the days that were good, and often those that were bad are the ones that spring most readily to memory in a quiet time of contemplation. I can remember the dances that I loved, but I can also remember the sicknesses, the illnesses, the losses of kith and kin. It is a gruesome joke, but I tell myself I will make an itemized list of everything I have lost, and hand it to St. Paul at the gates as proof that I should be allowed to enter. I can certainly recall them better than he, now. One day, perhaps sooner than I like, I will see myself bandying Tehranian street names with the nurse who stands at the side of my bed. I was there sixty some years ago, and I remember them more clearly than I do the food that I had last night for dinner. That, I cannot name at all.
Still, it has brought back the sweet and dear times that I spent with those that I loved, and I had forgotten far too many of them, forgotten to cherish them as I should have. That is the other gift of the aged, and like the memory, it is a blade that can sooth and sting, perhaps in the same quick pass. I can see what has gone before, and realize what I did not do, and should have done, and what I did do, and what I should not have done. But I push that aside, and concentrate on the good things, the pleasant things, that reside still within my memory. The present offers me little, for I am old, alone, with my wife departed and my children scattered across the globe in pursuit of their own lives, and so most days are spent between me and my memory, where they still live, little children seeing the ocean for the first time, dancing and bouncing along a damp sandy spit, too young to do anything but enjoy the scene before them. I think I appreciate that more now than I did then. Or take the time I took my daughter’s hand and marched her down the isle to see her groom, who blushed well more than she did at the ceremony. They are still together, and doing well, and from their last letter, not only am I a grandfather, but I am soon to be a great-grandfather. That news will stay with me, and will not be lost into the ravages of an aged mind, I tell you. I must have them up soon after the child is born, even. There are a few privileges that are bequeathed to those of ancient form, and I take full advantage of them.
As you can see, my mind has already begun to wander a little from the topic of memory that had been the purpose of this epistle, and to force it back to the course would take enough out of me that I would not truly recover the skien of thought. I shall just admonish those who read this letter to think carefully on what it says and what it contains, and to wish me well, wherever I may be.
I bid you adieu, and I go now to seal this with my will.
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