by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

I find that I'm allergic to years ending in the digit "5". It is in those years that I celebrate the decade anniversaries of my birth. The last one that I welcomed with open arms was 1965. Since then, the decade birthdays have been occassions of increasing angst and even outright depression. This year is the worst yet. This year I officially enter the anteroom of old age. This year I will become 20 times as old as my granddaughter. This year I am truly not a happy camper.

So, if there are times when the posting here becomes a little light, attribute it to pure black fugue as I contemplate a suddenly sharp and too fucking close horizon. I look behind me and the past stretches into the mists. I look ahead and realize that planning ahead for 25 years is becoming less and less realistic. I gotta face facts: I'm a type-II diabetic, I'm over weight and I don't exercise nearly enough. Any good actuarial would not give me long odds to make four score, much less my centenial year. Besides, unless I can reach those ages with both mentally and physically intact and functioning, I'm not at all sure I want to live to those ripe old ages.

On my mom's side of the family, her uncle (mother's brother) lived to almost 100, and, until the last few years, he was both mentally and physically spry. Her mom, on the other hand, lived to about ninety (nobody is really sure how old she really was: born in Mexico in the 1800's...record keeping was, at best, spotty...), but the last 15 years or so were lived in a pleasant haze: Senile Dementia as opposed to Alzheimer's. My mom herself has passed eighty (don't anybody breath a hint that I have admitted this much to her) and is sharp as a tack mentally although her physical condition has deteriorated over the past few years (She's given up tennis for bridge, and she moves much slower now...) On my dad's side, his mother lived well into her nineties, but, while she remained sharp as a tack mentally until the very end, she was pretty much immobilized by arthritis for the last 20 years or so.

So, three out of six direct ancestors (one grandfather died of emphysema traceable to asbestos and smoking; one grandfather died of a coronary thrombosis at age 72--he was healthy as a horse: my dad died just shy of 50 in an automobile accident so he doesn't really figure in the database here) and one great-uncle seem to prove that I have a fairly strong genetic heritage as far as longevity is concerned. It is the spectre of losing either/both my mental acuity and/or my physical strength that scares the shit outta me. The thought of becoming a doddering old fool (as opposed to the simple fool that I am now) leaves me thinking that, no matter how one cuts it, getting old basically sucks. If I had my druthers, I druther stay at about the early thirties level until, one day, I simply drop dead. *sigh*

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005