Don't ever get old

Good morning

If I could add a year to my life for every time I've been told never to get old, I wouldn't have to worry about it. As it is, I think I do need to worry about it, because it is obvious that no one who gets old wants to be old. In fact, most of them despise themselves and what they have become. I think my new heros in life are people who aren't in denial about being old and who can go through what may be the hardest phase of all with grace. It gives me congestive heart failure to think of a whole lifetime of disappointments, grief, and general disillusionnment remembered. There is escape in senility. However, sometimes I wonder if the characters we have when we are old weren't always there, lurking behind convention and hope. I guess I've been thinking lately that discipline now in how I handle the small struggles of my daily life will only make for a healthy old age, assuming I make it there.

So I just got home from a night shift. Probably 11 of my 16 patients are passively dying ( as in it will take a few weeks yet) and either anxious to get there, oblivious and/or in denial. Others will go home for a few months or a year and then they will get tired of fighting their bodies for every breath, come back and give up. At some point, every one of them will look as us who are young, and tell us never to get old.

Good night.