A simile for old age..? 18 9 3 (12) 25 2 1

As someone hung up on the idea of aging I have long thought that my simile for old age should be something like "In the (white) Winter of my Islands" since autumn had characterised my background pic for F-book this last 5 to 10 years and when of late I have had to acknowledge it is getting a bit old hat, as increasingly my life is less robust now than it was before, and because in a good winter hereabouts I get to walk over frozen sea ice to our nearest off-shore islands, as was the case this last winter when for example I spent 8 days in March searching the same stretch of sea-ice because I had dropped my smart phone there, and when on the eighth day I was ready to give up the search I came across an old lady who had just found a phone, my phone..!?   

But in the light of stuff I have been writing lately like for example as described in my last blog on this site, I have had to think I am still a long way from white being the dominant colour to characterise my old age and that perhaps "My Grey Days" would be more appropriate?

Of course ageism kicks in when people’s appearance changes for the worse, and I believe we are all guilty of the thing that seeing people get older is a turn-off for all of us, we all too often forget about the many exceptions to this rule of thumb, and as I explained in my last blog I had to concede myself to being surprized how for example and the expansivity of my bladder only improved the more water I drank before going to bed thus having to change my view that its apparent lack of expansivity was only myth.

Another example which comes to mind concerns the 106 year old Roberta McCain, mother of the fallen Vietnam War hero Senator and one time Presidential candidate John McCain, and her visit to Europe in the mid 00’s when she was refused a car-hire because of her advanced years, when instead she simply bought a car over there… hahaha (On the occasion of the Senator’s lying in state in the Washington Capitol it was nice also to hear that among the tributes to this great American it was said that “It isn’t necessary to make America great again because America has always been great in the things that matter!”)

What I have had to think about my own personal aging process is that this past 10 years, since I retired, my once dark brown locks have turned more grey than black and it shows in the faces of people whom I get to meet along life’s journey, though it is also as well to reflect on some of the positive signs too. Like for example aged 62 in 2002 I was almost swept away with a coronary heart attack, which to my question waking up in the Intensive Care unit of our nearest hospital next morning, “Was it a small one?” the answer from the doctor attending me said unambiguously “No!”. So there followed bypass surgery when a little used chest artery was re-routed to my heart to bypass blocked bits of coronary arteries, plus a length of artery from my left leg was taken to graft new artery bypasses to other sections of blocked artery, to the extent that I feel today something akin to being reborn with all these new bits, and the replacement therapy doesn’t stop there: each day when I awake these days my first job ½ hour before doing anything else is to take a dose of thyroxin, because my thyroid gland has become lazy and no longer produces sufficient thyroxin to meet my body’s needs, and so on, and so on..?

So if William Shakespeare who died aged 52 was able to cram all his seven ages of man into 52 years, its being said the average age at death for his contempories was in their thirties, it is clear that modern day men and women are living longer because of better nutrition and better medical treatments, not to mention the contributors I have enumerated to do with my own longevity. Together with other factors too perhaps?