Obsessions...16 12 5 (8) 25 2 20

My obsession with aging...16 12 4

Today is my maternal Grandfather’s, B’s, birthday when he would have broken all records by living to 133, born as he was in 1883 he has been much in my thoughts lately because of a portrait I took with a self-timer on my camera of his daughter my mother A, 45, my brother J, 21, my sister M, 15 and yours truly 19½ when he visited my home in 1959 just after my return from a 6-week tour of France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy camping and hitch-hiking and when I was probably sporting the most intense sun-tan of my life.

It followed the winter in which his wife my grandmother AA died aged 73.

Of course the three siblings herein referred to are now in their 70s, the youngest member the same age as her grandmother when she died but maybe with a big helping hand from modern medicine and the advances in the medical sciences may each continue to outlive the majority of the people from this older generation? Certainly our mother has made a good start by living beyond her 90^th birthday and so far all three of the next generation have surpassed all but our maternal grandfather who exceptionally survived into his 80s in these the longevity stakes..?

So each time I visit my wife’s bathroom where I installed one of those revolving mirrors with normal no magnification in one position but swivel it over through 180 degrees and the other side magnifies the image displayed so one needn’t wear spectacles to inspect one’s reflected face which I closely examine to see whether my nose is becoming bulbous as my grandfather’s did, or whether my ears are getting much much bigger, and so far despite being over a year older than he was when the picture was taken I have to compliment myself for not displaying these features that I ascribe to the aging process, not yet anyway…

He still has dark hair however albeit it rather thinly displayed but without any baldness whilst in the past 10 years my own hair has begun to grey… My brother my mother and my sister all began to grey more than 40 years ago as I am sure I have mentioned before in these blogs and so it could be argued it is only a recent departure for my aging body to begin to display signs of wear and tear..?

Earlier there were other signs of encroaching old age and for many years whenever we visited my brother J and his wife M I would joke about J looking like sh*t because of his white hair but then I would add but J is young inside: just look in his mouth for example to see a perfect set of teeth whereas me, well again I’m in danger of repeating myself…hahaha.

Well a little more than a year ago whilst visiting Scotland for one of my many hill walking trips I met this young lady only recently left school and doing a job not unlike a job I had done myself in my early 20s, and we became f-b friends with the idea that one day we might meet again in the same part of Scotland and maybe go on a hill walk together? After the winter however she wrote to me to tell me she had developed rheumatoid arthritis and wouldn’t now be returning to her autumn job which took her into the hills, though of course she expressed the hope she would recover and maybe manage to go anyway, and renew all her friendships there..? So we continued to remain friends and exchanged the odd word of greeting and also the odd pic because we also shared an interest in photography too. Then her messages became less frequent and eventually stopped, at the same time unfriending me, perhaps coinciding with getting and a new job working in a pub and making a good many new friends on f-b as befits the younger generation? Then when I took a look at old B my grandad with his enlarged ears and nose I get to thinking: impossible to imagine him making friends with someone a quarter his age and going hill walking with them but then it hasn’t happened to me either but these things are just some of the trivia that contribute and add up to a growing obsession with the aging process..? Have a good day everyone as I hope you too one day live long enough to obsess about the aging process..? hahaha   

My obsession with aging...16 12 5
And still pegging on as the Lancashire Mill-girl's expression to do with still being here all these years later...and because I'm still occasionally getting re-read re-posting old blogs in this new place on blogspot.com too busy to continue at the rate this blog was first published 8 yrs ago.