Growing old - not so gracefully!

  Growing old. is easy.  All you have to do is stick around for long enough.

  As the list of my friends and acquaintances thin out, I become increasingly aware of the fact that I am not growing old, I achieved that status years ago, I am growing ancient.   Not bad considering the genetic hand I was dealt.  My siblings too are beating the odds and my wife who is the same age as me continues a full range of household and a not so full range of other activities.  So I have nothing to complain about.   I really never realized I was getting old.  Denial is a potent therapy when used wisely and on occasion it serves quite as well as placebo.   It is not for everyone but it has served me well through real and imaginary crises.
   However, there are certain things that cannot be denied.  That my daughter will soon be getting what we crassly used to call 'the old age pension'.  That I sometimes have to work hard to maintain a look of casual insouciance keeping up with youngsters at the mall.  That schlepping myself out of an armchair I sometimes hear myself making, what I call, 'an old man grunt'. (You know what that is if you are getting your pension). That I'm not quite as smart as I think I used to be!
   Nineteen thirty-five, the year I was born was quite a year.  The world got Monopoly, a game people still play, as well as Shirley Temple dancing with Bo Jangles Robinson and Benny Goodman playing Blue Moon, the top of the hit list. (I still know all the words - it's only the important things I forget!)
   Aubie Blake, the great jazz musician said on reaching ninety, "if I knew I was going to live this long I'd have looked after myself better."  I know what he meant.
   Many years ago while making my hospital rounds I asked an older patient how he was doing.  "Great Doc" he responded.  "I've got the system beat" I asked him what he meant.  " I'm too old to die young," he grinned.
   I let my dentist who has been a friend of mine for twenty years but whose age is nearer my son's age than mine take me out for lunch every now and again.  I figure it's the least he can do in lieu of the vast amount I have invested in him over the years.  He has re-built almost every tooth in my head- painlessly (almost).  As we chatted and I happened to mention a very close friend who bit the dust not too long ago he commented, "Yes, most of your friends must have passed away by now".
   "Yes," I answered appropriately gravely and just so he wouldn't feel too comfortable I added, "even some of my younger ones."
   For years friends - and others, have been cautioning me that one should live every day as though 'tomorrow we die'.  I tell  them not to be so absurd, that thinking like that kills people.  In fact, I live each day as though as though I am going to live forever.  I might just succeed, but if I don't, I'll be the last person to know about it.