You should probably have some kind of answer ready and waiting.
Because, sooner or later, if it hasn’t already happened to you, someone is going to ask the question.
How does it feel to get old?
I first heard it around the time I turned fifty.
And it was asked more as a curiosity at the time, as opposed to being any kind of impugning of my ever-increasing chronological resume.
Age, like death, is just one of those things in life that both frighten and fascinate us.
Death, of the two, of course, removing any further need to worry about getting older.
Far as I know.
The spiritual jury is still out on that one.
What I discovered, the first time the question was asked of me, was that I was a little surprised.
First, I realized that I hadn’t really thought about it all that much.
We all get older, but we notice it more in the people around us as opposed to the face in the mirror.
What a piece of work we are, able to dream of the future, be in the now and live in denial all at the same time.
Even when the inevitability of age and the certainty of death come at us suddenly, we manage to kick the hockey puck of our lives right back into play with an instinct that would do Darwin proud.
For example, Tim Russert, the NBC news guy died yesterday.
Heart attack.
He was only 58 (“only”, of course, used in the context of this amusing belief we all cling to that our contracts guarantee us a minimum number of years here on the mortal coil)
And most of us who are aware of who Tim Russert were taken aback at the suddenness of his demise, faced our own mortality for a couple of hours.
And then resumed our concern about how we’re going to be able to afford four dollars a gallon for gasoline without having to give up those impulsive trips to the Safeway to pick up that Hagen Daas we forgot to buy during our weekly grocery chores.
Ob la di, ob la da.
Life goes on…brah.
I can honestly tell you that while my heart really did go out to the Russert family, his passing didn’t really make me feel older.
Again, I’m sure, because there is no set age for death.
So, I have to just assume that Tim simply came to the last page of his chapter in that mystical, yet often misunderstood, best seller…
“God’s Mysterious Plan”.
Meanwhile, back to the question, how does it feel to get old?
As for me, all I can offer is you that, first, it doesn’t FEEL like anything.
Aches and pains, of one sort or another, are around all of our lives.
And gray hair is often found in very young children.
And pot bellies and droopy boobs appear all over the generational spectrum.
What I can tell you is that getting older isn’t so much a matter of feeling things as it is a matter of realizing things.
Like…Ringo Starr will be 68 next month.
What?
Paul Newman is 82?
Are you kidding?
And there’s one other thing you realize, when you realize that you are getting older.
That you are, despite your best promise and effort to avoid, becoming your father or your mother.
Been happening to me now for awhile.
Since about the time I turned fifty.
Here’s today’s example.
Susan Atkins, one of Manson’s “girls” who has been in prison for forty years for killing Sharon Tate and those other folks, has terminal cancer and has asked to be released from prison.
If you had asked me what I thought about it before I became my father, I would have likely pondered and reflected and even shared some bleeding heart bullshit about forgiveness, et al.
Now?
Not so much.
She killed people viciously.
And God knows that Susan is in prison for that crime and that she has terminal cancer.
And it appears, for the moment, that the aforementioned mysterious plan is for Atkins to die in prison.
Before I got older, I would have been inclined to question said plan.
At this point in my life, I’m less inclined to intercede.
I find myself less a crusader and more a believer in God.
Oh…and Marge Simpson.
Who said, “kill ‘em all…and let God sort it out”.
And I really do judge not, lest I be judged.
I just realize that I’m a little older.
And a little wiser.
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