Let me say right off the Get-Go, I\u2019m no spring chicken, although my behavior might lead folks to think I\u2019m in late-stage adolescence. I never went through a mid-life crisis, never left the mizzus for a college intern, didn\u2019t buy a sports car and never thought I should\u2019ve gotten a career \u2026 or even a job. In other words, I feel young.<\/p>\n
Or at least did until these past few months, and no, it wasn\u2019t Covid that made my bones feel brittle and my mind sort of squishy, it was all the folks around me who have cancers and aneurisms and busted appendixes and chronic back pains and diabetes and bi-polar disorders. For the first time in my 71 years on this planet, folks I know are dying, some younger than me, most through no fault of their own, just bad luck, crummy genes, who knows? Something in the water, toxins in the house, crap in the air, don\u2019t ask me, I\u2019m not a doctor and you couldn\u2019t pay me to play one on TV.<\/p>\n
But \u2026 mortality sits perched on my shoulder these past few months, a black crow or a shadow of one, a dark daily companion right out of Poe, hard to shake, impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
I just put my 98 year old father into an assisted living complex. Hard to feel bad for a guy who\u2019s about to hit the century mark \u2026 unless you\u2019re one of those who want to live forever. All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Quality of life diminishes a bit for the Methuselahs of this world. Volunteer at one of these places and see if you still want extended longevity when you piss 200 times a day and you eat more meds than food. Me, I\u2019ll pack it in when the check-out time arrives and the maid needs to change the bedding for the next guest.<\/p>\n
Not to sound morose, mind you, just that we all have a Best By date and I\u2019m okay with that. But dammit, these early birds leaving lately, well, it\u2019s a phase of life, apparently, that\u2019s here to stay. Maybe I should consider that sports car after all\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let me say right off the Get-Go, I\u2019m no spring chicken, although my behavior might lead folks to think I\u2019m in late-stage adolescence. I never went through a mid-life crisis, never left the mizzus for a college intern, didn\u2019t buy a sports car and never thought I should\u2019ve gotten a career \u2026 or even a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3822,3823,3824],"class_list":["post-14387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-growing-old","tag-late-life-crisis","tag-mortality-made-e-z"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14388,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14387\/revisions\/14388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}