Monday, February 22, 2016

A Gift

Getting old is a gift.

I have to keep saying that or else I'm an ungrateful dick. I know of a half dozen people who didn't get to see their 25th birthday so why should I get to bitch and moan about getting older? Only if I were a dick.

But just between you and me, my birthday has come and gone and I dislike it more and more every year. My eyes look more tired and more sad, birthday cake tastes less delicious and the aforementioned people fade away a little more. 

I am grateful. The sky is beautiful tonight and this hot chocolate rocks and I didn't have to work today. But my mind goes back to a documentary about WW2.

A man in his 90's was talking about his ship sinking, about all the young men who drowned inside and those that would die from exposure outside. He spoke about friends who he hadn't seen or talked to in 70 years. Yet, he cried like it was yesterday. 

You never get over it.

It never goes away.

And I will might be lucky enough to be an old woman surrounded by that feeling and the ghosts of 70 years.

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