Definitely not for sissies
Getting old. Not since my teens have I felt such angst. At my age, though, I suppose it’s called agita. And whereas people care about adolescent angst and write novels exploring it, old-age agita is a bore for everyone, including the sufferer. There’s the stress of doctor’s appointments and tests, which fill your calendar, as workdays and social events once did, and any of them may foretell the cause of your death. There’s the lost word or name that signals dementia. There’s the anguish over friends who have died and the sorely missed opportunities to be with them. There’s the horrifying knowledge that if you compliment a baby or dog on the street, the owner of that baby or dog receives your words with dread, fearing you may prolong the encounter. There’s the even more horrifying sense that when you talk to your children, whom you love beyond measure and desperately want to connect with, they subtly steel themselves for your inevitably irrelevant or trite or tedious or, worse, overdra