Old Age

“Don’t be afraid of old age – it’s a privelege denied to many” – Paraphrasing something I keep reading. I’m old and can’t rightly remember who came up with the quote or where I found it.

While organizing my thoughts this afternoon, I ran across a post on Facebook from an old colleague telling of the death of another colleague and friend from back in the day. And I really mean back in the day.

The recently departed was, in many ways, one of the smartest people I have ever worked with. He had a way with electronics (got him a scholarship to become and electrical engineer), and he had his own little way of making observations no one else could possibly make. For instance, the chief engineer at the radio station where my friend and I worked back in 1974, would purchase a bottle of Pepsi from the station’s vending machine when he began to work on something. My friend noted that the engineer would purchase more Pepsis from the vending machine as the job progressed. Within a month or so of watching that engineer, my friend would estimate how complicated a job would be by the number of bottles of Pepsi the engineer would consume. I can still hear him say that thus and such a job looks like it would be a “Three Bottle Job.”

Anyhoo, my friend is no longer among the living – no longer able to judge how many bottles of Pepsi would be needed to finish a particular job.

Interestingly enough, that friend’s name came up in conversation with a mutual friend less than two weeks ago. The mutual (and still living friend) wondered about the man and what he was up to these days. I told the mutual friend that our friend had “left the building.”

I am to the age when losing old friends is becoming more frequent. I was reminded of the death of one of my best friends to early-onset Alzheimer’s when his widow reminded me of his birthday – and that had he lived, he would be somewhere in his seventies. He barely missed being in his mid-sixties.

The girl living up the street from us when we were in high school was another Alzheimer’s victim. She was a doctor. What a waste.

There was Tim, with whom I shared an enthusiasm for all things automotive. Cancer. Early sixties.

We have all lost someone, a friend, an acquaintance, a family member – and we all mourn those passings to one degree or another. Some we will mourn for years. Others, a month or two tops. Depends a lot on the burden someone’s death places on us. I have friends who have lost children who likely will never recover. Other deaths create barely a ripple in some of our lives.

My friend who passed with Alzheimer’s will be with me for quite some time, I suppose. We were somewhat close. Interestingly enough, it was the man who “left the building” earlier this week who introduced me to the Alzheimer’s victim. I have survived them both and will continue to celebrate being an old fart.

Not many of us have that privelege, you know!

Be Seeing You!