Walking Home
Less than a month ago, I said I needed to stop thinking and talking about my age, that it was just a data point. But I’ve decided as data points go, it’s a fairly significant one, and it might be the thing I need to talk about. After all, this blog, through the twelve years of its existence has largely been about my journey, from Houston to the Hill Country, through a life with dementia, and life after dementia. Life and death. Nature. So, aging feels a part of that. It’s a stage in my journey.
And maybe writing about it will help me be a graceful old man, going gently into the night, because I’d rather not rage against the inevitable dying of the light. I’ve had enough of that. I’d like to go out thinking about the wonders of nature, the joy of music, the pleasure of friends, the company of plants, and trees, and my little cats that once again number four because a stranger came to take the place of one departed.
What got me rethinking this was wanting to tell the tale of what I did yesterday, which was dig in the garden. The digging went well, but my sore shoulder and my sore back restrained my efforts, and that’s a natural part of life, an old body adjusting to the new rhythms. I can still think about the future, and what I want to do, but there’s no denying the obvious. This is the new phase of my life, the one I felt dawning the night I came down from the mountain, after scaling Guadalupe Peak in 2023. It was a long walk up, and long walk down, and now I’m walking home and I’ll write about it.