Got up this morning feeling a little battered and bruised after a hard night at work. Flicked the computer on to catch up with the world and immediately read two stories about fellows who had succumbed to heart attacks aged 45 and 47! Gawd. Good morning Starshine. The earth says hello!
I manage to thread the needle between these two men being 46 years old so it was a bit of a sobering way to shake myself awake for the day. The funny thing is, and I’m sure anyone who is around the same age will agree, you find yourself in middle age before you know it, not really being sure how you got here. One day you are young and carefree, fit and able, next you are dodging heart attacks and bowel problems! Hhmm. Time sure does fly.
The jist is that I don’t feel any different to how I did twenty years ago. I do feel I’m more mature. I occasionally say and do stupid things nowadays but it’s but a sliver of the time when compared to my loose mouth of decades ago. Physically, there are a few more aches and pains and perhaps I am just starting to feel the wear and tear on my body a little-I’m certainly not as lithe and agile as days gone by but I ain’t a cripple yet!
Illness and incapacity can strike at any time without warning I know and my doctor, the last time I dared to go, marveled at the fact that I don’t attend the practice very often. That must be a good thing though, right?
A few years back I took a trip to Europe with Linda. I’m a mild history buff and although I had been to Britain and Turkey before I had never been to western Europe. I was getting older of course and the thought had occurred to me that I didn’t want to die without having seen the fields of France and Germany. You never know what the future holds. So, we went in the spring of 2013 and had a great 6 week trip. Of course, two years later Linda is seriously ill with cancer and life was put on hold for a year and for some time in 2015 we were gripped with some uncertainty as to where the road in front of us would lead.Linda is now well thankfully but since then several extended family members have passed away due to cancer and my little world is getting shaken up just a little.
I’ll be 47 in three months. Well on the road to a half century. I can’t believe I’m here. Life is good and I have been very lucky in so many ways and pray it holds for a good 40 or so years yet.
In October 2013 I stood in a military cemetery in a farmer’s field in northern France and gazed upon the headstone belonging to a great uncle I never met. He was 20 years old and died of wounds at a place no-one outside a certain radius has ever heard of. Grevillers, France. I guess there is some nobility in dying for your country but that sort of thing is roundly mocked now particularly by those who lean to the left and lying in a lonely grave in France so young is certainly a waste of what would probably have been a good and fruitful life. But I think I owe it to him and the rest of my family and Linda to live strong and long and we owe it to ourselves to enjoy life to it’s fullest.
I have to go to work today and put in eight long, boring hours but it’s only a means to an end in order to keep living and enjoying my comfortable existence. Don’t take work so seriously. Do what you have to do and embrace the other sixteen hours of the day when you can do something worthwhile.
Embrace life and those you love. Life as you know it could be over in the blink of an eye.
Have fun and take care.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 