You old Influencer!

So I have always loved to read about Socrates from his student Plato.
Socrates was executed (399 years BC) at the old age of 70 for corrupting young minds and being influential.
They sentenced him to death and then made him drink the poisonous hemlock.
He left no written words.  No auto-biography.
What we know about Socrates we have to glean from other people.



Before we think Socrates was unusual in his being a threat ........a threat of influence while  old , think about yourself.  Not Ron Paul.  Yourself.
Are you influential?  Is there anybody out there who wishes to "dismiss you" as old and not with it...or old and out of date.....or out of touch.....or downright stupid?
Is there anybody out there marginalizing you?    If so, you have remained influential.  Good for you!

I'm remembering when my grandparents....all 3 of them...were bit by bit marginalized and "dismissed"  by my parents.  Oh, my parents loved them.....well, they loved their OWN parents, not the other person's parents.... so lack of love wasn't the problem.  The problem was my grandparents were influential without even trying!  And my parents did not want the youth being corrupted by thinking individuals who thought differently than they did!!
So there was a subtle , and sometimes not so subtle, campaign waged against my grandparents' input and influence.  It didn't work but temporarily, just like killing Socrates did not destroy his influence.  I actually think about my grandparents a LOT, now that I am old.  And I remember their words and deeds.  They have shining halo's and my parents' halo's look a little tarnished.  But maybe that is from the beam in my own eye.

My friend Ellen dropped by to see me one day  a few weeks before Christmas a couple of years ago.  She told me there was a crisis in her home.  She and Vernon ( in their  70's)  had received a big box from one on their sons.  This son, she confided, had not spoken to either one of them for 15 years because they had sided with his now ex-wife in the divorce that had taken place.  Now suddenly and without warning, they received a big box from him.  She told me it was still sitting there in the living room unopened because they were afraid to open it for fear it might be a bomb or something.

I think her visit to me was to just alert someone to what may have happened if their home were suddenly leveled with them in it!

Yes, I think the threat of hemlock casts a shadow, even today.

Enjoy your influence, even if nobody else does,
Thanks for visiting,
Riverwatch



PS  Vernon bravely opened the box a couple of weeks later and it was filled with nice presents.  I guess that makes up for 15 years of rejection and a Big Scare.  Let's hope so.  Or there's no moving forward for this Planet of the People!

A Little Bit of Plagiarism

One nice thing about getting old.....and there really are some nice things, and when I find out what they are I shall let you know......

One nice thing about getting old is that any cheap drunken lawyer can defend you successfully if you get charged with plagiarism.
Your memory really is shot, and all kind of people can testify to that as the reason you did not give the real author credit.

Additionally, you haven't made any money from the words and stories you stole, and on close inspection it becomes apparent you didn't even quote the whose-it author correctly.  Slam dunk.  The case against you is thrown out.

The following is by......I have no clue, can't remember....
But it was in a book....or a magazine...or something...
Last year.....or last decade....or last century .......(does it really matter?)

It was the published short stories of several people.....the assignment had been to tell a whole big story in 6 words only.

One author wrote:        For sale
                                     Baby shoes
                                     Never worn.
I almost cried .


Another author (one of our kind, as in OLD)  wrote:
                                          Sex Dreams
                                          At Seventy
                                          What Next?

I wish I could remember the other short stories of 6 words or less.  and I am a little embarrassed I only remember these two.  Hum.
All the little stories were powerful , but hey, you remember what you remember!



Glad you dropped in,
Riverwatch

Use it or lose it.

     

Use It




Aging is not a disease any more than the ninth month of pregnancy is a disease.

Feeling wretched does not have a "diagnostic code" because it is a mere state of mind, a true mental outrage that running and playing are not on the agenda for today.
Well of course, running and playing ARE on the agenda for some old people, even some very pregnant young people, but I am just trying to make a point.
Most of us old people feel a little wretched from time to time.
It is what it is.

One wretched characteristic of aging is the loss of muscle strength that we ALL experience on this twilight zone landscape.
No, old age does not cause paralysis or neuropathy.  Those are caused by disease.
 (I should slide in a little warning here that weak muscles CAN also be caused by certain diseases & ominous side effects to certain medications.)
But in the healthy aging person, loss of muscle strength is expected.  Some people were never strong to begin with, but for those of us who were, it is wretched to push the couch and have it remain stationary.  Or to try to open the door to a public building and struggle so much a young person rushes to aid you!

But though our muscles are aged, they do respond positively to exercise until the day we die.

Use it or lose it is not a lie.  It is possible to increase our fading strength.
However, it is a daily chore, because we go backwards a lot faster than we did at age twenty.

I can see why some old people give up on the exercise.  It needs done daily and we are  so tired!!

And we have such interesting thoughts pop into our minds, probably because of all the junk mail the local Mortuaries send!!!
Addressed to me, 
I never open the envelopes, yet their very arrival creates thoughts!

When I took out a loan to build my home, the mortgage people misspelled my name on every page in spite of having spent two sessions face to face with me.  
They had my credit history, my Wage and Earnings, my Tax Returns, my bank account number..and my name! Nevertheless, they misspelled my name.
Yet when the flyers come from the Mortuary people, they have my name spelled exactly perfect! Like they got it off my Birth Certificate.

That's not a good sign.

One time when the ominous envelop arrived, I checked my absent neighbor's mailbox to see if they received a flyer.  Nope.
Very targeted advertising and I was the target!  Not even addressed to "Occupant".

That's not a good sign.
                         **********************


I never gave any thought to burial until I was in my 60's and I was laying down on my sweaty back on the grass trying to recover from a little bit of yard work and avoid a stroke.  As I lay there , the thought came to me, "When I die, I want buried FLAT.  Please oh please don't stand me up in my grave!  I am so tired!"
Even Egyptian Pharaohs were stretched out flat for burial.  Who in their right mind would make a dead body stand up even if it would save space? (some young person might)
However, all those thoughts were before Hurricane Katrina.
Being a hypochondriac, I was mesmerized by all those caskets that floated up, having lost their moorings during the storm of all storms. Mesmerized and horrified.  Were you?
That is the exact time a new plan formulated in my brain: I want my body cremated after I die!

There is a Rose Garden in the town I live in where you can have your ashes scattered among the roses, mixed in with the ashes of other's . ******* Doesn't that sound cooler than heck?

And I have lived long enough to also see the beauty of scattering  ashes to the winds.  However, I do remember from the Hunger Games series, what Katniss said in "Catching Fire" (or was that "Mockingjay"?) as she walked in the dusty ashes of a town full of people bombed to ash:  "It's not what I'm breathing that bothers me so much as who I am breathing."
     So, I plan to opt for the Rose Garden.

Or, I could be like my mom who died young before getting to enter the twilight zone.
Death overcame her while the sun was still shining brightly.  She was dismissive about what to do with her left-over body.  "I don't care what you do!  I won't be there!"

Yes, it is possible to leave somebody else holding the bag.
                              Good-bye, Mom.
There probably are great lessons to be learned from getting caught holding the bag.  I can just imagine my mom smiling as she departed the scene, perhaps saying, "See ya!  Wouldn't want to be ya!"


Thank you for your visit to this dreary post,
Riverwatch

PS  This post started off upbeat. I don't know what happened!  Probably the mail from the Mortuary addressed to ME!  Crap.

"You Do What Life Calls Upon You To Do"

    




     I was 35 and she was 53.
She was just starting her descent into  the twilight zone of aging.  Of course I already considered Bonnie old in spite of my nursing education.  See.....age is relative.
     Everything is relative, including the compass.

When you are 35...... 53 is OLD!

     I was reeling from my recent divorce, from having four small children to raise alone (I'm sorry.  Where I come from we do not rear children, we raise them....and it shows.), and working full time as a critical care nurse in a busy urban (didn't we used to say metropolitan?) hospital.

     I think I was crying real tears to Bonnie about being overwhelmed with the new landscape I was on and the fact that I was too tired to fix supper.
(I'm sorry.  Where I come from we do not dine, we sup.)
Supper for my kids was  cereal and milk...& hey! don't judge me harshly. We had warm toast.  The kids didn't care.  Nobody wanted to wash and dry pots and pans.  With somebody missing from the table, the table lost its charm and it became "ok" to scatter about the house to eat, including in front of the TV.  Cereal and milk travel semi-well across carpet.  

     Still and all, I felt like life was meant to be different
.
     Bonnie was kool, and Experienced.  She said simply, "You do what life calls on you to do."

     I stopped whining and looked at Bonnie.

     She elaborated, "I never thought I'd ever quit cooking, but Glen and I now eat TV dinners or eat out.  That's what life calls on us to do now.  I never thought I'd have to take heart medicine.  But life calls on me to take digitalis, so I do.  You just do whatever life calls on you to do."

     Bonnie's words are still a guiding neon billboard in my life.

     Over the years I have watched Bonnie experience many changes in the landscape around her....so much joy and so many hard things: precious little grandchildren grown and scattered, sadness about outcome in her children's lives as adults, loss of her beautiful large home, a move to Assisted Living, the death of her husband, and now the Alzheimer's Unit.

 No, Bonnie no longer recognizes who I am, but she is still a trouper, feebly doing whatever life calls on her to do.  The human spirit that has allowed our species to survive and flourish is still holding sway for Bonnie.

     Bonnie remains a guidepost for sane living.



Thanks for visiting me,
Riverwatch

Hey, Baby Boomers!

Hey , Baby Boomers  (ages 48-66 in the year of our Lord  2012)

Did you see that scarey little article by Stern and Heavey 8/15/12 of Reuters?
"Will Baby Boomers Live as Long as Expected?"   These authors were rattling  on about the state of your health.
Studies refining the trajectories for American lifespans have a Frowny  Face for you!





teensdiva.com






Did you know that?  I didn't.  Did you know you have increased rates of obesity, increased rates of cancer, and  increased rates of suicide?!  Of course you are living longer (except for those suicides) but you are SICKER, ie, increased frailty, increased risk from cardiovascular disease, and increased declining cognitive functioning.

I am always stunned at some of these lofty studies.
Ever since I wrote a letter to my congressman informing him I am Pro-Choice and why, and he wrote back thanking me for my Pro-Life support I have NOT been blinded by dazzling statistical data!
You shouldn't be blinded by the data either.
I am a nurse, and I smell a political rat here.
Sure enough, after spreading gloom the article dropped into the Social Security Math issue.    As if!    Like I am surprised.

I read some of the comments following the article and mostly they were "buy in" to the "OMG" ambiance.
However, one person caught my attention.  He said half of his classmates were already dead.  And he noticed that people born  earlier...1917..lived much longer.
He is on to something.  My cousins and I have noticed the same thing.  Most of our parents and grandparents lived to be really really old....and members of our generation are dropping like flies.....not necessarily dead, but sick.

Ok, here it is folks.  We are living in a very toxic environment, not the least of which is the Electro-Magnetic Field that fuels our Information Age.  Look it up.

https://oehscience.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/dirty-electricity-is-not-getting-any-cleaner/


Read the book on Dirty Electricity.


Find us a solution.  Before that cognitive decline becomes apparent.

Your older sibling who still has faith in you,
Riverwatch
Hey, I am not that much older.

Not Everybody Hates a Hypochondriac

     Ok.  So I will go ahead and admit it.  Not only am I old, I am divorced.
     My divorce, which happened so long ago it probably doesn't even count as history, was not a surprise because there were portents of things to come long before the Big Finale.  Of course I was oblivious.
     The first hint of the coming Big Finale actually came long before I met the man I married.  It came in the exasperated voice of my mother.  "For God's sake, Riverwatch!  Shut up!  A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once!"
     Later on my husband would echo that disdain.  "I'm going to tell you this:  if you don't quit examining yourself I am going to divorce you!!!"  and he did.   He was involved with another woman, but let's not get issues too mixed up. I was always under condemnation for my hypochondria!  Apparently he wanted someone who was REALLY sick!
     And then my former doc (I no longer go to him!) who always said, "My God!  It scares me to death every time you bring out that list!  Just tell me what your number one problem is."
     "My number one problem is I am going down globally!  Help me!"
     Doctors love money, and it wasn't that I didn't represent coins in this doc's coffer.......it just wasn't easy money.
     Nope, docs do not like me.
     "Let's get something easy in here for me to cure...say  like hemorrhagic fever."
     Nope, experienced physcians do not like to see me coming through the door.  My present doctor is truly kind as well as competent, but I am not sure she actually likes to see me show up.
At least she asks to keep my list of scary symptoms so I always type my list these days.  She  is kind.  Tolerant. Competent .

     But it is the charlatans and quacks who LOVE me!.
     They really do!
     "Going down globally?  What a pleasure to serve you!"  

                                              *
Can I just say one thing about charlatans and quacks?

CHARLATANS AND QUACKS ARE   K I N D !!

Kindness sells.

Call me a fool if you must.  I now think they have their contribution to make.  They sell kindness.

Kindness has a huge impact on the human spirit.....and thus upon the immune system.

Charlatans and Quacks sell kindness and caring.....or a good imitation of it.  
Business is booming.


I appreciate you,
Riverwatch, RN

"However, if you live long enough, you get the disease."

Who said that?  Not me.
I say if you live long enough, it means you escaped the disease!
It is possible to die from just old age.  Remember the "slowing down" that is a characteristic of aging?   Well, if we live long enough, we just get slower and slower until like a clock we stop.
No disease.  Just done.  Stick a fork in me.  Done.
                                 ****************
Do you want to never die?
Like, what would that be like?  All your family gone.  They had the good sense to finally shove off.   All your old friends gone.  They had the good sense to depart for somewhere else and have the door close behind them forever.  They aren't coming back to visit!
All your lovers gone?
Well, of course you can make new friends!  Maybe even new lovers!   And when they all depart you can start  over again.  Do you want to never die?!

Do you want to be the only person on earth who never dies?  What would that be like?
Well, scientists and other freaks are trying to arrange that.....transplant, clone, bio-engineer away genetic flaws, splice, manipulate, harvest organs from the abducted youth for those aging folks with enough money (and will to destroy selfishly)....make a brand new world and never die.
   
     Already I'm looking forward to shoving off ! ! ! ! !
    Not today, of course.  My goal is to live another day.
 That's what we are given .....one day at a time.

And frankly, I am not too worried about the scientists and other freaks.  So far they haven't been able to even get rid of ugly!!
  It isn't aging you have to worry about.  But you sure as *#*# better be on the lookout for ugly!  It is headed your way.  Unless it has already overtaken you.
     Last night I dreamed my 75 year old friend was getting remarried because SHE WAS 7 months PREGNANT!  She was a frightened bride.  (The groom was young.)
I don't think I'll tell her what I dreamed.  Would you?
Old  AND pregnant?  Emma Jean doesn't drink, I don't drink... but I think this calls for something besides Diet Coke!  Even just the thought of it calls for Xanex or something!
A bit rattled,  
Riverwatch

ALL IS VANITY

   



  Ok, I was going to write more about the universal effects of aging on us, but it will have to wait.

     I have something exciting to share with you.

     I found a blog by (surely!) an old person and if he is who I think he is, he is a Grandpa!
     Here is how it happened.  I awakened in the mid-winter of night, deeply discouraged, feeling What's the use?? 
     Throwing off my  CPAP, and even before I could walk as though I don't have a balance problem, I staggered into the Family Room, switched on the light, prayed for help and grabbed my Bible.
     I knew I needed help.
     My Bible opened to Ecclesiastes.  Ecclesiastes is a bit hard to find, usually, as it is a small book, only 12 short chapters, tucked into the Old Testament.
     I remember Ecclesiastes from the song "Turn, Turn, Turn" sung by the Byrds...and Judy Collins.....and quite a few singers during the Viet Nam War.  You know, "It's not too late for peace".
    Beautiful and haunting and popular.
    Of course I didn't read much more of Ecclesiastes back then, or if I did, it didn't speak to me much, except that one verse about remembering thy Creator in the days of thy youth.  I do remember that.
     But now, having read Ecclesiastes in the middle of the night while despairing, I think it was written by an old person!!  It is a Grandpa's Blog.  I kid you not.  
     I'm so glad I found it.
     "The day of death is better than the day of one's birth."   No young person could have written that!  "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."  No young person would have written that!"
     Thousands of years ago an old man got up (probably at night) to blog about What's the use?   
     The blogger concludes:  "Fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man."
     There is so much in his blog of feelings we experience on this terrain of the twilight zone of aging.  Read it and weep. And find comfort.


Thank you for dropping by,
Riverwatch

Old Age Versus Disease

Old & Aging:          unstoppable
Disease:                   treatable

     She had trouble getting up from her desk at work.  Using the strength of her arms, she pushed herself upright .  Didn't scream once.  She looked up and saw me watching her.
     "Getting old," she said.  "Arthritis."

Arthritis and old age are not synonymous.  Every old person does not have arthritis.
     Arthritis is a disease.

Disease:      pathological.....abnormal....cluster of specific symptoms
                   of a particular state of dis-ease.

     As we experience the twilight lumpy landscape we are now upon, it is easy to get really mixed up about what is disease and conversely, what are the characteristics of being old.  After all, this is new terrain for us, and I don't know about you, but my grandmas and grandpas left me nothing about what they were experiencing.  Where are my grandmas when I need them!!!!  Why didn't they leave me a blog or something?!  
     And frankly, the characteristics of aging seem like symptoms to me!  But the characteristics of aging are not symptoms of disease.....they are NORMAL.

     If you long to know what aging does to a person, look at other old people.  All old people have to have the characteristic or it is NOT about being old.
     All old people don't go blind!  Blindness is caused by disease.
     All old people don't pee their pants!  Loss of bladder control is caused by disease.
     All old people don't have memory problems.  Memory problems is caused by disease.
     All old people don't give up sex.  Sexual dysfunction is caused by disease......(or maybe anger).

     So.........what does aging cause that we all experience?

#1.  We all slow down as we age.  Even those old people who make us so proud at the Senior Olympics will tell you they used to be faster.
     I heard O.J. Simpson being interviewed (when he was trying to regain lost status after his crimes).  Did he regret the swath he had cut?  Didn't seem like he did.  What he talked about regretting was that he couldn't run down the football field at lightening speed as he once did.
     We all slow down.
     Come to think of it, that might be a good thing.

#2.  Another thing we all experience is that our bodies go through two major metabolic changes as we become more and more "fuel efficient".  The first change comes about age 35 and decreases our need for calories by half!  If that isn't difficult enough, our bodies go through another metabolic change about age 70.  Now our need for calories is decreased by half again.
Look around you.  How many of us have made those switches at the dinner table?
     So the pounds pile on a lot of us.
     But before we write ourselves off as hopeless, let's remember our worth:  WE ARE THE MOST FUEL-EFFICIENT DANDIES IN THE HUMAN RACE.

     We are valuable.  We don't need much food, we don't need as much sleep and by now we have learned to live without any positive feedback whatsoever!  We are priceless.
   Yeh, you couldn't put a price tag on us low enough to get somebody to buy us as a slave, but put a price tag on our volunteer efforts....or even our suffering.....and you could better see our worth.
    I will speak to other normal changes of aging tomorrow.
   


Thank you for tuning in,
I appreciate the wave,
Riverwatch

Focus

                             

Is my focus off?

My older sister said to me one day, "When I die, my first question is going to be 'Who shot Kennedy?'...and your first question is going to be, 'What did I die from?' "

Now that's a little bit funny!
But not to a hypochondriac!

I'm sorry.  I should never have been a nurse.



I appreciate your visit,

Riverwatch 

THE NEW NORMAL

    Health care workers....well, nurses....like to talk about permanent changes in health as "the new normal".
That makes sense for young people who break their necks , like Christopher Reeve did, and wake up to an altered world.  Stable, but permanently altered,  their new world calls for a new way of doing things, a way that must be learned if quality of life and influence, even power is to be restored to some degree.

Old age is nothing like that!!
There is no "new normal"!
One wakes up to a brand new world every day!  And if it isn't a new world that morning, it may be by twilight.

For this is the twilight zone of life where the great lesson is that Life Is Fluid.

There is no normal.  There is the Flow, and finally you realize that going with the flow, yielding to the larger stream IS life.  There is no going back, only going forward wherever the Stream takes us.


Hang on for the ride of your life!
It is an experience unlike any other era in our lives.

Thanks for hanging on with me,
Riverwatch

"..........I miss my mind the most."

  



   Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."





I know you won't believe this, but those words hung on a plaque in the  psychiatric unit of a local hospital.
I would go into that area from time to time to see how the staff were doing and I always gazed at that plaque.
I never ever saw any patient looking at that plaque!
But the staff seemed to enjoy the plaque and since some of the staff were sometimes patients, I concluded that the plaque was "ok".

Now that I am on this unearthly landscape where I have landed as an old person (having not died young after all), I think of that plaque a lot.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

This is a time in life of increased losses.  Yep, we've always had some losses to deal with, but just as earthquakes really have increased, so have our losses increased here in the twilight zone of life.

I do miss my young mind......brain, if you will.  It used to have such a good Servo-Mechanism in it that allowed me to have habits such as brushing my teeth without thinking, locking the doors, finding my way to Target without thinking, stopping for Red, going for Green, putting the milk back in the fridge, picking up little useless things I have dropped, knowing what time it is without looking at the clock, eating on schedule, turning on the curling iron after I have plugged it in, turning off the iron when I am done, ........oh just lots and lots and lots of "little housekeeping items of life" that a part of my brain took care of for me for decades and decades. That part of my brain seems to be on vacation now a lot of the time!  

Now I have to CONSCIOUSLY remember all the little things I need to do to run my life.  I can do it, but wow, does it take time and energy!   And sometimes I fall down on this job!  It is not that I think about locking the front door and then forget to....it is I don't even think about it at all.  No reminder sparking up from the old Servo-Mechanism.
                  ************************
Hope your Servo-Mechanism is still working well!




Thanks for checking on me,
Riverwatch        

"Frankly, It's a topic I'm not interested in."

      The news lately is full of self righteous men speaking un-supportively, self-importantly and ignorantly regarding crimes of power against women.
     In their book, rape is a poorly defined term that always needs clarification.  There is Legitimate Rape (Akin), and there is Forcible Rape (Ryan)  , and Invited Rape ("you asked for it!" raging talk on radio), and Invented Rape (non-legitimate) , and Incest (Not REALLY Rape because the child "participated") and Marital Relations (Unwilling does not make it Rape)  and then there is Sodomy which is not REALLY Rape, and  Attempted Rape.  Oh, the list goes on, but I am getting sick!
     If you listen carefully to such men, you will hear strange belief systems like "the unborn fetus has rights that supercede the rights of the (impregnated) woman...because #1. the man who helped make the fetus has more rights than the hormonal unbalanced woman and #2. the fetus has nobody to protect it but Society".........(you know, Society, who has no intention of protecting, loving and supporting the unwanted child once it arrives)!
     Such men go on to cry , "What was the alleged rape victim wearing?"
"How many lovers did she have relations with BEFORE the alleged rape?"  "Did the rape actually injure her?"

Rape is a crime of Power.
And so is the modern day stoning of the victim.
Crimes of Power.

     I asked one of my grown sons why men are so afraid of women that they have to try to hang onto power over women and their bodies.
He said, "Mom, this is a topic I am not even remotely interested in. It does not apply to the young men of my generation.  It is a generational thing.  Men like Romney, Ryan, Akin, Rush, Russo, Miner and other old men who stereotype women and put them in male-defined roles for women are fading slowly from the scene.  Young men of my generation do not view women the same way those old guys do.  It is a generational thing.  I just am not interested in this topic."

It is not that I disbelieve my son.  He speaks true.  It's just I am a woman and I know this thing is about Power.
Power raises its evil head again and again and again, generation after generation after generation.
                    But that's a blog for another day.


Thanks for your visit to this blog,
Riverwatch

Somebody's Angel

    

 What a joy!  Having received Lidocaine and Cortisone into my right leg,  I am out to walk in the Park. There is sunshine.  Birds singing.  Blue sky.

        Summer has not yet vanished............
but Charles has vanished.

        I didn't really know Charles.  He's just a faithful old man I met years ago on the trail we shared as we cheerfully pushed against gravity.  
We waved.  
We greeted.  
We smiled and exchanged pleasantries over several years.

When I first became aware of Charles, he  was a Brisk Walker.

        Then, oh, about 2 years ago Charles began sitting on a Park Bench to rest occasionally.  That's when I got to know him a bit.  I'm a nurse and anytime anyone bows out of an activity unexpectedly, I always pause to see what's up.  Charles revealed no details about his health (men don't, you know) and passed it off with a smile.  "Just slowing down", he said.  "Aren't we all?" I jousted.  

One day, many months or more ago, I became aware that Charles only sat on the Park Bench, never walking the trail.  He always recognized me and I was always happy to see him.

        Today  I realize that Charles has vanished.  It has been months now since I have seen him.

He has vanished!

        But Maizy has appeared ...this very morning.....on my walk!   Which is very odd since her funeral was less than a week ago.

        She was with three other walkers.  Her face lit up when she saw me.  Her smile was radiant!

        I almost staggered!  Sitting down on the next available bench, I contemplated whether I was going Mad!?!  Or was that woman a relative of Maizy's or something?

        Certainly I don't believe the dead walk the earth!

        As I sat there on the Park Bench resting, I recalled the time I "saw my mother"  twenty years AFTER she died.  She was in a hallway and I saw her from behind.  MOM!  I knew it couldn't possibly be her, nevertheless I ran after her.  She paused at the elevator and as she turned around to see who was following her so ardently, I could see with disappointment that she wasn't really my mom.

        Then she smiled at me.  My mom's exact same smile!

        I smiled back and walked away happy.

        These little kinds of big events we mostly keep to ourselves, lest the younger crowd think we really have gone 'round the bend.

     Yes, I am old.  Yes, I'm disappointingly unpretty when I gaze at myself in the mirror.  But in some ethereal ancient way, I'm everybody's mother, everybody's grandma, everybody's friend.  I must remember to smile more often because I may also, however briefly, be somebody's angel.

        But for now, I MUST get off this Park Bench!

Thanks for sitting here and resting awhile,
Riverwatch

Senior Citizens are not Harmless!

     OK, so I know it isn't nice to speak ill of the dead....or the aged.
But since I am aged...and not yet dead....I feel I have not only a right, but a responsibility to write a bit about senior citizens.
     We aren't always the vulnerable victims!
     Some times we come right out and do criminal stuff ourselves.
     Unbelievable ?
     Think again.  We don't have centuries-old  legends about young witches.  Nor pictures of unwrinkled trolls.  My take on it all, now that I am old, is  those legends are rooted in reality.

     When I was young, I could not even imagine old folks committing crimes........... or having sex.
   Now I know, sex and crime are not reserved for the young and middle aged.
     Shocker.
     Didn't you just see where that 70 yr. old woman killed her husband with a coffee cup?  Police had been to the house for domestic disturbances a few times before the Big Event, but probably the cops were young and unlearned about the power still residing in the elderly citizenry.

     We are not talking petty crimes.  Or traffic violations.  We are talking Crimes.

     Our greatest help in covering for our crimes, should we decide to commit any, is that young people are reluctant to call us names or call us on our crap because we are old.   Yell at and blame a child unjustly and people try to understand, take a swing at a teenage probable delinquent and find yourself praised, but if a young person is mean to an old person, well...that young  person is  just a dirt bag that deserves to go to prison ! ! ! ! !
     Part of our arsenal is we can hide behind claims of memory problems....or dementia.....or side effects of our sack of pills...or unstable blood sugar....or pain that has driven us to despair and depravity.  We can become mute and "childlike" in a hurry and young people are fooled.  We can look hang-dog and dismal without even trying!  We can whine we are lonely.  "Loneliness made me do it."
   AND we seldom blow the whistle on other old people.  We know how hard it all is ...we cut each other slack here on the unearthly landscape we now trod....and we try not to cheer for the old criminals.
     Hit him in the head with a coffee mug?