I will be fifty-eight in a week. Two years before sixty. Enough folks seem to have already relegated me to the grave or almost. My face is still relatively young but I am balding with grey, almost white (in the front) hair. In the stores that is what Junior at the check out sees when he asks me if I'd like the senior's discount. On the bus that is what the young student sees when she gets up to offer me her seat. Of course I accept. I am in good shape for my age, I suppose, but I like to encourage good habits in the young and sometimes after a ten mile walk in the woods I really do want to sit down for a while.
I don't mind getting older, it is not as bad as I feared and actually is much better. I have greatly enjoyed my fifties. I have lived almost twelve years in the same apartment and worked almost ten years at an occupation I love. I do not make a lot of money, am statistically poor, but I have been able to vacation for a month or longer almost every year down in Mexico and Costa Rica since 2008 and I enjoy good enough health to do well on a foreign holiday. I have become fluent in Spanish and enjoy a quiet though not boring life.
I am single. I have always been single. And childless. I have no family. My parents are dead and I have been long estranged from my only sibling. Aunts, uncles and cousins have never been in the picture, or at least not since childhood. When I changed my name in 1995 that was the beginning of the death of my family for me, and me for them. I have lost all the friends I had in my twenties, thirties and forties and have made new friends. Now that I'm older I don't seem to need or want to spend as much time hanging out as I used to and I have noticed that many of my friends, who are more or less also in their fifties, are like this too. We all work hard for a living and we need to rest more at home in order to restore our energy. It isn't just that. As one ages one becomes more contemplative, more prone to meditation and reflection, more in need of the still silent spaces.
I realise that I am part of an at-risk demographic. Aging single men on low incomes are highly prone to mental illness, depression and suicide. I can understand why. We have all on some level been abandoned, given up on. We are the leftovers and no one wants us for anything. We have lost our youth, good looks if we ever had them, our strength and sex appeal. Being poor we are also as it were a burden on society. At least that is the portrait that the statistician paints of us.
Some of us old guys, I for one, have no plans of going quietly. I for one intend to keep on learning. I am ever expanding my personal library and reading in English and Spanish as well as hearing great news and information/education items on the CBC and Coop Radio or reading them on the Internet. When I hit retirement age and move to working part time I would like to take university courses and learn a third language, likely French. I am going to keep on painting and will soon be doing more to gain exposure and marketing opportunities for my art. I intend to continue travelling every year as I'm able and to meeting and making new friends of all ages and persuasions. I am going to continue taking good care of myself, watching my nutrition and respecting my rest and sleep needs. I have doubled or even tripled my intake of fresh fruits and vegetables and tend to crave broccoli and strawberries over almost any junk food except maybe chocolate, which I plan never to give up. I am also going to continue at my church because for all their imperfections and mine there is a sense of ballast in being part of a faith community that cannot be easily substituted. Last but not least I intend to go on enjoying the present moment and each moment of each new day and all the surprises and familiarity that every new day will bring me and I it.
I feel as though I am finally getting my life in order. I have let go of old grudges and resentments and have steadfastly refused to take on any new ones. I know that my time is shorter than it once was, I have perhaps two good decades left, three if I'm lucky. As a Christian I know that when I die it is not going to end here. I will be standing before God who will judge me and I want to be ready to see him, I want to have as little baggage as possible to carry over that threshold. I want to be ready for the party to begin.
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