Sunday, October 22, 2017
When the Gods Weaken.
Last night my neighbors invited me to go on a haunted walk with them. There is a lake side, bed and breakfast close to me and every fall they hold a haunted walk through trails in the forest. It was actually fun, I got to feel like a kid again. I was enjoying it in a detached, mature, adult way, until the guy with a chainsaw stepped out of the darkness and started the thing right beside me. Suddenly I was at the front of the group and don't remember how I got there. I joked with one of the owners later, if you find someone's heart in the bush, it's probably mine since it jumped out. ....................................... The other interesting thing that happened was the group I was with brought along some of my older cousins, they were up at their cottages for a last beautiful weekend of sunny weather. Some I haven't seen for a while. In their mid to late fifties, I felt a little sadness because time was winning the war against them. One of my cousins reminded me of my grandfather, his looks, the way he spoke and certainly that same sense of humour. I don't mean in an elderly way and it was also comforting as I miss my grandfather, but I can imagine now what my grandfather looked like in his fifties, shifting from the handsome young farmer to the role of grampa. For my cousins as well I felt a sadness, these guys were like gods to me, tall, handsome, popular, athletic but not jerks about it. Everything I wished I was, not some shy, awkward, clumsy, skinny kid. I remember once feeling very gay (lol), when between hockey games they stripped down to nothing but their long underwear, changing into dryer clothes in front of me. That site stayed in my head for a long time, also I insisted my mom buy me the same type of cotton long underwear since it was very cool looking long underwear, as cool as long underwear can be that is. I wanted to be like them. ............................................. Now here they were standing before me, I could see the elderly men they were about to become, I see my path as well, I think that is why I am more aware of people aging now. I no longer felt a sense of awe looking at them, I just saw some guys, they had lost the super powers I had assigned to them. The sense of time slipping away I have to admit, is probably the scariest feeling that I got from the haunted walk.
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10 comments:
Don't be sad..we all get old......even you
That's what makes me sad John, the even me part! Now I understand why people wrote so many depressing stories, poems and songs about the good old days and aging, now I understand the meaning of "youth is wasted on the young". I also understand that aging is better than the alternative to aging. Lol.
I always enjoy reading your posts. They seem to echo what I am thinking. I looked in the mirror yesterday and I saw an old man! Aging scares me, but I guess there is no alternative.
Michael 54, one day when I was tired after a long day of work, I was coming out of a grocery store and was startled by an older man walking up behind me. I saw his reflection on my car windows, when I turned around suddenly there was no one there, it was my own reflection.
What a beautifully written contemplation. Two people I know have both had deaths in the family this past week; one lost a 13-year old cousin and the other lost a 103-year old brother in law. Getting old is a privilege, which is easy to forget when you're the one not getting any younger. My aging goal is to not end up looking like Golda Meir (who you may or may not remember depending on how young you are) and I must say, so far so good...but I'm just beginning to take this old age stuff seriously and it's got me spooked.
Thank you Vivian, I have to admit that I have become.... I guess the word is melancholy about the subject of aging. I'm working through that, no point in being sad over something I have no control over.
I actually don't mind aging and getting older...right now. I have been told I have aged extremely well, and people don't believe when I tell them my age, or they say you never age. It all about exercise, plenty of sleep, water, and tons of moisturizer.
Little do they know I'm like the movie Death Becomes Her!!!!!
I think about aging too much lately. Anyway another thing to avoid is smoking or too much sun, any of my friends who went that route have the skin of a used teabag where my friends who didn't, have not changed all that much so far. Of course in gay world they have you put down after thirty so that's a bummer.
Whenever we get the chill of passing time, it ought to be a wake up call to not forget to live life, whatever that means for you.
May you see another Haunted show a year from now with the satisfaction you had done well x 12 months.
Dr. Spo, you are so right, I'm telling myself that all the time now, to stop worrying about what I didn't do and get out and do stuff before I am not able to.
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