On Being Old

Anyone over 90 who says they never give their age a thought is not being truthful. Every day I wake, I give thanks and check my pulse. Then I go to the front door and get the papers, and get six dollars in coins to put away never to be spent (I will get back to that another time). Then I attend to the first pills of the day before I eat and listen to the morning news on TV, which is always bad these days, with various religious persuasions infiltrating and killing each other in and around the Holy Land. I want to keep up, even though I am old and do not have to do anything about it all.

Somewhere along the line I have suffered osteoporosis, and my back hurts if I have not laid down for more than five hours or so. So after lunch I do lie down for a half hour, which can easily become two hours. After that is when I do things I should do every day, like this page of comment, which would be better done first thing in the morning, with orange juice.

This brings up the subject of habit, about which I will write again. Long ago when I was in the tuberculosis hospital, I learned that three weeks of doing the same thing at the same time each day forms a habit, especially if it displaces another one, and you will feel guilty if you do not do it. As you grow older, forming habits helps to make up for the loss of short-term memory, which is inevitable.

Now that I have gotten started, again, on getting old, I could go on indefinitely, but at least I have several topics, related, I can turn to. I meant to write a page, and I have, and I will be back.