A free verse poem about living too long. |
I’ve reached age seventy, which qualifies as old age. I have seen what living into the eighth or ninth decade so frequently brings -- dreadful physical impairment, including severe arthritis that cripples hands, knees, shoulders, and hips. Too feeble to stand and walk, either completely bed-ridden or merely wheel chair-bound, in and out of a hospital bed via a sling and mechanical lift like a side of beef, victims reside in a nursing home, unhappy and waiting to die to rejoin their loved ones who often preceded them in death many years previous. Such elderly age can bring incontinence and life spent in adult diapers, on which one must now depend. Many suffer failing health and failing minds. Once razor-sharp minds now regularly confuse past with present and forget what happened only two hours earlier. Doctors diagnose whether it is simple dementia or Alzheimer’s that bedevils them. Once strong and proud people are reduced to a pathetic shell of what they were, with the meaning in their life slipping away. It grieves my heart and saddens my mind to see what frequently awaits those who live too long. The possibility of such an unfortunate future scares and haunts me. I fervently hope I don’t live long enough to lose proper functioning of my body and mind so I no longer can enjoy the beauty that abounds in life but instead descend into mere existence. There is much to recommend dying before one succumbs to such a pitiful fate. Death can be a blessed, merciful deliverance from the indignity of living too long. Please check out my ten books: http://www.amazon.com/Jr.-Harry-E.-Gilleland/e/B004SVLY02/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 |