THERE ARE MANY THINGS WE NEVER GET TO DO OVER AGAIN

We do not get to be infants again but it does not mean that we must give up all elements of childhood.  Once you have been young, you know what youth with its limited responsibilities and great opportunities for fun are which remain as happy memories..  For some of us, childhood lives within us always.  'Been there, done that' remains a familiar part of memory bank.  We never give up the love of laughing, the excitement of learning new things, the meeting of and making  new friends,

You just don't get to do old age all over again.  Old is the last chapter.  It can be short, or be very long for some.  My Dad was over 65 for 42 years.. He learned to do old age very well though it took him a long time to accept and perfect it. Old age is the last stop before oblivion. You don't even get to practice everything you've learned before you forget much of it.!

We don't  get to return to the past or treat those in our lives, whom we've lost, as we have retrospectively decided they probably deserved. All this points out how imperative it is to get it right the first time.  Waiting to have perfection in Heaven is not a realistic goal.  Life, you may find, is your only chance to be whom you want whom you want to, since you only get to do it once.

It doesn't matter how full our lives have been, there will always be things we will wish we could have done, places to have seen, experiences to have felt,  professions to have tried, hobbies in which to have indulged, and so much more!  Nevertheless, those thoughts do not necessarily diminish the lives we feel we have lived.  They only serve to underscore how much we get out of our lives and that is still worth living.

Just as the second chance to catch the 'fish that got away' would be considered rare, so,often, is the love that got away...Though we sometimes hear the miracle of someone who reconnects in later life with a long lost love of their youth,  in the scheme of things, this is not something for which one should spend a life waiting to happen.

People who find it hard to accept change in their worlds, also find it difficult to look in the mirror of old age.  They are blessed by plastic surgeons, con artists with their anti-aging creams if they are  unable to accept there is beauty in old age. They create bored friends and family, tired of hearing about what they did and accomplished in their youth.

There is an art to growing old gracefully.  It comes with accepting reality, changing the things in your control and accepting those which are not.  To me, growing old is a great relief.  For those of you who remember the poem, WARNING by Jenny Joseph I will refer you to the last line, "When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.". Let me warn you differently.  There is nothing sudden about old age. It creeps up on you and is a 'wedgie' of reality.  Realization is sudden if your denial and resistance is strong.  I differ with another line in the poem. ("But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.) in that I have shocked people my whole life, so doing so in old age is somewhat expected and is not associated with my age.  Similarly to the poem is that I don't care people's expectations of old age.  I simply repeat, I didn't come with a manual; no one has taught me how to be old.  I have to get it right by my standards because I can only do it once .

HOLDING RUDENESS BACK

Basically, at this age, I am an impatient person.  People who think and talk slowly, taking too long to get to the point and or with their editorializing, make me fight to keep from being rude. I feel as some of my friends do (though they don't seem to want to talk about it) that I have a relatively limited time left in my life and it angers me to waste it being bored by people.

We older people seem to find others our age who want to talk about the same things over and over, even when told they have mentioned this before.  It is as though the record has to be played to the end.  If they really want to repeat a story they know is boring me by my spaciness, yawning, and glazed eyeballs, I have the urge to tell them they should talk to a mirror.  Sometimes I forget to whom I have said something and tell my friends to stop me if I am repeating.  I don't want them to be polite when I repeat myself.  In a car as a passenger it is often difficult to see a face to gauge reaction..

Others keep repeating because there is nothing  new in their heads about which to talk.One person rarely phones me because, I'm told, she has nothing to say.  She seemed baffled when I suggested she might just want to call to see how I am!  Generally I listen to such people thinking about all the days of my life I have wasted listening to people who talk to hear themselves, rather than caring whether I am listening, want to hear or not.  While I think it was an amusing comeback, I don't want to respond as the son of a cousin of mine when he said to his father, "Dad, you must mistake me for someone who gives a damn!"  While I don't say that, I think it often.

I tend to chatter at times and am sure I have bored friends and certainly wish they would tell me, especially when we are in a car and I can't see their face to read the emotion.  I wish people could accept that I will not be insulted if they tell me they aren't interested in what I am saying about myself and /or have what I am saying before.  Likewise, when I tell someone I don't wish to hear what they are saying as I have heard it all before, I don't want them on the verge of tears telling me I hurt their feelings.  Nor do I want them to look right through me and continue on with the story.  Sometimes, no matter what I do, it just doesn't work and I'm truly sorry about that.