Bookends

  It is in the early morning hours when I am the first one up that my blog entries are more on the melancholy side.  This one is no exception!

  At this juncture in Life, there is something that troubles me and there is nothing I can do about it because it is a natural event.  That is the passing of those close to me.  Of course, as I get older, this is going to happen more often, but I don't like it!  Not to mention, it reminds me of my own mortality.
  When I was younger, I would unconsciously categorize everyone who I met into three groups; kids, people my age, and the geriatric group.  Now I am a part of the later.
  I don't mind getting older, except that I use to think I had the rest of my life to do things, now it is in terms of so-many-years-left to do it.  But most of all, there are those that I miss that have already passed on.  These include family, friends, and even some celebrities.  I grew up with them and now many of them are missing pieces to the puzzle or close to their ends.
  Simon & Garfunkel dwelt on this subject in their Bookends album.  One song in particular, Old Friends, stands out:

Old friends, old friends,
Sat on their parkbench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today,

Sharing a parkbench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years,

Silently sharing the same fears

  To close on a more positive note, I have just spent the past week with a son and grandson.  That has got to be one of the best things about getting older, so there are rewards after all!

Age is an issue of mind over matter.  If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. - Mark Twain