I am not looking forward to getting old. Not that I'm afraid of maturity per se, but when I see old people, I get the sad realization that someday, unless I'm lucky, I'll get old and decrepit like them. Oh sure, old people can live out their "golden years" and be happy, but let's be real. The list of common geriatric afflictions reads like a grocery list of things that God gave people who were bad in the Bible.
Want the list? OK. Arthritis, rheumatism, muscle degeneration, cancer, baldness, tooth loss, gray hair, vision failure from a variety of causes, the loss of my singing voice, impotence, prostate problems, ungrateful children, dementia, strokes, heart disease, liver spots, incontinence ("anal leakage" as they call it), loss of bladder control, a variety pack of diseases named after some guy I don't even know, and the sad truth that all of the TV shows I like will have been cancelled.
I'm getting on in the years, too. I'm already plunging deeply into my 26th year on this planet and already I can feel my youth evaporating like gasoline in a '66 Buick. I can feel gravity pulling at my cheeks, the slow grinding of my joint cartilage into dust, and the creeping corrosion of my cranial connectios. Well, I've still got a knack for alliteration. I'll be the talk of the nursing home.
It's not dying I'm afraid of. That I can deal with, since it's unavoidable anyway. It's kind of like being afraid of falling when it's really the sudden stop at the end that does the damage. So it's not dying that scares me, but the long decline from youth and vigor to old age and infirmity. I suppose it would be worse if I still had my mind intact. That way I would know exactly what I had lost.
Or maybe I'll be lucky and die young.