Kim Lembo Music
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

The things they never tell you about aging into the middle.

That the losses will begin to pile up.
Death, at one time a foreign concept for the elderly and the accidental, will become a persistent prayer of “goodbye” and, “I’m so sorry”.
The sickness that once seemed impossible will move onto your block like a new violent neighbor and begin to randomly threaten so many that you love.
You will fear the loss of your parents in a way you couldn’t have understood before your own aging began to take hold.
You will become invisible to the naked eye, standing in the middle of the room like the carpet and the chair and they will walk by you and bump into you and un-see you in the same way.
There will be your last fuckable day and while you will remain oh so fuckable in truth, you will be treated like an offense that you dare to even think about it.
This truth will feel like both a relief and, a sentence given for the crime of noticing and feeling offended.
You will stop giving all the fucks except the ones you give and those, those fucks will take you down in the middle of the night as the desire for sleep drains your ability to actually sleep.
There will be times you will sit with a redwood hundreds of years old and think “this is it. This is what it all means”.
The youth obsessed culture with which you were only a blink of an eye ago very much a part, this culture will begin to enrage you, bore you, push your buttons. When the young man on the street refuses to move his dog out of the sidewalk and your hands are full of bags and your back is aching from that injury and he doesn’t even try to help you, you will say something curt and bitchy and realize, “holy shit, that was my mother coming out of my mouth”. And suddenly, that will be it. The moment you have become your ancestors as they were elders being curt and bitchy with you and your youth for the offense of being clueless and selfish and intolerant of aging.
So you will write about it. A lot. And the words will feel cathartic and strange because really, while the hands typing are your father’s hands, so strong and slightly swollen, your spirit, your spirit is that of your grandmother and her grandmother and her grandmother. And they are whispering to you through the words and the mirrors and the restless sleep “welcome home”.