Lessons on Life, Death, and Aging
Nature is a wise and patient teacher.
My back hurts, my legs are stiff, and my shoulder has a strange pain. As they’d say back in Texas, where I used to be a farmer, “I’ve got a hitch in my git-along.”
It was nothing serious, just spring gardening season after a bit too much winter-time sitting.
Somehow, this year, I’ve been able to accept I am getting old. Of course, my gray hair should have already made that obvious. Still, I refused to say the word ‘old’, let alone embrace aging as the inevitable result of being blessed with a long life.
It hasn’t been outward changes that bothered me, but rather a fear of losing the ability to do the things I love — especially being outdoors and working in my garden.
Last year, I turned seventy, and my dear older brother sent me May Sarton’s book At Seventy: a Journal for my birthday. Sarton was a true and careful observer of nature and a student of life. Like me, she lived a lot of her life alone with plenty of time to ponder, and I love her writing.
One thing is certain, and I have always known it — the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about …
—At Seventy: A Journal, by May…
