Ikigai?
The identities that
created life diminish.
Friends, lovers, children,
decamp for death
or some other elsewhere.
The deeper meaning
of work disappears.
Careers vanish.
Extremities ache.
Brains blur. Falls occur.
The aged remain; their
former selves survive
only as a name,
the evaporated pasts
from which they came.
Invisibility sets in.
The old exist
unnoticed and alone,
living in memories,
moldering monuments
the young can’t see,
soon to be forgotten.
They shamble along
pretending to thrive,
still breathing,
though barely alive,
putting up a brave front.
Eighty is the new sixty!
We are old! We are bold!
Until suddenly
cancer or dementia
arrive and give
trendy optimism
the lie:
we must all die.
Dignity departs:
an excreting body
bound to a bed,
not quite living,
not quite dead,
until the curtain
mercifully falls
on the dreary
inevitable end
of it all.
