Must read 'o the day: 93 year old Roger Angell on getting old
by digby
Just read the whole thing.
An excerpt:
... I’ve not yet forgotten Keats or Dick Cheney or what’s waiting for me at the dry cleaner’s today. As of right now, I’m not Christopher Hitchens or Tony Judt or Nora Ephron; I’m not dead and not yet mindless in a reliable upstate facility. Decline and disaster impend, but my thoughts don’t linger there. It shouldn’t surprise me if at this time next week I’m surrounded by family, gathered on short notice—they’re sad and shocked but also a little pissed off to be here—to help decide, after what’s happened, what’s to be done with me now. It must be this hovering knowledge, that two-ton safe swaying on a frayed rope just over my head, that makes everyone so glad to see me again. “How great you’re looking! Wow, tell me your secret!” they kindly cry when they happen upon me crossing the street or exiting a dinghy or departing an X-ray room, while the little balloon over their heads reads, “Holy shit—he’s still vertical!”
This essay may be the most interesting meditation on aging I've ever read. Even today, still decades younger but feeling old, I can't only hope to be as funny, erudite and clear as Roger Angell is at the age of 93. I feel a renewed sense of hope that despite the growing catalog of physical impairment and personal loss, this last act can be a really, really good one.
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