Bad ailments
Memory is a strange thing. The storage capacity of the human brain is enormous. You don't forget things, you just don't always think about it at times. But it's still there. In your memory.
The bodily ailments, which come with old age, are not difficult to think about. They grow steadily with your age, sometimes with leaps and bounds but often at a pace that can be kept up with. Who doesn't know it. After all, old age comes with defects. You walk slower, less stable, with a stick, with crutches, behind a walker, or at all no more. Long live the wheelchair and the scooter. You get more and more difficult jars open, your hands let you down, arms don't go up anymore, fingers cramp. Long live the more handheld can openers. Incontinence, you get less and less control over the pelvic floor muscles, you have to get out of bed more and more often at night to urinate, until the time comes of total antibladder control. Long live the diapers, long live the catheter.
All annoying nasty side features. I've known them longer than old age. I've been through them in old times.
But the spiritual still prevails. I don't think about something like that every day, but it's still there, in my brain. Under dusty layers, safely stored under lock and key, in various drawers, sometimes fun, sometimes painful and sometimes things you want to forget, but with the best will in the world you can't. I wish for that to come the time when I can say, “Long live oblivion.”
