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FROM THE PORCH SWING OLDER THAN DIRT GETTING OLD AIN’T for sissies. In some ways it seems fairly easy, just keep on living. But old age will sneak up on you. Bones become brittle without you knowing. Muscles don’t stretch like they used to, but the loss of flex and elasticity is so gradual that most people don’t realize it’s happening. About the only way that age doesn’t sneak up on us is in getting facial wrinkles. And despite determined attempts to stay positive, who has ever truly happily uttered “Oh good, my
something high up in a cabinet, to attempting to lift something you’ve lifted twenty-eleven times before and getting locked into a painful body position. And sure, the changes to your appearance accelerate dramatically, sometimes to the point that you walk past a mirror and have to turn your head to get a better look at that strange person who was reflected back to your peripheral vision. But, I think the emotional adjustments are the hardest of all.
first smile line!”? Once it’s here, though, the hard part begins. Sure, the physical ramifications aren’t easy to deal with. Pulled, strained and aching muscles are frequent, from playing your favorite sport and not being able to walk the next day, to the twinges your back gives you when reaching
The strains and aches keep coming if you refuse to acknowledge your age, and unwillingness to acknowledge is an emotional issue. And there are a host of other behavioral issues that come with denial. How many broken hips have occurred because a senior citizen refused to hold onto something for
HCB MONTHLY | SEPTEMBER 2020
balance when stepping out of a shower? How many tumbles on stairs, some deadly, have occurred because a senior citizen was too proud to use the handrail, both down and up? How many senior citizens have succumbed to diabetes or heart disease because they refused to acknowledge that they shouldn’t continue eating the way they’d eaten the previous part of their life? And, oh my goodness, how many debilitating or fatal medical conditions could have been prevented and/or treated if senior citizens went for medical care more often than they did when they were middle-aged? From this Porch Swing, this old person thinks that all the physical stuff related to aging is so much more successfully dealt with when one admits and accepts that one has become old.
