Wednesday 24 July 2019

“Another Birthday”




We were talking yesterday, my cancer buddies (who are also writing buddies) and I, about the way most people seem to fear or even hate old age, and how some, who are fighting to make another birthday, see every extra year as a tremendous gift.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I am grateful I am still alive, but I do fear the lack of independence that many of us, especially those with no money, face as age or infirmities increase. I think that, even more, I fear dying before I have managed to polish off my roughest edges and be the kind of person I know myself to be underneath the crust. Someone who can really embrace life.

So this is what I wrote.


Another Birthday

I don’t want one more birthday
I want a thousand
ten thousand
I want to live so long and so well
that all my fears die of old age
and I wait my stiffness out
outlast all infirmity
lose interest in whether I’m
remembering right or not
tire my fatigue
bore my hesitation
give flight to every
impulse toward life I ever have
and spend my days protecting insects
nurturing plants
feeding   giving water
giving shelter and a sense that is
the absence of all panic
to birds   and rats   and dogs
I want to live so long my crusts
crack and split and fall away
till I respond with tenderness to those
as brittle as that near-forgotten me



Image: "A woman's 78th birthday on 4th December 2005. Ardencraig Care Home (Glasgow)" by I Craig from Glasgow, Scotland.   Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic