Sunday Morning

Once again, a night of troubled relationship to sleep. 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM. Saw them all. And there was so much to see, it seems. Now, with a near lifetime of memories, regrets, worries, fears to drift amongst, like a cloud above a mountainous landscape – a dark cloud and a night landscape – there’s plenty to fill those empty hours – the ones which, so often now, do not know sleep.

Now, sitting at the keyboard, eyelids drooping, forced to stay open, longing to fall shut, it’s hard to know where to go next, after such a gloomy start. Sitting, looking out the window at a day trying to be rainy, waiting for the drowsy fog to focus into an image that has meaning – it happens sometimes, not often – waiting, waiting. And now the drizzle. And now the rain.

But it won’t do to be melancholy.  Melancholy gets us nowhere.

Can either of us believe I wrote that? I know you smirked reading it. I almost did myself. There are times when melancholy is the only thing that seems to get us anywhere. When the words won’t come, the thoughts won’t focus, but the cloud drifts on, no matter how much we try seeding it for useful precipitation instead of salty tears.

Sitting, waiting, hoping – even when things don’t flow (no old guy stereotypical pun intended) – those are the hardest skills to muster, the ones they don’t give you the training for, even in post-graduate education. They’re skills you have to master on your own.

A friend just turned 90, another 95. If I make it as long as they have, then I’ve got 15 or 20 years to go. Being realistic, it’s more likely 10, with luck – and how many of those, “good years”?

There’s no way to know, of course – barring purposeful intervention – and the more important question, anyway, is – however many, what will I, what can I, do with them? (This last bit written at 4 AM, so is there any wonder there are sleepless nights?)

I’ve written a lot of words over the decades, some making good sentences, some less good. But it seems that there is still something in there itching to be said – and less and less time left to say it. For a long time now I’ve been – haunted is too strong a word – by the title of a book I’ve only partly read: Somewhere Near the End. Now, some days (no, more likely some nights) I wonder if I have time enough left to read it to the end.

I’ve always been a late bloomer, and what better time to bloom late than in old age. Whatever I do now, I’d best be doing for myself. There won’t be any career to think about, not this late. The annuities are fixed, the will notarized. There are no heirs. It’s not absolutely too late for minor changes, but they’re not likely to rewrite the memoir substantially.

They used to say, back when we were young, “Do what you love and it won’t be work.” As though we had the gumption (courage is too grand a word) that could take. As though we knew what we loved then, and the living would take care of itself.

A more age appropriate admonition now might be, “Do what you love, and do it FAST.” It may still be work, but what’s wrong with work? Man doth not live by grace alone. That’s the Calvinist in me speaking.

Despite the Botox and the plastic surgery, there’s now no denying – for most of us, anyway, “ We’re not getting any younger. Get cracking! If you’re ever going to, while (if) you still can.” (That last bit written at 4:15.)