The Aging Phenomenom

I just finished a novel, 'Still Alice' concerning an well educated woman, Professor of Linguistics at Harvard who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer Disease. She is 50. Well, I am into my 70's and can go whew for that! But it was indeed thought provoking. I found myself taking mental notes. I would also feel apprehensive, and then I would wonder about myself and the things that I would forget, the reasons behind my desire to organize my files and make notebooks noting where things are, what accounts we have, etc. Then I read the Obits! There I note that people either die young, below fifty, or they seem to make it into their 80's. Lots of people die from 'battling cancer'. God forbid that should happen now. I wonder if I would be up to the battle. Then I wonder, do these people move around much? The ones who make it into their 80's? We are still driving back and forth on trips that take 2-3 days, and so far we have been aware enough to notice if we think something might happen. But things do happen! Tires come off those big trucks. Things like blocks of wood fall off truck beds. Idiots throw things off bridges. Drunks are out there driving the wrong way on highways. But one thing, we don't drive at night. That narrows some things down. And the roads we travel on seem to be so empty a lot of the time, and they are four lanes. There are two big, well maybe three big city corridors to drive through, and they can be some kind of hell, but we make it by both being alert! Well, we try being alert. One lovely trip going from East to the West, we were in the Salt Lake City corridor, the beginning of it, 8 lanes here, and coming around a long gradual corner there in the road is an large metal shed that would hold bags of ice, but it has just fallen off a trailer into the middle of the middle lanes. If you can believe it, a person with no shirt on is coming out into traffic to do Lord knows what. The truck and trailer are on the right side of the road, and another person is standing looking at the trailer. Oops! The best thing to do is get out of there. We did!

So back to aging, but the above is an example of being alert. If no one else is alert, it could be one big mess. But driving in and around where you live gets to be easy, so you have to make yourself be alert. Driving to the Post Office I prod myself to look around me, watch for others, obey stop signs, lights, and whatever else might be out there. No nonchalance for me anymore. Once driving with my Father who was in his late 70's, he was driving, and managed to merge across six lanes after coming off a ramp on the left, and I swear he did not look at all, just kept merging. I know he didn't look because horns were going off all around us, and when he got to the far right lane so he could go off another ramp, traffic was stopped, he stopped abruptly and the license plate right in front of us was 'Yew Ram'. I almost peed my pants. Another lesson learned.