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Old Man Take a Look at Your Life
“Who IS that?” This question hits me almost anytime I pass a mirror. The image I see resembles the classic garden gnome. All I need is a red pointy hat. Like almost anyone my age the question hits me daily because I don’t feel substantially different than I did 40 years ago. You know I am talking mentally here, not physically. Physically speaking, my two titanium hips and my “glued together” vertebrae betray the robust farming kid that grew up tossing hay bales, wrestling livestock, and playing rodeo.
The grey in the beard came on so quickly, it seems. I still can feel the wind in my hair, but the right angle in any room with two mirrors betrays the fact that I am mostly bald. I fool myself with the stragglers left that my comb will still catch. The surgeries for my back and hips and recovery time are behind me. Now I am left with the aftermath of what remains.
Yet I am more fortunate than many. I am a survivor of the first pandemic that those around me seem to have forgotten about. The HIV and AIDS diagnosis of many of our friends, and the many deaths, still remind me of my escape from that wave of illness. Even though I was in a high-risk group of gay men in that time period, I paid attention to health advisories and guidelines as my knowledge of the illness grew.
