I often think about old age and what life will be like if we make it that far. I wonder what it's like to feel the creak in your bones and to suffer pain in simple movements. How I'll manage a bent back or a hearing impediment; if I'll feel embarrassed for taking a long time to get on the bus; if I'll need help getting to the bathroom; if I'll look at the young and envy their youth; if I'll curse myself for having taken for granted everything I can now so easily do?
Or will I be looking back on a fulfilling life I'll be happy to have lived? Will I be surrounded by grandchildren who call me nai nai who run into an embrace when we meet? Will I even have grandchildren? What will I spend my days doing and will I still be friends with the people I know now?
I'll be honest -- old age is truly a frightening thing. As time flows, so does the imminence of passing. To not just wither, but to feel and see yourself withering. To see my loved ones wither weighs down on me even more. I have an image stuck in my mind of a scene from a film where an elderly man strikes people off his address book, one by one, as his friends go.
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I was thinking of my grandfather and how tears would well up every time I left my grandparent's house. Each time I opened the door, there he would sit in a state that broke my heart even more than the time before. Witnessing his degeneration was always almost too much to bear. At one point, he had started wearing socks on his hands to stop him from scratching his itchy skin that had started to bleed. Disheveled hair streaked with silver and grey, scruffed up stubble with age spots on paper-thin skin and the wrinkles etched near his eyes, with thin lips turned down at the edges. To get a smile or a word out of him was what I hoped for. It was just really hard being slapped in the face by a stark reality so different from what he used to be in my memory of earlier times.
And I think about how strong my own nai nai is. She's an incredible woman with so much to bear yet she always has something to joke about. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to lose someone you've shared your whole life with.
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The further time marches on into the future, and further from the 29th of November 2014, 10:57pm, the more nebulous it gets which scares me. I wish I could experience the future selectively - let some parts move on while some are kept on pause. But I want to remind myself to love what I have while I can, to not live in regret.