"I WISH I WAS 18 AGAIN"?

“That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience.  The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;” (Titus 2:1-2)

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve discussed the cancer of a woman about my age (with her concerned husband), I’ve also discussed (with his wife) the illness of a guy who’s not that much older than me and MAY have cancer, AND I’ve visited a guy who is about fifteen years older than me and is having serious heart issues.

I’m thinking about a holiday social my wife and I hosted for a group of 45-60 year olds between Christmas and New Year’s in 2000.  Almost all of them, including my wife, talked about their operations and horrific medical problems.  That meeting was interrupted when we got a phone call informing us someone we knew had just died!  I was SO depressed the next day.  

“When we were in our twenties and had get-togethers, “ I said, “nobody sat around talking about their operations, their heart attacks, their near death experiences, etc.  It was like sitting around with a bunch of, well, ‘over the hill’ people.”  Well, considering I was 46 at the time ... I guess that meant me, too!  I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve had only two operations in my life: a tonsillectomy at age 6 and a vasectomy at age 32.  Overall, I’ve been pretty healthy.  Well, my blood pressure IS up a bit, but is still essentially in the safe zone.  I wonder:  if at some point my health fails, will I want to talk about it all the time?  (I actually hope NOT.)

Kids can’t appreciate how quickly life goes by.  My parents used to talk about it, BUT I was a kid and I couldn’t relate.  In just a few weeks, my daughter Amy graduates from college and nursing school.   I was her age 30 years ago.   Amy will be 22 in May.  I can remember the childbirth classes when my wife was “expecting” Amy- so clearly. The teacher’s name was Julie Boch.  She had married into the big automobile dealership family from Norwood.  It SEEMS like 4 or maybe 5 years ago- not 22!   A couple of weeks ago, in the MetroWest Daily News automotive section was a story about a classic 1959 Chevy Bel-AIr.  I was only around 4 when that was a new car, but I distinctly remember those cars because they have such distinctive fins and tail lights.  In their day, they REALLY stood out.  Even my mother used to call those cars, “The cars with the butterfly backs”.  When I was in high school, cars like that were starting to be considered old, BUT they were  popular with the teenagers.  NOW, that car is 48-years-old and an antique in every way.  And I remember them new....

A guy in our church who is in his 80s always refers to me (and any man under age 70) as “just a YOUNG man”!  Well, compared to him, I AM just a young man.  But I wonder how the past thirty years have all gone by so fast!  Having peers with cancer, and heart attacks, and operations, and DYING, well, that’s not what it was like when I was a kid!

What was it George Burns sang back in the late 1970s? “I wish I was 18 again”?  Maybe I do...