I am of an advanced age and pretty much remember lots of stuff. Whether the memory is true or not, might never be able to proven. But those memories help a lot.

One of the things we all deal with is the occasional lack of focus, followed by the “Now what do I do?” question. Young people often use the old chestnut “I’m bored.” As thinking human beings, we then add activity to give us meaning or keep us from getting the old chestnut. Once, I spent an entire summer in a small, empty college town for the solitude. Ugh. There was a bar…

So where is the blessing from the title?

In 2023 I was afflicted with what I’ve come to call “The Calamities”. After a vigorous, active life free from major health issues, my apparent lifetime ration of health problems arrived all at once after age 71, as if they had been stored someplace waiting for the right time. The Calamities upended everything and even caused an immigration from the too-warm South to the hopefully not-too-cold North. Hey, just found a blessing: I moved in the spring and was here for the glorious, northern summer. Bad me, I sent many a pic back to friends when the southern heat topped 100 degrees. Bad me.

But the biggest blessing of all is the lack of down time for my brain. Since February of 2022 there have been tests, treatments, follow up tests, follow up treatments, and more follow up tests (for three afflictions), and financial issues to navigate. Even when I sit and recharge in The Chair, my mind never wonders what to do next, or what do I need to accomplish. No boring, wondering, empty time. Every second is spent on survival, including what happens if the treatments work and what happens if they don’t. And how much will it cost me. And where will I get the money. And…and..and…

When first arrived, I asked a friend where to volunteer. He asked me what could I do, what could I tolerate. We soon realized volunteering would have to wait for a better body and mind.

But I still did not suffer from lack of purpose or a lost way.

Plus, drum roll, there is a very big hope for the future…and that chance to volunteer.

How blessed is that?

Sorry about yesterday, but it illustrates, again, how life is–strange. I was sad.

Now, today, I’m not. There have been crises (Yes, that is correct) my entire life, as with most of us. For some reason, though, it’s hard to remember they will pass, life will go on, and often times better than before. If I wrote it on my hand it would wash off, so we’ll see how long it takes to forget if I write it here, because more crises are on the way. That’s life in our older days.

The two obvious differences between a young person crisis and an old person crisis is, one, the potential for a crisis is baked into old age as body parts fail, memory lapses, and young people get noisier. And, two, the time to recover. Much like investing, there is a time when you might not have enough time left make up what you lost. Youth is wasted on the young…

And there’s always the final crisis, the last trip to the hospital. When I worked with an aged population, they knew what going into a hospital meant: You didn’t always come out upright.

A lot of love has been lost in my life, and each time it was not as long as one might think before a new love took the old one’s place. But the recovery was helped by youthful vigor and activity, a “get right back on the horse” mentality. Besides not being able to mount anything now, there aren’t many horses my age around these parts, pardner.

Well, this turned into a complaint about old age, despite how hard I steered the other way. It isn’t wasted time, though, because we remember things better when we write them down. (Proof: See how often I remember that phrase?)

I’ll never, again, succumb to sadness during a crisis.

None, of you should, either.

Yeah. Right. Life, have at us.