Maybe it was Lady Bird's several day tribute with the funeral, fifty-mile cortege and the burial, all on TV. This shop window on South Congress (showing Day of the Dead folk art) seemed to illustrate my mindset. Anyway, I've been thinking about how we all end up. Even though we never know what the end will be. They say that but then you see people in nursing homes with Alzheimer's or in the hospice in the final stages of some fatal disease and you are pretty sure where they will end up. For some of us, we keep breathing for quite a while after our fate is sealed. For me, my body seems to be working. But the clock ticks. My dad seems obsessed now with his birthday. He told me a few days ago that he would be 91 in two months "if he made it." He doesn't have any new complaints and he is getting around and doing a few things. He's been coming to the club with me for water aerobics, climbing in and out of the deep end on the ladder. He's been trying to kill poison ivy at his house and he says he washed the filter on his AC unit. He shops, eats, reads, naps, visits with people, tells jokes. The mere numbers, though, seem to impress him now. Somehow this extra year over ninety more so than last year when we celebrated the 'significant birthday.' I think he does a pretty good job of living every day. I guess I do.People who are struggling or who have already succumbed to the inevitable are on my mind just now. It happens.
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