Insomnia. I awoke this deep morning gripped by death. No, not quite. More accurately, I think, age. Death is another thing altogether, and has never been an issue, not really. Dying doesn't/wouldn't bother me. Never has. Death and I have a long and intimate acquaintance and we have long since settled into a vague, prickly tolerance, if not understanding, of one another.
No, it's just another one of those more and more frequent times when I'm jerked awake with my marrow freezing in the certain knowledge of how much closer I am to the end than the beginning; the night terrors crawl up into my chest and behind my eyes and wake me an hour into my sleep and remind me where I am on that timeline.
My father turned 85 the other day, did you know that? Silly. Why would you? The only reason I mention it is because I find that I'm pretty close to 3/4 of his age. When I was 12 I was only 1/3 his age, and at 25 I was about half. Virtually all the events of my life that involved him were when he was at ages that are now years in my past.
He's old now by anyone's reckoning. The fact is that I am too, even if only by Zeno's assessment of my timeline against that of my always-old-since-I-was-a-kid parents. Discovering I'm suddenly within striking range of their ages is more and more grabbing me by the throat and beginning to suck dry that part of me that still "feels" young.
Soon my dad will stop aging altogether and the collapse of our relative ages to 1/1 will rapidly accelerate. Tonight is one of those nights where I know clear into the bottom of my dreams that my self-deluding pretense of “not old” is sliding away like sand under my feet as an ever-stronger tide of cold time rushes higher up my limbs, and will become utterly unsustainable long before that day.
Soon my dad will stop aging altogether and the collapse of our relative ages to 1/1 will rapidly accelerate. Tonight is one of those nights where I know clear into the bottom of my dreams that my self-deluding pretense of “not old” is sliding away like sand under my feet as an ever-stronger tide of cold time rushes higher up my limbs, and will become utterly unsustainable long before that day.
Time to go back to bed. Us old guys need our rest.
Well! That was cheery. I have been plagued by insomnia off and on for a few years now. It SUCKS.
ReplyDeleteAt not quite a double-nickle I am still "young" feeling; my bones', sinews' and joints' arguments to the contrary notwithstanding.
ReplyDeleteMy father would already be 85, were he still living. My mother is about to become 85, a few weeks after I do that speed-limit thing with my age.
I think, though, that among the subtler signs of my aging is the fact that I am less able to sleep well. I wake regularly, fully awake, intervals in the night. An hour an a half after I retire. An hour after that. Two hours after that. And so forth. There've been far too many times I have been in a relatively deep, exhausted slumber when my alarm tells me it's time to get up and do my daily thing.
That is what makes me feel old, when I do. That is what highlights aging and the approach of inevitable eternal sleep, for me.
I refuse to compare myself with my parents. They will forever be 30 years older than I am; the ratio doesn't matter. My father's ashen condition doesn't matter. The fact that I've passed the age of my earliest recollection of my *grandparents* age does not matter.
I guess, really, it's all about me.
Fuck that first photo is creepy. It's too creepy for me to form a coherent comment. Sorry.
ReplyDelete