Old and Sick

I wonder if this is how I will feel when I'm old? A fever crept up on me last night and hit a summit of 102.9 degrees, leaving my body achy, flashing back and forth between the Sahara and Alaska. Not preferable over the typical health of a 20 something. But am I living in luxury now? And when I hit my 80's I'll wake up to reality? Is this is the kind of pain I'll have to put away daily to just enjoy the simple pleasures. I have seen old people groan when they sit on couches, and struggle to get up from them after they have sunk down deep. My grandmother was old, but I don't remember her groaning.

Idaho wasn't the friendliest of places in the depression, nor were many others for that matter. A vision my grandmother shared with me once was her mother feeding those who came to their front door to beg for food. When there was work, so that they would be dignified in their request they would do it, when their wasn't, they ate just the same. I don't know how many people she fed when she was small, nor how often, but she grew up dignified, working right along with those men. Feeding chickens in the blistering cold, tending to soil writhing with weeds and 4am milking appointments is bound to make you tough. So it is no surprise to me that Grandma would get up from any chair without a sound, and it is no surprise to me that she walked a few miles everyday until she was diagnosed with cancer, and passed two weeks later. And it is no surprise to me that her sick body went unmentioned by her, because she minded not her own aches but the aches of others, whom she continued to serve and feed since the farm.

Awaken my mind to words and stories.