Fizzling

Seems most of us coming up in the world aspire to SIZZLING. We want to be…

• good looking
• sexy even
• smart, possibly the
• life of the party

Do we make it? Do we acknowledge it? Do others tell us about it—give us the feedback, possibly for a stretch of 40 years—that we indeed SIZZLE?

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We’re just back from celebrating Dad’s 95th birthday. Actually, it was less of a celebration than a scolding. “Dad, you have to have more help in here during the week.”

“No! I don’t want to be invaded!”

“Then you’ll have to go to an assisted living facility.”

“No, I’m not leaving my house and I’m not allowing anyone to invade my privacy.”

“Then you’ll have to sign up for Life Alert, and promise to wear the necklace at all times.”

“OK.”

It was depressing. Dad couldn’t explain why he carries a half pound of keys in his pocket every day, even though he leaves the house for only an hour one day a week, and needs only two keys to lock up and get back in (none for the car…finally stopped threatening every driver and pedestrian in his part of Los Angeles County!).

He was stupefied and a bit perturbed by finding a beer in his fridge, even though three adult children arrived with food and drink for a birthday luncheon. “Where did this beer come from? I didn’t put a beer in the fridge!”

Though it’s difficult to see a parent or parent-in-law, or any friend or neighbor near, or over, 90 lose their faculties—they may have been a famous actor, a war hero, a renowned author, an award-winning artist—and now they are the pitiful, shuffling refuse of their former glorious selves.

Could it be the worst part of this all is that they know it?
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I think about when I’ll be in the same boat, except I have no children to try to save me from myself.

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Do we all wither—fizzle—after a lifetime of aspiring to SIZZLE?

Other than staying healthy, I have no options that I know of. But today, it is not about me. It’s about all my 90-103 year old friends and family…

Reality is setting in. (Is ‘reality’ something we say after a certain age?)

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