Everyone's Getting Older

[canyonwalker]

Occasionally I feel wistful about growing older. Each passing year brings some new infirmity or awareness of something I can no longer do like I used to. At our joint birthday party (Hawk's and mine) the other night I was reminded that it's not just me. All my friends are growing older, too. That was made most acutely clear in the form of two friends who were having a visibly difficult time walking.

I'm no stranger to people struggling to stand or walking with a cane. I'm not talking about "older people" here— my grandmother used a walker starting in her 70s and a wheelchair in her 90s— but people my age. My partner has been using a cane regularly for 10 years already. Her conditions are unusual for her age, though. Or at least they were. Now as we get older more and more of my friends are struggling to stand, walking with a cane, and/or laboring and breathing hard after climbing just a few stairs. This is becoming the new normal for our age group.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

Last year or the year before, I met up with he-who-always-plays-yellow for dinner and catching up after COVID. I was really surprised to see how much he relied on his cane, and he had a whole lot more gray hair than I remembered!

I don't know if he had really changed that much in the few years since lock-down, or if my memory had held onto a younger image of him for many years of seeing him weekly. But it really was quite a shock.

[merhawk]

He definitely had changed.

[canyonwalker]

I now add my oldest sister - 2 years younger than me - to the list of "People around my age who walk with a cane".

Like my spouse, she doesn't need a cane constantly, but there are times when her condition flares that she can't stand/balance without it.