Carolee, my granddaughter
being silly when she was three

Did you ever notice that the older you get the older your friends get and the less old friends you have? Today after the liturgy at Church a parishioner paid me a great compliment by saying I looked like an enthused six year in church when I made an announcement. Someone over hearing the compliment wondered if I had been insulted by being compared to a six year old. I explained that it was not an insult but in fact my goal in life was to be like a three year old. I got the same look of amazement from her as I get from a three year old when, after they give me their age, ‘three’, and I reply I am ‘free’.

This afternoon I went to the 80th birthday party for a friend. It was good to see old friends, many of them older than my 69 years. Getting older is okay if we can keep your spirits getting younger. It is okay if we are able to simplify life like a three year old who cannot distinguish ‘three’ from ‘free’.

It is difficult to see an older person, like my deceased Dad or like my friend’s, Tom, mother who suffer from Alzheimer brain disease. By our standards persons without much of memory, are helpless and useless, people to pity. By from the persons’ viewpoint of one with Alzheimer ‘all is well’ if they can accept living in the present moment. If they try to recall the past life can frustrated. Tom’s mother lives in the present and although she does or communicate well I can always maker her smile when I play the “tickle, tickles’ game with her, as I would with a three year old.

With age comes the responsibility of being an elder but the wonderment of being a child.

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