Getting Old Has to be a Bitch

The old lady two people ahead of me in line moved much too slowly for the guy in front of me. He was annoying in his youth. I say that, knowing that he probably had about 5 years on me, but the waqy he fidgeted made me want to be like, "calm the fuck down, dude." As the old woman slowly pulled herself away from the counter, the guy surges forward, but I continue to watch her as she grabs her cart and pulls it towards her. It knocks into the sign, but she succeeds in getting her cart safely into her hands and away from things that could fall. I watch her walk, painfully, away and I think about the fact that I'm getting old.

I think about getting old a lot. Actually, I think about dying, but to get to the dying part, you have to get old. At least, that's what I tell myself. I am frightfully afraid of dying. Something to do with not knowing what's on the other side, what happens when you are no longer breathing. It scares the hell out of me. I don't want to think about death, but it has finally hit home to me. My dad and uncle dying has done a lot to make death a concrete matter, not an abstract thought.

I don't want to die. It is a plaintive wail that I hear inside myself every day, a wail that grows in ways that I never imagined.

And frankly, I hate imagining.

PS - something that makes this all the more heartwrenching is I've had a friend die, someone who is a friend on Facebook and whenever I see her in my friends list, it makes me sad. Yet somehow, the thought of deleting her from my friends is preposterous. It's a quandry I find myself in every few months. Death frakkin' sucks.