Crows in the fog

Must look closely to spot them.

One of the verities of age is pain. I spoke of Margie’s pain yesterday, but pain sets in well before 90. Skeleton crumbles, spine compresses, nerves pinch and vibrate with quiet violence. Arthritis invades the joints. Muscle mass slips away as inexorably as ice melts in spring sun. Digestion falters, heart forgets its rhythm, liver and kidneys sag with exhaustion and lungs fill with fluid. Getting off the planet after you’ve lived, as people like to exhort us, “to the fullest” (and who would ever choose to live half-full?) is natural and predictable but seldom easy.

Tony Hoagland has written a splendid poem about it, suggesting

you might come to see pain
                 as a kind of weather—
like the sun, the wind, and the rain
that fall through everything 
and constantly change.

Full poem is here.