Fragile Frames Don’t Frolic

Oh, the pleasure of plunging into retirement, with all the vitality of a drowsy sloth. Over the past fifteen years, you have increasingly caught yourself musing over which pastimes would suit you, when you pension off, and they finally put you out to pasture. These would be all those things you feel you should be doing now to assimilate a healthier lifestyle and even become fit and more alert. In fact, you have persuaded yourself that you will then have the time and vigour to live a more meaningful life. Upon reflection however, you don’t have an unbroken record of blooming well-being, even now.

Physical decline comes uninvited and insidiously, in short sharp bursts. You excuse it as minor hiccups, while you ardently deny the onset of advanced years as being the cause. Dental treatment increases around thirty years of age, but with the help of your loyal dentist, your choppers can still hold their own in combat with nuts and green apples. At about forty your eyesight requires reading specs, but in the fullness of time, they are upgraded to bifocals, and before you know it, they are promoted to trifocals to ultimately clear the fog. By and large, your body holds together rather well, notwithstanding a thirsty naturel and a partiality for pizzas. The recommended fitness program never materialises either, and simple weekend walks seem pretentious without a dog. By fifty, the diaphragm is showing signs of unrestrained expansion which can be attributed to a sedentary day job. By sixty, your hips are playing up, but this irritation is swiftly resolved by replacements from the spare parts department at the hospital. As if you are spooked, no sooner are you up and about again, than the right shoulder starts playing up. Then you become aware of muted sounds around you, as the volume on the TV surges up the scale. Thus, a pair of hearing aids are surreptitiously acquired and need to fight their way through the hair protruding out of your ears, which is denser than that on the top of your head. With this new innovation, you can now hear the clicking in your knees when you stand up, and the doorbell, which had hitherto been so silent.

Various therapies into retirement, as your biological clock ticks away, you can sense the signs of erosion kicking in. But instead of concentrating on the projected fun and frolics that now evade you, you create a medley of activities that acclimatise to your carnal constraints. In place of fitness, you take up previously unthinkable games of chess with your mind-numbing neighbour. Instead of dancing the light fandango, you have some raised flower beds installed on your spacious terrace and take up amateur gardening. Thus, you can give your wife a bunch of parsley and thyme and a crop of carrots for her birthday – a thrifty Win-Win outcome.

Further medical complications tend to appear unannounced as you fill your days with loathed undertakings like washing the car. What would have been considered a waste of time during your working life, suddenly becomes significant, after all and you have all the time in the world. Weekends become pointless, now that every day is free from work for you. Who wants to go shopping on a Saturday, like you’ve done all your working life, when the place is full up with stressed people? It’s relaxing to know that no one expects anything from you, and you have no hassle. But, hang on a minute – isn’t it more rewarding to feel a sense of achievement at the end of the day, rather than watching the daisies grow? Speaking for myself, I spent all my life working hard, to the exclusion of a healthy social life. Now, I miss the comradeship and human exchange, so I start to appreciate the cashier instead of zooming through the time-saving self-checkout, like I’ve done in recent years.

So, as your medicine cabinet gets more and more congested, and your body becomes a museum of scars and wrinkles, it does well to remember that every step of the way up the ladder to seniority was valuable in becoming what you are today. In your own little way, you have mainly done your best with the bare essentials you were given at birth!

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