A Meeting of Old Men

"Guess who I saw?" I asked my wife Saturday afternoon. I had been to the recycle bins. I had then driven down East Claiborne, and I thought I saw someone I knew walking a dog on the levee. I went back and parked at the tennis court. He walked up. I got out.

"I had to see it for myself," I said. "Jim Bob walking on a cane." (The name has been changed to protect his privacy)

"Walking slow on a cane," he responded.

We chatted a few minutes. We talked about getting old, about the virus, about the stock market.

"Who?" Penny asked a while after the meeting of old men.

"Jim Bob. I saw Jim Bob, and he walks with a cane now."

"Wow. Well you know he's older than us."

"It's stunning to me. It hasn't been that many years since we were riding bicycles together, doing fifty miles at a time."

Back to the meeting with Jim Bob. I told him about my recent experience with my brother-in-law. I wrote about it here. He saw me out running and stopped. He seemed genuinely surprised and said, "You're running like an old man."

"I am an old man," was my reply.

I suppose I'm still processing that. I'm still trying to come to terms mentally, and emotionally with my mortality, my age. I never thought I would be this old. People my age a dying, people I went to school with. Then I see Jim Bob on a cane, barely moving along his grey head bent slightly down. He was once one of the best distance runners in Greenwood, Mississippi. Even ten years ago he was still a very good cyclist. But time waits for no man. Age is undefeated.

That, however, will not stop me from fighting it, from resisting. My dad did that right until the very end. The day he died, he had been out walking. He literally died with his running shoes on. I hope to go the same way.