<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div></div><div>John,</div><div><br></div><div>I can certainly commiserate. I will be 80 if I make to December. I’ve managed to avoid most of the medications, but I am aware of several “rites of passage” of sorts—hearing aids a few years ago, knee replacement a year ago and the sudden realization that I seem now to have more hair on my ears than on my head. Among the new insights that seem to come only with aging, I’ve become aware that at some point my focus has begun to shift from quantity to quality. I try to adhere to a regimen of physical exercise and maintain a healthy diet. But it tends now to be motivated more by the desire to live “well” than to live longer. It’s also interesting to note that I seem to have a little more control over the former than I do the the latter, but control is less an issue than going with the flow. I guess that too is part of the process. </div><div><br></div><div>So may we and all like us be well,</div><div>Randy</div><div><br>On Jul 4, 2018, at 4:47 PM, John Epps via OE <<a href="mailto:oe@lists.wedgeblade.net">oe@lists.wedgeblade.net</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr">
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:14pt">Earthrise @
79<span></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Recently we were returning from a
trip to Kansas and stopped for lunch at Denny’s in Limon, Colorado. We’d been
watching storm clouds gathering on the horizon and were hoping to make it home
before they hit. As we were leaving, I held the door for an obviously elderly
couple – both were white-haired, somewhat bent-over, and he had a cane. Walking
was a chore and pushing open the door would have taxed their capacities. They
could obviously use some help, so I pushed open the door and held it as they
struggled through. Then they uttered the words that still jar me: “Thank you,
sir.” “Sir?” Coming from them? I was taught to use that term to refer to those
older than I. That statement occasioned an interior rainstorm of reflections,
including lots of wind, rain, and some hail.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Looking back over the last month,
I’ve had more “sirs” thrown at me than at my senior year at The Citadel. There
it was earned, deserved, and welcomed. Here it’s a surprising address heralding
the onset of elder-ness that I didn’t think I had earned (yet) or deserved, and
certainly not welcomed. There are plenty of signs, from the number of
medications it takes to keep going to the diminishing energy and frequent naps.
But I have ignored those as simply the afflictions of a young man with
something gone wrong (to use a phrase from JWM). <span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Reality will not be denied. It
breaks through our facades.<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This time it drove me to look at
a work I’d heard about but never examined: “On Holy Living and Dying” by Jeremy
Taylor published in 1839 (a century before my birth). I turned quickly to the
section on Holy Dying. Here’s an excerpt. “A person is a bubble…all the world
is a storm, and people rise up in their several generations…like bubbles
descending from nature and Providence; and some of these instantly sink into
the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having
had no other business in the world but to be born, that they may be able to
die: others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and
give their place to others: and those that live longest in the face of the
waters, are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy; and being crushed with
the great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a froth; the change not being
great, it being hardly possible it should be more a nothing than it was before.
So is everyone….”<span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This goes on for 10 pages with
powerful images and the same message about our relative insignificance in the
cosmic scheme of things. Somehow, and I don’t know how, I found this strangely
comforting, and not unsettling as one might assume. You just never know where
wonder will break through, but when it does, it’s well worth celebrating.<span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:12pt">John Epps</span><br></p>
<br></div>
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