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I know you are right, Westy, about our whining about getting older...I guess I just cannot believe that I am no longer 25, and do things like I did them then...nearly 30yrs later, some things just dont work the way they used to...I guess that is what I regret...

Whenever I get to moaning about things related to getting older, I always remember this little poem type thingey from Edgar Lee Masters, and his Spoon River Anthology....

For those who dont know about the Spoon River Anthology, it was written by Edgar Lee Masters....each little poem is someting spoken by a person who has died, and is buried, and this is what they would say to those of us, the living, if they had the chance to say a few last remarks...

Many of the little incidents or poems, are actually based on people and incidents that Masters actually knew or heard about, but they could equally be applied to any small country cemetary, which held the graves of the local inhabitants...anyway here is my favorite little poem from that Anthology, related to an old womans thoughts as she lay in her grave...

207. Lucinda Matlock

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis. 5
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick, 10
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys. 15
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters, 20
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.

For some reason, I always loved that, for this woman did much in her life, saw much, experienced much, and passed to a very old age, and is appalled at the whining and complaining of the younger folks, and her thoughts on that...