aging

At 11, I could say __ am sodium_ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.

You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time?

Mother is fading for him, her face receding into shadows, her memory diminishing with each passing day, leaking like sand from a fist.

(You know you've reached middle-age if...) when you hear 'Boys in the hood' you think of the Ku Klux Klan.

REFUSALWhen you refuseto tell your weightand age,people knowyou're fat and old.

One quarter of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions, sees an average of 13 physicians each year, and fills 50 prescriptions per year.

I used to think that eighty was a very old age. Now I am ninety. I do not think this any more. As long as you are able to admire and to love, you are young.

Perhaps this was part of growing older, to undergo hideous alterations in the deepest certainties, in love, in lovers, finally in one's self.

...wear a hat and some old lady shoes, and you can do whatever you want.

..Thirty's the end of being young, forty is where you stop fooling yourself.

I don't know who to write to anymore... They've changed their souls, that's a way to be disloyal, to forget, to keep talking about something else.

In her daydreams, they aged miraculously, she still trim with a blond ponytail, standing next to her strong, tall husband with his thick, curly dark hair and straight white teeth. Money was never an issue.

Though Jonah felt transfixed inside his own childhood, no one else saw him as a child. He was already over the hump of middle age, heading rapidly toward those year that no one like to speak of. The best parts had already passed for people Jonah's age. By now you were meant to have become what you would finally be, and to gracefully and unobtrusively stay in that state for the rest of your life.

It pleased him to see that things, and not only people, suffered the wear and tear of age. [53 yr old Inspector Bordelli's view]

If I knew I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

Philip looked incredulously at the tiny bundle in Johnny__ arms. He reached out a hand tentatively, and lifted a corner of the blanket. He saw a wrinkled pink face, an open toothless mouth and a little bald head__ miniature of an aging monk.

Someday, I suppose I__l give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I__l probably be rocking fast, because I don__ know what I__l do without a job.

In these days of physical fitness, hair dye, and plastic surgery, you can live much of your life without feeling or even looking old. But then one day, your knee goes, or your shoulder, or your back, or your hip. Your hot flashes come to an end; things droop. Spots appear. Your cleavage looks like a peach pit. If your elbows faced forward, you would kill yourself. You__e two inches shorter than you used to be. You__e ten pounds fatter and you cannot lose a pound of it to save your soul. Your hands don__ work as well as they once did and you can__ open bottles, jars, wrappers, and especially those gadgets that are encased tightly in what seems to be molded Mylar. If you were stranded on a desert island and your food were sealed in plastic packaging, you would starve to death. You take so many pills in the morning you don__ have room for breakfast.You lose close friends and discover one of the worst truths of old age: they__e irreplaceable. People who run four miles a day and eat only nuts and berries drop dead. People who drink a quart of whiskey and smoke two packs of cigarettes a day drop dead. You are suddenly in a lottery, the ultimate game of chance, and someday your luck will run out. Everybody dies. There__ nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.