Aging

Ah, the indignities of age. Over the past year I’ve suffered significant hearing loss. “Huh?” has become my favorite word and I’ve developed a strange new respect for the loonies who hear voices. Aspiring to stoicism, I informed Lucine, my wife, “When I hit 60 I figured that I was entering a stage in which the physical setbacks, some quite unexpected, would mount. So I told myself that I could either whine about it or I could accept all this with grace and good humor.” Lucine didn’t miss a beat. “Then why have you chosen to whine?” Thanks, dear! I mean no disrespect to the late Freddie Mercury when I say ‘We Will Rock You’ sounds better muffled I confess to the occasional maudlin moment.

Batavia, New York I sit in hospice at the bedside of my beloved Aunt Jane — who never let us use the honorific, as “Aunt” made the perennially youthful Jane feel old — and the jukebox in my mind plays its saddest song: “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” by Fairport Convention. Jane, who is eighty-nine and till a few weeks ago looked twenty-five years younger, was my hip and happening aunt of the 1960s who lived in Buffalo and dated pro athletes and bopped along to WKBW’s Top 40. She taught my brother and me to write letters, which is why I still have an autographed photo of Minnesota Vikings kicker Fred Cox, and my brother has his signed picture of Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel.