the golden years, can't wait for them

i was doing a new patient assessment. it went like this:

myself and the company marketer walk into this old little apt. This 97 year old man, and probably about 97 lbs, was sitting alone on a moldy sofa.

me "Hello Fred (name changed), my name is Shanna, how are you doing?"

fred "I know what you're thinking (yelling in an old crackly voice). And NO I don't have dementia."

Great introduction. And he was just getting started.....

We did a short assessment, and out of the blue he turned his head towards me and locked his gaze.

fred "Why?" "WHY??"he shouted (the marketer asked "why what?") "Why?" he said again. He didn't take his foggy cataract eyes off me for a second. The war was on.

me Staring right back at him, in a firm voice, "Because" he blinked, processing my response. Then his lips raised to show a toothless smile and he started laughing.

fred: "Have you ever heard the Golden years poem?"

me "no"

fred: not waiting for an invitation started in, by memory,

(some words have been changed.. so if it doesn't make sense sorry...)

" The Golden Years, my golden years have come at last, I cannot see, I cannot pee, I cannot chew, Oh My what can I do? My memory shrinks My hearing stinks No sense of smell I look like heck! My mood is bad - can you tell? My body's drooping, Have trouble pooping The Golden Years has come at last ,The Golden Years can kiss my but."

i LOVE my job.

aLL we can DO.

we all are nothing but victims of fate. tossed and frown upon the winds of uncertainness. heaved to the tidal waves of bleak unknown. Riding a wave, without really knowing what we are riding. Where we are going. It could collapse at any second.

Questions pulse through the mind...What will happen. If I do fall, where will I fall to. If I don't fall where will this wave take me to. Can I change where I'm going. Do I want to. How do I get where I want to go. Where do I want to go. They go on...& on.

What then? All we can do is keep breathing. Keep riding. Adapt our instincts to where it takes us. We must LIVE 4 today. Does happiness depend on an event. a stage we reach in life. a number we see in our account. Events may or may never happen. The sun might. or might not. come out. You might buy any ice cream cone just to have it robbed at your first taste, by gravity. So why go on? There is no insurance company that can cover you from tosses of fate.. BUT. U choose how to ride the wave. You may not know where you're going. But WE DO choose HOW we go there.

A famous survivor of the concentration camps Viktor Frankl once said:

"We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

man were created equal in the beginning, just somehow we all have ended up with different things on our plate. the REAl ? is: how will we ride the wave. what words will be on our lips as we walk into the chambers. it's not where we go. it's how we go there. .