I’ve decided to keep a journal of aging, “Counting My Days,” about anything worth sharing whenever something meaningful comes up about where I am.

This happens often. I have no desire to complain or wring my hands about sore legs, the government, or Big Farma. I love my life and am happy living it.

Yesterday, when I went to the doctor to have my ears checked and cleaned, I realized my doctors had changed their tone.

They mainly check my blood to see how I am and no longer ask me if I go to a gym, about my heart, reviewing the medicine list,  if I have fallen,  safe at home,  or much of anything about my future. It’s just maintenance now.

It’s different but unmistakable, less exciting but quite sensible. We no longer discuss the future and plot ways to thwart it. I accept that fully. I did enjoy the plotting.

It isn’t a time to explore new things and to not obsess over the old ones.

One of these years, I’m going to die, and there is nothing my good doctors can do about it except make me even more miserable by keeping me alive because they can.

I don’t mind the new vibe but it’s different. In and out, as if there is no point in going over things too carefully. I know they feel.

I don’t want to be tested anymore or agree to any major surgery,  and I just learned that New York State says I can get a DNR form from my doctor without going anywhere or spending anything. I’ve got an appointment. I had one made up some years ago, but I have no idea where it is.

Maria, my doctor, and I will talk about it. I will not be kept alive by artificial means. She doesn’t want me to.

“Age puzzles me,” Jungian psychologist Florida Scott-Maxwell wrote in her journal, The Measure of My Days, which she wrote throughout her eighties. “I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties were passionate. I grow more intense as I age.”

Me too. I like this Journal idea very much. It isn’t a journal about death but life; it is one precious way to chronicle it and share what I am learning – living the days well and with acceptance.

I’ll be honest and open and try to make it helpful to others. And I’ll talk about all the new things happening to me. My life is much more intense than a couple of years ago.

My short-term memory sometimes fails me; I can not remember the names of some things and people. I asked my doctor about it, and she laughed. “Welcome to 77. Don’t worry, Jon; bloggers and photographers don’t have mind problems.

The problem isn’t when you forget to wash the dishes, but when you forget what dishes are. I’ve read your blog and talked to you. You are in perfect shape head-wise.”

_____

“If we learn anything at all as time goes by and the changing of seasons become fewer and fewer, there are things in life that cannot be fixed. It is more than possible that we will go to our graves with a great deal of personal concerns about life agendas left unresolved. That becomes clearer and clearer by the year.”  — Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years.