Venus In Furs

The weather right now is in its absolute prime. Nightly walks have never felt so refreshing! I hope I go on walks every night until I am dead. I would say every night until I’m too old to walk, but even then I think I would make someone wheel me around the block. Getting old terrifies me. I go back and forth between thinking that dying at a relatively young age is better than dying when you’re too old to remember yourself any other way. I suppose I’ll just have to find out what happens. If I could choose how and when I was going to go, then: a) I would be around 75 years old. That way my kids would all be old enough to have their own children, and perhaps I’d have some great-grandkids too. I’d have the satisfaction of knowing that my kids had successful families of their own, and my old mouth would smile just thinking about their successes. They would all be well taken care of and life would be going swimmingly for each of them; b) I would die in my sleep dreaming of stick fences and tall grasses in the wind. Or I’d be dreaming about all the incredible things I got to do during my lifetime. I’d remember lake trips, bike rides, horseback rides, the smell of saddles, eating peppers and hummus, climbing trees, building fires at the cabin, the color of the water in Kauai, the sound of my Dad’s voice when he was singing, all the best books I read, tennis games with Mom, catching tree-frogs, Penelope the chicken and Gato the cat, Gus and Gertie, kayaking on Christmas morning, dance class, and hopefully the sound of my kids laughing; and c) I would die in my huge and deliciously comfortable bed that had more pillows on it than anyone really needed, that had the softest white down comforter, and was placed on the exquisitely large porch off the back of my ranch-house, where I could feel the wind on my cheeks while I slept outside. If you think about it that way, dying isn’t such a bad thing after all, is it?