The Old Man

The old man gets out of bed, shakes the cobwebs out of his head, and stretches his legs to get them going. The first step after putting on his house shoes are unsteady. His body seems to have aged twenty years in the last several months. He looks at himself in the mirror thinking "DAMN!!! I have Bill Clinton's bags under my eyes!" His morning necessities seem to take longer, you know the bathroom routine! He gets a glass o milk and a toast and cheese sandwich. Goes to his chair in the living room, his butt barely eases down ( Everything is easy in movements since retirement. ) and his dog is in his lap. Warm comfort to a tired old soul. It is not yet daylight and he stares out the double window where the worker bees are a buzzing to work. Seems oh so long ago he was one of them. Daylight creeps in and he watches the birds of many different feathers flock for breakfast. Man this time of the year they tear the bird feeders up! You can lose yourself in the simplicity of watching them. Daylight to dark, their happy for a free meal. Traffic on the main road picks up then slows down as the workers have reached their destination and are creating product and all the what-nots of their duties. The worker bees are a buzzing for survival. For it be the survival of the fittest, older generations are put out to pasture whether they want to or not. The old are dispensable, replaced with modern versions, that are paid cheaper. That's the way its always been, more so today where insurance, money, we're just a number carrying a lifetime of aging that companies no longer will carry.

The old man finds it harder to get out of his chair, more times going to the bathroom, age has finally took its toil. Just not the body, the mind has finally accepted the inevitable. The last few years his battery was slowly depleting, he chose to ignore the signs and push on, after all that's all he's ever known. Work till you drop, finally the drop happened with such magnitude, reality hit him hard, smack-dab like a killers bullet between the eyes. Still he shrugs off the time in the hospitals and prepares to get back amongst the worker bees. Strength coming back with him working out, after all work is all he's ever known, after all no one gets ahead by being idle!

It was not to be after recovering nicely physically, briefly visiting a place where few return from, mentally he was shot down, visiting a mental place that almost took him down equivalent to the minutes of no heart beat, nor breathing. Devastated as to how the scenario played out, the old man forced into the pasture where old horses go.

Experience, wisdom, devotion means little. After a lifetime of learned knowledge, it means diddly-squat.