The One Way Trip

) A piece of work (or more) that you feel eloquently describes a topic like death, loss, pain (mental/emotional only please), joy, new life, a wedding, etc. along with A Baby Boomers Reflections...

I was walking past Sunnyside Nursing Home

 - a senior hot spot. 

The day was damp and moldy

like some of the oldies  outside sitting on rows 

of identical wooden chairs 

chilling in the setting sun.

I've walked that path before 

feeling watched while they stare... 

I hate being stared at.  

It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. 

This time though, I'm suddenly aware of time thinning

loose and floppy like wattles and sagging skin. 

Above my head two s**t hawks screech and squawk

over a scrap of garbage. 

To my left the river flows 

dank, dark and dingy

old smelling... and used up.

I remember how this place used to look 

back in the sixties when I was a kid. 

Nothing but gopher holes, scrub brush and 

rolling prairie bleached pale gold and covered with 

rough fescue, yellow yarrow and golden bean 

competing with thickets of Russian thistle trying to

claim their prickly pocket of turf.

The scent of silver sage perfumed the dry, dusty air. 

And it was always windy... my childhood memories are linked with the prairie wind....Sounds and smells were enticements carried on the restless and constant moving air. Back then time was forever.

Time was thick and syrupy... endless with discoveries around every bend. We spent hours exploring in the hot sun; cooling beneath dappled shade of aspens and poplars or playing hide'n seek in the thickets of tangled willows and dense undergrowth that cloaked the clay banks of the South Saskatchewan river. It was a kid's paradise...

Anyway, turning away from the nursing home I look 

over my shoulder and see the oldies are still staring at me.

 My blood runs cold. "F*****g reptiles" I think. It's an ugly thought but hey, they freak me out. I know it's mean and I'm not proud for thinking it but, at least I have enough sense to keep

my thoughts to myself ... well most of the time anyhow.

I can't help wondering  how many other people 

think similar, ugly thoughts. 

Civilized  living, I think to myself, really isn't "real". Humanity doesn't want "real" ...."real" life is too frickin ugly because people do not want to come face to face with life's callousness

and our animal ferocity. It scares them and being scared them makes them mad. Instead, any truth that bites us in the a*s or 

makes us face our own horribleness is hidden away, 

scuffed over or somehow made taboo. Truths that expose 

us as the very animals we are, become quickly controlled, bound, manipulated in some way shape or form to diminish this fact.

 

The "makers of the civilized codes of conduct"

(who ever the hell they are), have been established to 

deny humanity of their collective animal natures.

We are above animals they like to say.

Being "civilized" means being  consummate liars. 

We gott keep up the pretense. Go with the program.

It's easier to allow ourselves to be programmed because,

reality is just too big and scary for our tender civilized little hearts. 

Getting old though is real and unavoidable, given the alternative,

and getting there is freaky man! No doubt about it...

The so called "truths" in the civilized doctrines of modern society, 

are really nothing more than fluffy cotton batton wads of platitudes. 

Cold, stark reality is the one way trip. How long is yours gonna 

be be? Or mine? Now, that's the conundrum...

It's the inevitability of this un-experienced finality 

that scares the ever-living piss out us. 

We're programmed, hard wired one might say, 

to fool ourselves. Apparently we are the only creatures 

aware of our own mortality. We know we're gonna die! 

And the ugly reality of it really screws with our heads 

so we try to hide from it. 

As a society we claim to love, honour and 

respect the elderly ... but just look around! 

We shut them away in nursing homes! 

We cloister and hide them all the while pretending

this is the right thing to do!

We take them away from their families (our families!) so 

they can spend their "golden years" ....in an institution!

Now think about the other  institutions we put folks  into....

No one wants to be old damn it! But most of us want to live - 

so, we play stupid, selfish, silly little games with ourselves and well, mostly ... mostly we try to avoid thinking about it all. Which is why we don't like hanging around old people, smelling mothballs, s**t, piss and the stink of old age... and our own demise.Yes... death! 

It reminds us of the one way trip.