Random Musings: Growing Old

I am growing old. I am closer to the end than I am to the beginning. That is a strange feeling and something I do not feel that I was prepared to face.

It feels like just yesterday I was working at my part-time job after school in a nursing home. I worked in the kitchen. The nursing home was for people of Scottish descent. We had to wear uniforms that looked like they were out of an episode of some British period piece set in the Victorian times.

We wore white dresses, shoes, stockings and frilly white hats that kind of poofed up on top. We were relegated to the kitchen area preparing trays of food like lamb and mint jelly. We tended to the elderly folk answering their food needs.

The head of the kitchen was a fiesty older Scottish woman named Maggie. Her mischievous Scottish husband named Rodney was in charge of the grounds. He would go to the cemetery to retrieve a bunch of flowers left from funerals and we would use them to make pretty flower displays on the tables. Macabre yet practical.

After set up and before dinner being served we dined together in our little staff dining area. My coworkers were three other girls my age. We were all in high school. We chit-chatted about all sorts of things. Maggie always had something to say as well.

One day I was bemoaning being young and wishing to get out of high school and move on soon. Maggie told me not to wish my life away as it would soon pass.

How right she was.

However, when I do start to feel a bit down about the age thing I think to myself, ¨This is your chance to take action!¨ I can still have dreams and hopes and plow forward creating my life. I plan to keep working, being active and living a full life til the end.