la valse de la vie

I just had the realization that my dad is in his sixties and I think, shit, in less than ten years he'll be seventy and that's when the body starts to go*. Anything can happen. Which is a stupid way to think about it, because any one of us can go in a heartbeat (or lack thereof, ha), but I guess probability-wise, he's gonna be old then. Officially old. And I'm gonna start ticking off each year as a little bit of luck or a gift or something. Start worrying about spending enough time with him, etc., which I should be doing now.

He could just as easily live to be ninety, who knows, and thirty years from now I'll be the age he is now and be thinking, "damn--never thought he'd make it this far" or something like that. Mortality is a crapshoot, but the house always wins, or whatever the metaphor. Maybe seventy is the new forty. Maybe stem cell research will having us all living to a hundred and twenty, and they'll start talking about us like in the old testament. John married Kate and they begot one child, and he lived to be one hundred and forty-two wizened old years. He never stopped bitching about the cold.


*which is completely not true. For me, it's been all downhill since age 20.