Who Will Still Need Me?

Image by Marcus Chen

Who Will Still Need Me, Who Will Still Love Me When I'm 84?

Nobody, I don't think. I'm not an ugly old man. Any woman seeing me walking like a 50-year-old through the hills and into the markets would know I could still give her a joy ride. But there aren't any around that I know of. Maybe it's the way I dress in my ripped jeans more holier than thou with their holes made from long-time, truthful wearing, not purposefully torn and costing three hundred dollars in Beverly Hills. Or maybe it’s my sandals strapped over my socks, my tie-dyed T-shirt, or my Halloween sweatshirt with its grinning face, or my wool hat pulled down over my ears when the weather is cold, or the broad-brimmed one with its feather when the weather is warm. People do admire the hat, both young and old, telling me they like it, and why shouldn’t they, it was my wife’s I wear in her honor. I don't give a shit if people stare or not. I'm entitled now and finished worrying about what people think. That's a good thing. But it can get lonely at times. I try not to worry about the woman who won't be there nor about the young who think I'm an old fool. I do not care to care about such things, not out of anger, but out of a sense of being who I am with who I am, as I have always been, sometimes in denial, but, more often now, if not in acceptance, at least accommodation. That's a good thing, like sitting before a fire on a winter evening.