Wondering What to Share

Old age has advantages and disadvantages. For example, in my youth, I didn’t have the wearing down of some of my body parts that make my shoulder, wrist, and knees ache today in this cold weather of winter, but in my advancing age, I can draw on a much wider selection of memories and experiences to write about. Right now, both seem to be failing me, but to write I must, so I write.

This past week, I finished butchering the venison, freezing some, making deer baloney from other, and from the last orts, I made jerky. I prefer to cut up my own venison. I don’t have to worry about the conditions in the butcher shop, what kind of treatment the meat will get, and whether I will get the same deer that I sent to be processed. By doing it myself, I know who to blame if I find a hair and I don’t have to worry about bone shards from cutting the deer on a band saw.

But I have paid the price. The ache in my right shoulder has begun again. It is the shoulder that I’ve injured three times before in my past. From the continued movement, my left wrist has flared up and I will probably have to have surgery to release my carpal tunnel as I did to my right wrist, about twenty years ago. Ah, yes, the joys of an aging body, while tales and wisdom abound in my brain. I do worry about that as well. My mother Sybil Beck and her five sisters all developed Alzheimer’s disease and my mom’s father Ray Miner had hardening of the arteries or Dementia. Are these a vision into my future? I pray not. Both diseases steal the brain and eventually the body away while trapping the soul inside.