I assume Spanish or Portugese is Cai’s first language, which makes this entry even more astonishing. I found it impossible to stop reading it even though it made me very uneasy.

There are quite a few posts in English so for anyone, like me, who doesn’t speak Spanish or Portugese, there’s still plenty there to get stuck into.

I wrote this to try to get it out of my system. It’s certainly made me feel a little less maudlin about ageing. I think I tied myself into a bit of a straitjacket by going for rhyming couplets, but once I’d started I couldn’t really stop, so here it is.

The doorway

I know I am close to that small, low door.
My journey soon will cease.
My lifetime of memories but a poor,
and distant cousin waiting for peace.

I once was young – weren’t we all?
Too soon made old and frail,
borne aloft on a funeral pall,
in which skin sags waxen and pale.

My fear of death is not so great,
as the fear of age itself,
tied inexorably to my ultimate fate,
which sits there waiting, on my shelf

Mocking me, teasing me,
bidding me visit and then,
releasing me, easing me,
into that permanent den.

Life is short, they tell me in stories,
every day could be your last.
Why then the thought that less always more is?
What of the dreams I’ve amassed?

Do they die with me, undreamt?
Do they pass onto others to dream anew?
Let me the answer pre-empt.
I believe they pass on, to him and her – and you.

My fear of unbeing is only a nightmare.
Unbeing is just the beginning,
of new lives fresh and vital, free of care,
new dreams being dreamed as the stars go on spinning.

So hear me, children and heed my wishes.
Make the most of your days and your dreams,
for your time is but short and the secret this is,
life’s never as long at it seems.
***

Boy, I can be miserable when I want to be!

Reality check: if I got off my enormous behind, exercised regulary and lost a ton of weigh (and by ton, I mean almost literally a ton) I suspect I’d have a few more years to look forward to and the energy to enjoy them.