In Wry Retrospect

Dr. Bill Freedman Nature Reserve at Prospect High Head, NS (Photo by NCC)

In Wry Retrospect

Some wag once said that growing old
is not for the faint of heart, and
indeed as we grow older the heart
does grow fainter in its reliability
taxed as it is all those years through
constant use. On the other hand there
is much in life that taxes us and brings
us to the very brink of madness. If
growing old is difficult to contemplate
much less experience, so is the
journey to agedness, compromised
as it is for so many of us by the
natural outcome of marriage and the
raising of a family. My brother used
to quip, he of the jaunty airs and 
amused view of life, that raising
children is akin to death by a thousand
cuts. Yes, raising children is beyond
difficult, the parry and thrust of
minds growing into adulthood
hesitating to give credit where it is
due often taxes one's patience where
there is nothing left to teach because
they who have inherited our genes
simply know all there is to be ingested
to become the beings they strive toward.
And, as it happens, the unkindest cut of
all was reserved for my brother, ardent
naturalist that he was for whom the 
nature conservancy named a preserve,
not by striving to meet the challenges of 
offspring become adults, but nature
deciding in the crapshoot of life that he 
had struggled long enough awarding
him an inoperable cancer to end it all.