Remember my good friend L, the one whose memory I was worried about? Well, we had lunch again yesterday, and she seemed much more with it.
Sometimes I tend to forget that she was always a little on the flaky side, even when we were young.  She even admits to it, laughing and telling me yesterday that a mutual friend of ours had jokingly told her a few years back that she would never have to worry about  Alzheimers because she'd had it all her life.
But, alas, she brought more bad news.  Another person about whom I have written, the local guy with whom I had a summer romance once, is now her brother-in-law.  
He died in December in a car wreck on Main Street.  For some reason, he just drove right into a pole on the sidewalk.  Although an autopsy was not performed, the police believe he may have had a heart attack just before he drove into the pole.  
Too many of the people my age are now passing away. It makes me all the more conscious of my own mortality.  I still have unfinished business; I'm not nearly ready to die.
But, as Janet said the other day when we were talking and she was telling me about yet another of our friends who is now battling esophageal cancer, "getting older is no fun."
"No, it certainly isn't. Whoever said these were the golden years didn't have any idea what they were talking about,"  I said.
My cousin and I were visiting on the phone just a few days later, and we also began discussing getting older.  I relayed to her what Janet had said.
"As Grandma Ruby used to say," Connie replied, "these golden years are the shits!!!"(By the way, that was Connie's grandmother on the other side of the family. Our mutual grandmother would have walked through fire rather than utter a curse word. Of course, I have to admit she wasn't always nearly as much fun as Grandma Ruby either.)