Only the Moon as Witness

When Father Time crashes your party, and he will, you'll know it. At first you may just feel a bit 'off', unbalanced perhaps. The aches and pains that have been rumbling through your body for some time feel just a bit more real. But you pop some painkillers and launch yourself out into the world, just maybe with a tiny bit less energy than you had yesterday.

Ageing is inevitable and no amount of supplements or three for the price of two gadgets will change this. It's how you age that apparently has a plethora of choices. Just look at the ads on your Facebook feed and how they shift with the passing years. Five years ago you might have been seeing other greying folk beckoning to you, eyes smiling as the skin around them crinkled, inviting you to sign up to a dating app. Three years ago, endless promotions for miracle skin creams, lotions and potions, diets to get rid of post-menopausal gut overhang, cruises along sparkling rivers dotted with castles and palaces. Today it's all about retirement villages with names like 'Gemlife' or 'Aveo', fronted by minimalistic apartments and a constant timetable of activities, the nursing home and dementia wards pushed into the background. Nothing to see here. A veritable greenwashing of aged care facilities.

Today you check your diary. A trip to the hairdresser, not yet ready to join the blue rinse brigade. Various medical appointments, maybe you'll cancel a couple, sideswiping the medicalisation drive. Lunches where you can eat food you don't really need, washing it down with an overpriced glass of not very palatable wine. Lunches where you can discuss your ailments with others who have similar illnesses like it's a competition for who has the most chronic conditions.

You wipe the diary clean. Checking your bank accounts, you leave the house, reversing the old, cobweb decorated Subaru out of the carport and head for the car wash. Two hours later, you leave the car dealership in a shiny, new, turbo-charged sporty number. Feeling a little reckless you head for the winding backroads, top down, music blaring, singing along out of tune but not caring. Stopping in a small seaside town, you check into a hotel opposite the ocean and stroll along to a seafood restaurant overlooking the bay. As the sun sets magnificently, creating a perfect back drop for the end of a perfect day, you tuck into a surf 'n' turf combo with gusto, washing it down with a very good and very expensive bottle of wine. You sit until the waiter starts to close up, the whole town shutting down around you. Then you rise.

Wandering down to the beach, the town behind you in darkness and only the moon on the water lighting your way, you kick off your shoes. Taking a few steps towards the ocean, listening to the waves gently lapping at the shore, you remove all of your clothing, not bothering to fold it neatly as you once would have. Then with only the moon as witness, you run into the sea as the years fall away.