"You don't stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing." George Bernard Shaw
Ageing is not for the faint-hearted, my friend says to me, when I am complaining about an ache here and pain there. A few weeks ago I spoke to a surgeonand last week to an anaesthetist and, for the first time, I realised I had a list of things they needed to know about my health. They read my notes and started asking questions. As I answered, I realised it was now a long list.
I was conceived in 1951 during the "wharfies" strike in Wellington. Yes, my dad was a sailor, and my mum a "clippie", a young woman who worked on the trams clipping the tickets. So, in nine months' time, I will have been around for three score and 10 years. In terms of health, things have sort of crept up on me. I wish time hadn't gone so fast, I wish I'd enjoyed it more on the way and worried less about life. Yet I have no bucket list, I have done all the things I wanted to do.
My Angels say that being young has its advantages, they also say that living to old age is the true declaration of worth. Living a long life is how we recognise our character, which is memorable for the small things we have done, as well as the big ones.
This past week I thought of the remarkable life of Captain Sir Tom Moore, an army veteran who won hearts from all around the world by his fundraising walk of 100 laps of his garden in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire last year, raising money for NHS Charities Together (a federation of more than 250 charitable organisations that supports all the devolved National Health Service (NHS), their staff, volunteers and patients, in the United Kingdom). He was a "National inspiration" and, although he died last week, I will long remember his words, "Tomorrow will be a good day."
So, my friends, make tomorrow a good day and all your tomorrows that follow. I'm going to try to follow the directions from Charlie Chaplin who said, "To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it." Always find time to laugh. Arohanui. Shirley-Joy
