By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve lived enough of it, and maybe the time simply arrives when the scars we have to show each other are the results of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people the age I am now talking about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes with blowing past the time when dying young was an option. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves knowing we’ve outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

By Mark McNease

It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.

I took the gestures we make with our faces for granted. I failed to understand how crucial a form of communication our faces are, and how strange it would become when we no longer exposed them to each other.

For fourteen months I did the right thing for myself and my community. I wore a mask despite finding it uncomfortable and inconvenient. It was required at my job, but I also wanted to be part of a solution when no one was sure what the solution was. This pandemic was a new experience for me, my country and the world. At least it was new insofar as it had been a hundred years since the last significant one.

Then the vaccines arrived, like the calvary showing up in a syringe. Most people I know managed to get appointments after sharing among ourselves how difficult it was, a form of pandemic gossip and communal anxiety. We sat in chairs, we rolled up our sleeves and offered our fleshy arms, and we walked away amazed at how anticlimactic it was. I went through this for months and all I got was this lousy vaccination card.