A Cranky Old Man

If you study the basic characteristics of people, you will find there are four different temperaments.  Mine happens to be the melancholy type.  Being a melancholy means I'm a little sensitive about certain things in life.  Maybe pensive might be the right word ... giving thought to, and pondering God's care over the past 69 years of my life.

So ... today, feeling a little melancholy, I thought I would post something different, something sensitive to my heart.  Aging ... the process of growing old.  But don't worry, I'm not depressed about the process because I'm just that much closer to seeing Jesus.  And the older I get, it becomes easier for me to understand how an old man can look back on his life and reminisce about past events.

What I'm going to share today is not mine.  It's been around for over 40 years or so.  You may have already read it.  If you have, it won't hurt to read it again.  It was supposedly written by a lonely old man in a nursing home where he spent his last days alone with his memories before he died.  At least this is how I recall the story that came with it.

I found this prose-poem entitled ... "A Cranky Old Man."  I don't know if he was cranky.  Maybe he was; but in the end I think he just finally gave up knowing his life had been full and it was time.

The author relates his life from the perspective of an elderly man whose nurses just perceive him as a cranky old man who needs constant care ... rather than the man he was or the life he lived before they knew him.
 
Take notice of the last line he writes, but not until you read what he says ahead of it.

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"What do you see nurses?  What do you see?  What are you thinking when you're looking at me?  A cranky old man, not very wise, uncertain of habit with faraway eyes; who dribbles his food and makes no reply when you say in a loud voice, I wish you would try! 

Who seems not to notice the things that you do.  And forever is losing a sock or shoe?  Who, resisting or not, lets you do as you will, with bathing and feeding the long day to fill.  Is that what you're thinking?  Is that what you see?  Then open your eyes nurse, you're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am as I sit here so still, as I do at your bidding, as I eat at your will.  I'm a small child of Ten, with a father and mother, brothers and sisters who love one another.  A young boy of Sixteen with wings on his feet, dreaming that soon now a lover he'll meet.

A groom soon at Twenty, my heart gives a leap.  Remembering the vows that I promised to keep.  At Twenty-Five, now I have young of my own, who need me to guide and secure happy home.  A man of Thirty, my young now grown fast, bound to each other with ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons have grown and are gone, but my woman is beside me to see I don't mourn.  At Fifty, once more babies play 'round my knee; again, we know children, my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my wife is now dead.  I look at the future, I shudder with dread;  for my young are all rearing young of their own.  I think of the years and the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man and nature is cruel.  It's jest to make old age look like a fool.  The body, it crumbles, grace and vigor depart.  There is now a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass, a young man still dwells, and now and again my battered heart still swells.  I remember the joys, I remember the pain, and I'm loving and living life over again.

I think of the years, all too few, gone too fast, and accept the stark fact, that nothing can last.  So open your eyes people, open and see, not a cranky old man ... 

Look closer ... see ME."

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After reading what this old man had to say about his life ... I'm feeling kind of mortal ...  because we are mortal.  You know, it's in the Book ... we are appointed to die and after that, the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)

But I'm blessed.  Unlike this old man, I still have my loving wife beside me.  And I'm not really all that old yet ... but I'm getting there.