[Mo_Gearhead]

When I recently read that short sentence (in a Stephen King novel) it struck me how profound it really is. As a younger man I might have read that passage and not have paused to appreciated its depth. But as the pages of the calendar are torn away and the years pass …I know what he was implying.

“Time has weight.”

The years press down on you - like gravity. Each one seems to compound with those that came before it and slowly you begin to feel its pressure. The weight of just living life and the weight of growing older. Like boiling the frog; the heat goes un-noticed …until it makes itself known.

I had to drive to Fayetteville Arkansas today, a little over a two hour drive. I took some nice two-lane back roads that the P-car would have been at home on. But even in a large car with room to stretch the legs, after two (plus) hours of driving the knees now protest when I finally open the door and stand again. Only for a few seconds, but they send me that little reminder that I am no longer young and as flexible as I once was.

I was almost an hour early for my appointment (traffic and road construction was minimal) so I walked around the long, curving driveway entrance at the front and sat on a bench in the sun. It’s about 62 degrees, blue skies and one of those seemingly perfect spring days. The V.A. hospital is moderately large, and made with brick. It’s an attractive older building - solid. I ponder its age, when it was first built, maybe the 1950’s? Perhaps somewhat newer.

A lot of veterans, their spouses, and family members come and go as I sit there watching. Many (like me ) probably drove there by themselves. They walk. Some with relative ease, some with a slower gait. But I also notice how many have a cane, or have a limp, or have one of those small oxygen bottles on wheels. And some are in wheelchairs. Their family members behind them, pushing them forward to their appointments.

A man sits down beside me on the bench and lights up a smoke. We exchange pleasantries. The slight breeze carries the smell of his cigarette to my nose. I don’t drink coffee or smoke, but I have to confess that I sometimes find both fragrances not entirely unpleasant. I listen as he talks on his cell phone to someone about a home loan. After he ends his phone conversation we chat some more. He’s from St. Louis but has moved to Arkansas to be closer to the VA hospital. Now he is trying to use his VA mortgage guarantee to buy a small place. He left the service one year after I did (1971) and confesses that he has rented all those years …never owned a home. It makes my heart sink. He pushes his cigarette into the sand filled receptacle, stands, bids me good day and walks away.

I spend about another twenty minutes watching veterans enter and exit that large building and it makes me consider how fortunate my life has been. I still play tennis several times a week, ride a bike and workout. I take no medications - only supplements. I look at their canes, I see their walkers, I watch some of them limp, I see the small oxygen tubes at their noses, I see the wheelchair-bound, and my occasionally creaky knee-joints pales in comparison to what many people endure.

And that little sentence …replays itself in my head.