I’ve been thinking that the events of the past couple of days are the beginning to my end. I went into see a nurse about a self-diagnosed hernia, was run through a series of scans and blood tests and Poof! Today I’m leaving a cancer specialist’s office in the Oncology department of a hospital. My beautiful wife, Jennifer, and I have just learned that I most likely have some kind of Leukemia.

To offset aging, they say that a person should exercise regularly, take some vitamins, don’t smoke, watch their diet, and other common sense stuff like that, and I do. I’m in the gym 4 to 6 days a week for resistance exercise and I have a treadmill at home that I use regularly. I take a multi-vitamin, Fish Oil, a Protein Supplement and even a Testosterone Builder, So, I just don’t think that this should have happened. Not to me.

I remember turning 68 this year. For the first time in my life I felt old. Oh, not old in everything, but old when I hear the crunch and crackle that my knees make when I get out of bed, or when I feel a little less energetic sometimes. My vision needs correcting again. Jennifer wants me to go to an audio specialist. I keep answering her appeal, again and again, with one question. “What? What?” I say.

It’s interesting the number of different feelings that gather along with my diagnosis. The biggest is that I’m not ready, and that makes me feel foolish and vain. To think that I’d live forever and not have things in order for my wife and family to seamlessly carry on their lives without me. It’s almost selfish, isn’t it? I can now picture Jennifer searching through my office looking for bank statements, life insurance policies, titles to the cars, my boat, the mortgage, bank accounts, credit card statements, passwords for my computer transactions, all the official and legal documents that are needed to continue living.

I have some life saving treatments coming up, too. As long as Medicare and my AARPie supplemental health insurance keeps paying, the doctors will want to keep me alive.  Their efforts should be able to afford me time to get my house in order.  My greatest fear is suddenly growing weaker and becoming inactive or having my mobility and energy compromised through the process.  I hope not.

One of life’s irritations, for me, since I’ve grown older is the way old people get together and discuss their ailments. I don’t like to be unkind, but while listening my mind shouts out to them, “Get a life for crying-out-loud.”  Or, “Why don’t you just die, already.” It’s a case of one-ups-man-ship to them. They’ll tout their aches and pains, their bowel movements, doctor appointments, their cancers, rheumatism, goiters, uncomfortable hearing aids, the thinning treads on their wheelchairs, or the rust on their walkers. I’ve started to wear headphones while in medical waiting rooms so that I can be with the old farts I truly enjoy like Mick Jagger, Neil Young or Bob Seager.

There’s my funeral, too. I’d like survivors to know what kind of service I’d like, even though it’s none of my business. I guess my job is just to lie in a coffin with an artificial smile stitched into my face, but I want more than that. I want a party. Maybe dress me in drag with a comic big nose and glasses and have Jennifer wear a sweatshirt with big letters on the front that say: “I’m Available”.  Now that’s more like it. When my grandkids and other youngsters see me in my coffin and ask, “What’s Grandpa doing?” I need the answer to be something like: Gramps has left this body and has gone back to the planet Aarkon.

I have a lot to do before I make that trip to Aarkon and a lot to think about. I’m inviting you to join me through this process. It’s not that I think that I’m so special. I guess it’s just that I have no other old people to talk to.