Last leg of a relay? Mad sprint to the toilet before my bladder bursts?

No, the CBC’s famous “long dash following ten seconds of silence” has lately become a kind of earworm for me. Like Disney’s Captain Hook, I feel hounded by my own Tick-Tock reminder that my time is short. Post-retirement anxiety? Perhaps. But I think the untimely death of a friend in 2012 is what really triggered my ten seconds of silence: figuratively launching the beginning of my own long dash.

That unfamiliar sense of looming mortality spins some of us into a frantic bucket-list scramble, others into despondency. Me? I do feel a certain grudging resignation—maybe I won’t win that Nobel Prize after all. But stronger still is the urge to savour that last dash, however short.

Now, it’s not that I suddenly feel old. It’s more that I’m simply not sure how much older I’ll get. I don’t know about you, but it’s not lost on me that about half of the posts in the HG blog are obituaries. We seem to be dropping like flies.

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” 

Groucho Marx

So how do we get out of this morbid dead-end? Well, more uplifting blog articles might be a start. As your blog editor, I promise to do my bit if you do yours. Don’t worry if you feel that you’re not much of a writer. Just send me your stories, insights, personal profiles, or spicy revelations. I may edit for length and good taste, but I will get them posted. We all want to hear about the interesting stuff you are doing and how you are enjoying retirement.

“My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle. “
Henny Youngman

Won’t you help me put a more positive spin on retirement? Let’s really savour that last long dash.

But please, no fake news. VERY bad!