The strange thing is that old age doesn't strike like thunder.
It creeps.
First, your knees ache after long walks, so you walk less. Then your back stiffens, so you sit more.
Until one day, the only long journey you make is from your chair to your bed. That was how I aged, slowly and quietly, until I was no longer myself.
The house that once echoed with her voice grew silent and heavy. I kept it tidy enough; the table was wiped and the floor swept. But even order couldn't hide the emptiness.
The carvings piled higher: wooden sparrows, foxes, small houses, and fish. It became a museum of my hands' stubborn need to stay busy.
Yet the more I carved, the clearer the truth became.
These things weren't really her, and they weren't truly life. They were shadows of what I had already lost. Still, I couldn't stop.
What else was left for me but wood, breath, and waiting?
My body betrayed me day by day. My vision dimmed. My hearing failed.
My once-strong arms trembled even when holding a knife.
Time mocked me.
I had spent my youth dreaming of the horizon, my middle years bound by duty, and my later years drowning in silence.
Now, at the edge, my body denied me even the small freedom of walking independently.
Neighbors helped at times; a kind soul here or there. But pity feels heavier than solitude. Their kindness only reminded me: "Look at the old man who never left, who never built more than this."
Winter was the hardest. Each gust of wind pressed against the house as if it wanted to bury me in snow before my time.
Some nights, the coughing wouldn't stop. Each rasp dug deeper than the last.
My chest burned, reminding me of how little breath I had left. Each morning, when I somehow woke up, I wondered why.
Why another day?
And yet, in a strange way, I began to see. Perhaps age was not just weight; it was also clarity.
With every failure of my body and every ache, I felt stripped of everything false. Ambition slipped away.
Regret still gnawed at me, but it no longer controlled me.
What remained were fragments—her laughter, summer fields, the warmth of shared silence, the carved birds that brought fleeting smiles to children in years past.
No, I did not "succeed." I did not conquer my dreams, nor did I break free of my father's shadow.
But I lived. Dully, clumsily, painfully perhaps—but I lived.
Now, as I lie here in this hospital bed, too frail to walk, I realize old age is not just the erosion of bone and breath. It is the final teacher.
It tells us that life was never meant to be all victory.
That happiness was never meant to last untouched. What remains in the end are small moments… nothing more, but nothing less.
And maybe, just maybe, that's enough.