A Day in the Life of Chaos

Conchiteen Rondain Alcala “Chatty” When we are young we watch life begin. Our friends and even ourselves have children and commence the process of building a life and a family. If we make it through the frustrations and difficulties of marriage we reach a short period of stasis and then life commences its most cruel of tricks.  Life becomes death. It starts among our parents and those we have looked up to. Tragically it becomes interspersed with surprises as those we always thought healthy succumb to the boney fingers. Sometimes I feel like life has moments in the dark when we all stand naked and a dart is hurled impaling an unsuspecting victim. It can seem so random.  My mother died at 59. So young it has always seemed, especially as I will soon pass 58. It’s funny how as you grow older, old seems to become younger. When I remember her sickly and dying form I can’t believe we almost shared the same age. Early death is the most tragically unexplainable. The kind where there

Karen Goerler I think a lot about aging.  I think it is because I am aging.  Well in truth we all are.  It is an inescapable reality of life.  I wrote a blog called “Today is the Youngest I Will Ever Be.”  I think as you grow older this phrase becomes increasingly apropos.  Like a computer we constantly run a systems diagnostic on our body and each pain, creak, or scatterbrained moment becomes a source of questions.  Is this a sign?  Is it the beginning of something or only momentary discomfort?  Did I do something I shouldn’t have or is this the moment of inevitable decline?   As we grow older our lives and physical well-being are impacted by the lives of those we have grown old with.  Like soldiers in a battle when one falls the others look around and wonder if they will get the next bullet.  Recently a high school classmate of mine passed away.  She was only 50.  She was a good person who lived a good life.  There was no simplistic explanation of why cancer should have ta