Progression

Progression of the seasons drags summer out of spring with today the longest day of 2014 at the beginning of summer. Free from oil deliveries for a few months, I shutter the idea that this winter could be as demanding as last winter for fuel oil consumption. The price of oil times consumption equals thousands of dollars from a fixed social security income. Then add to this increases in school taxes, federal, state, and local taxes and the lemon gets squeezed beyond juice. The financial noose around seniors' necks slowly tightens as each service cost increases proportionate to the cost of living increase which automatically, though unrealized, is levied. 

Progression is a stern master : The act of moving forward ( as toward a goal ) is one definition for it. My doctor had it right when I asked him about growing old, and he said : the problem is that humans are becoming too old, in general, and that societies are unprepared to adjust and accommodate for this phenomenon. 

Yes, I'm already older by a dozen or more years than my parents when they died and am still limping along thinking death is just around the corner. Doc was right, oldsters are living too long and society can't adjust. I would think with the vast numbers of aged people now living among us they would rebel about the subtle way society allows the oldsters to waste away falling into an ever increasing poverty. Creep is the sanitized word for our elders dilemma. We become older, less able to earn, more susceptible to disease, more subject to be duped by scandals, and beaten down less vocal. Dead death may be the only savior oldsters may ever know.

Ronald C. Downie