7.001 years left to go.

That means my 48th birthday is tomorrow.  My plan is to retire at 55 from being a full time clinical neurosurgeon.  I hesitate to say "brain surgeon" because that never has sounded professional to me, and because I am more a spine surgeon than a brain surgeon anyway.

Lately, I have been feeling old at last.  Up until recently, I never felt older than my college self.  Then I discovered that Cousin Vince is 60.  Not possible.  He can't be any older than 45.  Then Dad died, followed by Uncle Lou.  They are all slipping away one by one, my parents and surrogate parents, leaving me to contemplate a life in which no one shares my whole history or loves me in a truly unconditional way.  Thinking of the ladybugs helps, but only to remind me that maybe there is a place where I will see them again.

Enough melancholy.  Now is the time to catch it all up, to stuff in all the living I can in the time I have left.  I would like to leave some record to which I can look back when I can do no more.  Similar to "There and Back Again:  A Hobbit's Tale," except I don't expect this to be a loop trail.  More like, "The road goes ever ever on, down from the door where it began.  Now far ahead the road has gone, and I will follow, if I can, pursuing it with weary feet until it meets some larger way.  And whither then? I cannot say."