I pulled some figures from the BC Ministry of Health webpage. I correlated them with B.C. population figures from the last census..

            Surprise, surprise! The elderly are NOT the most at risk for infection.

            Certainly they’re most at risk for death. As of a month ago, three-quarters of all deaths were among those over 70.

            That shouldn’t be a surprise. They’re already on their last legs. I suspect the same would hold true if I took statistics for almost any disease, illness, or disability.

            But not for infection. The infection rate among those over 60 is significantly lower than for younger adults. Among those over 60, the infection rate is about 1.4 per 1000. Among the 20-29 age group, the infection rate is more than twice as high -- 3.5 per 1000.

All my tomatoes ripened at once. One day, the vines were loaded with green tomatoes, only three showing red. The next day, it seemed, every tomato was huge, red, and already overripe. 

            I picked about 30 pounds of them. Some were so ripe, they were starting to split. 

           I thought I remembered Joan, my wife, cutting them up and freezing them for future use. For tomato soup, spaghetti sauce, or chili con carne. So I washed the remaining tomatoes, quartered them, cut out the stem core, and popped them into freezer bags. 

            For I don’t know how long, we’ve been using paring knives that go back, well,  I don’t know how long. They may be been my mother’s. Or Joan’s mother’s. The blades won’t hold an edge any more. 

            So, recently, I bought a new self-sharpening paring knife. I used it on those tomatoes. 

            What a difference an edge makes! 

I sing in a church choir. Correction: I used to sing in a church choir. Further correction: I used to sing, once upon a time…

            Singing has fallen victim to the Covid-19 pandemic. When health regulations prohibited large gatherings, and when physical distancing precluded even small groups from getting together, choirs everywhere had to shut down.

           My church chose to move its Sunday services to Zoom. Zoom is a wonderful platform. But you can’t sing together on Zoom. 

           On our first attempts at singing over Zoom, some singers ended a full line after the pianist had finished. It was chaos. Definitely not a unifying effect.

            So we tried having just one person singing the words, while everyone else had their microphones muted. A few weeks back, I was the congregation’s “designated singer.” I did not like the sound of my voice. It felt raw, uncertain. I struggled to stay on key.

            I realized I hadn’t done any vocal exercises. to warm up. I should have done at least ten minutes.

            More than that, I hadn’t done any singing at all for several weeks. Not even in the shower.

 What good are memories when there’s no one who shares them? Or cares about them? And yet roses do bloom in December, because memories are sometimes just as real as reality, and so my mother’s knitting needles still click as they knit my sweaters and socks. My dark road unfurls ahead, leading who knows where, over the hills and far away, because the granddaughter who once rode my ankle to the bounce of a cock horse going to Banbury Cross has gone away too, and my empty arms can still feel rocking her through the black pit of an Ethiopian night.

            My baggage brims over with memories, transcending time. Some hurt. Still, I’m grateful each time the wisps of fog pull aside and let me re-live the past.

I had my 84th birthday earlier this week. It’s a privilege to have lived this long.

            Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has written several books about the process of aging. Basically, he suggests, the first half of life is about acquiring -- possessions, wealth, friends, family. The second half is about letting go -- of our acquisitions, our ideas, eventually our lives.

            Recently, he’s been writing about a pattern of spirituality. He calls it Order, Disorder, and Re-Order.

            In his terms, we inherit from our parents, our friends, and our social culture an understanding of the world we live in. That’s the Order. We don’t question it; we just accept it.

            Then as we mature, we discover that the old Order doesn’t work as well as it should. So we reject bits and pieces of what we used to take for granted. 

            And then eventually, we re-organize our lives and our understandings into a new Order.