Being 70 is a great surprise, a revelation. When I was in my 20s and 30s reaching the age of 70 seemd both unlikely and even undesirable. Now that I'm here, I find it's not so bad. I can still do most of what I did 40 years ago. Not as often, not as spontaneously, but it's all still there.
Sure, I do have trouble driving at night and that dammned ringing in my ears has gotten worse, but all things considered, it could be worse. I look at old friends whose idea of a good time is showing me pictures of their grandchildren, who have started to walk funny, who look like they've been eating wrinkle pie too much, and I cringe. None of them scuba any more. Not even shallow local inlet dives or undemanding Caribbean dives. "Too dangerous, I'm not up to that anymore, why are you still doing dangerous things? Stay here on the beach with us, stop trying to pretend! Face reality." etc. Or "show us a pictures of your grandson" Never in this life. Is it me or is everyone utterly bored by having to stare at pictures of little kids, the kind you see every day on the street, and make appropriate noises, saying trite things, lies really, to placate people who have given up and now live vicariously through their offspring.
Did I just not grow up? The saddest things are old diving friends who are no longer living, including one who never made it back from SE Asia. The friends of my youth are all gone, either swallowed up by war, age, illness, or a mysterious transformation into sedentary old folks.
I dive alone much of the time, or with what to me are kids. I really enjoy diving with people much younger, but I sometimes wonder if I enjoy being with them more than they enjoy having me along. Sometimes they get a little annoyed when we complete a dive and I have much more air left than anyone else. I tell them to slow down and really look at small things, and they tell me to keep up with them. They also get a laugh at my equipment, some of which was manufactured before they were born.
I miss Cecil Brown, a dear Jamaica friend, owner of Blue Whale Divers, with whom I dived back in the 70s and 80s in the Negril, Jamaica area and all over the island carrying our gear in the back seat on my Starlet, but who seems to have vanished from the earth after commercial interests there turned Paradise into a parking lot. Cecil refused to become anyone's employee, and was pushed off the beach. Where are you Cecil? I'm still on for whatever adventures you have in mind.
All I can do is keep diving, making whatever compomises time and and external reality require. But I miss my old dive buddies. Very much. They were, in the final analysis, irreplaceable.
