I don’t care if Dylan Thomas was drinking himself to death while that was being written.  It is a sentiment close to my heart, and undoubtedly the stanza of poetry I quote most often.

Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rage at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I will not accept  the allegedly inevitable “cognitive loss of age.” 

I suppose my mother did me a service at age 10, when she dragged me fairly close to the oversized window of an oversized ladies room, and told me never to linger trying to make myself attractive, for it would be a waste of time.  I was – in the opinion of my parents – destined for brains, not beauty.

Time lost in fixing my appearance would be noted sardonically by my father, and bother him, as we wasted his time. 

But my strong suit was my brains, and even I agreed that I should work on them — working very hard in school — and that way I could win in life. I actually took my mother seriously, for a very long time. It was not until my late fifties that I started to be anywhere near a fashionable woman’s size, finding to my amazement that people found me attractive, and taking more notice myself than ever in my life.

But even now, I don’t give a damn if they call it “cognitive loss for age” or “dementia,” I want nothing of it.

Nothing at all. 

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