Reflections: At Seventy
As my seventieth birthday approached, it felt like a good time to take stock, to look back at where I had been and also at who I think I am. I prefer to label this piece of writing as Reflections rather than Memoirs or Reminiscences because it's intended to be a bit more thoughtful than a simple record of the past, and that seemed to suit the free verse form that I chose as well.
Parts of these Reflections are an image of what I, at certain significant times, would like to have had said, and heard. But since I know myself better than anyone, why not do it myself? While writing, I realized that the Reflections could also serve as my very personal voice in an eventual memorial service, all of us being mortal and, at seventy, more so than ever before. It struck me that there was a kind of threshold to this age milestone, that looking ten years into the future would no longer be the same as looking ten years into the past.
Here then are my Reflections At Seventy.