read this when you're old

i like old people.
i grew up getting very attached to my grandparents. a lot of my childhood memories, the good times have their faces etched in them. i cared for my grandma till close to her passing. sometimes i feel like old age reverts a person back to their childlike state. we go back to needing help with feeding and bathing, then there is dementia, which may render our intelligence to nothing it was before, and before we know it, things we say become 'cute' again.

i went back to my mom's hometown last weekend. met some of my old uncles and aunts. i got to look at some old pictures, back when things were in black and white, when high waisted trousers were in. it's pretty funny but surreal to think my old relatives used to be those people in the pictures. did they realise when time passed them by? did they realise the age creeping up?

do i realise that someday im gonna be in that same position, and that who i am now will be but a picture in an old album, a memory written in a blog, a person who my older self might not even recognise? it's as flaming lips puts it. every meeting, every acquaintance ends with death. either that of the others' or of our own. do we realise that?