The Wound of Growing Old

I am becoming an old man with an old soul which brings with it the sweetest memories of my own ancient times.  Those days when days were long, mountains and meadows filled with adventures, first loves, first challenges, first achievements, all of life was made up of firsts.  And now it is the same, my first attempt at the greying years, when days are shorter but mornings longer, and adventures are more apt to be trials for the body than journeys for the soul.  I have this great longing that comes in the quiet of morning, rain falling prompting me to days of old, friends first made, caves, and mountains and bands of brothers like gangs I ran with.  It is sweet the memory, aiding me to live more fully in the lingering hours of the morning, those days gone by when I was as young as this morning's rain.  The aging years as filled with aches of the heart as with the body but the remembering is like salve to the wound of growing old.