Those who have sharp brains can remember appointment dates, people’s names, and where they put things. A little mental bell rings, and the info quickly pops into their frontal lobes. My bell must be wrapped in a towel, because it’s often too muffled to hear.

Two weeks ago, my faithful old IBM computer tower died during multiple power outages. Even though it was a used, rebuilt office model, it had given us many years of service. Today a new tower is in place and working well.

Of course before we could let the old computer go, we needed to remove the hard drive and our personal information. I took the tower to my favorite techie who saved everything before disposing of it.

Right then is when my towel-wrapped mental bell began ringing, but of course I didn’t hear it. It wasn’t until after a week’s worth of muffled clanging that I woke with a start thinking, “My new CD is in the old tower!”

Having turned the house upside-down looking for a just-purchased Barbra Streisand CD, I finally remembered, but it was too late. When I called our tech guy, he told me the old tower was long gone. So the CD was lost, and I felt old and forgetful.

Mom used to have decorative napkins that said, “Old age isn’t for sissies,” and I’m beginning to appreciate that. I’m actually getting there faster than most with my muffled mental bell, because I know several 90-somethings who would have remembered to get the CD out of the tower.

All of us wonder about our futures, how long we’ll live, what health issues we’ll have, whether or not we’ll end up in nursing homes. Those are unknowns God will gradually reveal, bit by bit. One thing we know now, though, is that none of it will be easy.

I remember reading about a project in which high school kids were given geriatric characteristics: Vaselined glasses to blurr their vision; cotton balls in their ears to mute conversation; gloves to make it difficult to pick things up; weighted clothing to make walking laborious.

The kids were disbelieving, and they hadn’t even been given joint pain, diabetes, heart damage, or cancer. But studying how life is going to change for all of us if we live long enough should not inspire fear. Instead it should produce gratitude for what we have today.

We should also rejoice that God promises to be as fully available in our old age as he was in our youth. Although we experience subtle mini-losses every day, he never changes, never grows old, never tires and he never, ever has a loss.

I hope I can remember that when I’m pushing 100. Maybe I should burn it onto a CD.

“I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you.” (Isaiah 46:4)