Why Is Being Middle-Aged So Wearing?

Tonight I am comparing my lack of energy with the vast supply of energy I used to have when considerably younger. It seems to have been the first thing to go as my age increased and is the first thing I notice in the evenings now. It is this lack of energy that defines my choices of evening activities and, where a few years ago I would have been eager to get out of the house and visit with friends at some favorite restaurant I am now content to sit at home relaxing with a good book or, mostly, vegging out in front of the television. Today has been partially spent hoping that what a classmate told me about another fellow classmate was or is somehow untrue. To hear that someone for whom you had even a marginal affection has died creates a frame of mind that does not only lead to rather gloomy thoughts and reflections but also causes a certain quiet grief that refuses to alleviate. For some reason this lesser sort of grief seems to have more staying power than the huge kind that begins to fade over a period of time. It remains at about the same intensity for a decade, maybe two, before it is "dealt with" enough to begin to dissipate. This is perhaps the result of it not being intense enough to be at the forefront of the grieving process and, therefore, it does not get dealt with quite as rapidly as a more intense, more painful grief. I do not understand why the thought of a former acquaintance's death should remain in my thoughts and heart for so many years, and yet it has and I would like to try to resolve it before I , too, go the way all of us do in the end. I have sent an inquiry to another former classmate who I feel certain will clear up the question for me once and for all. I think that this unresolved hovering between hoping the news was incorrect somehow and all of the little things that I recall that remind me it probably is true are what has kept the grief, though not intense, from healing and resting in its proper place beside the memory of a young man, probably with more than his fair share of struggles as he entered adulthood, who is remembered with an inaccurate fondness born of the distance of many years and their ensuing events. I hope he had a happy life from the last time we spoke until whenever whatever happened however, forever.