Myopia and memory loss

I've left my glasses at home - inadvertently - and am surviving on scratchy contact lenses today. Coupled with itchy hayfeverish eyes, they're not particularly pleasant.

I'd forgotten, yesterday, that it was Uncle C's funeral. Funny how the workday can consume so much of your thoughts that even the passing of a close relation can play second fiddle to the next urgent item in the project list. I vowed, years ago, that I would never let work interfere with my being true to myself, but I have somewhat failed. When last I saw him back in 2004, he seemed bloated, sickly, as if the excesses of life had risen up from within him and was stretching his skin taut in their struggle for release. He was only 60 then. I remember him as a man in his late 30s (disconcertingly, I am close to that age now), a stout, kind-hearted man, quiet and quite generous. Years and distance have made him mean less to me than I would have liked. And now that he is gone, I felt sad for a while, though I fear that the sadness was a selfish grief: more to do with the realisation that the generation before me is gradually dwindling and that it means that I am growing old.