Years ago a friend of mine drove through California visiting her siblings. Since (at that time) I lived in the middle of the state, she also stopped to visit me. I asked how the sibs were and she said they were at the age when they stood around talking about their ailments. I thought it was funny. I was in the early stages of that age.
I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and talking about my ailments. It's just so boring to be obsessed with the minutia of one's body. Organs and joints and skin all clamoring for attention. Pain usually defining what gets the attention but the effort to keep things from getting worse also absorbs a lot time.
Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book coming out in April. There's a bit of it in this months Harper's. She writes about a man who works out before work and after work just to "keep going". It reminded me of a story from Being Mortal in which Dr. Gawande meets a man having a very difficult surgery because he believes he will be back to paying tennis afterwards. If the surgery goes well he may have less pain and more mobility but he will never play tennis again. He's reached a point in aging where there's only so much better he can get. Considering the risks of the surgery he might be better off accepting some limitation. Ehrenreich writes with her searing lucidity, her PhD in cellular immunology and critique of capitalism. The piece is titled Running to the Grave.
Heh.
In America if something happens with your health (good or bad) it's because of something you ate or didn't eat. Exercise you did or didn't do. An attitude you maintained or didn't maintain. It's not part of life in a body. It's a task list for prevention. And hey ... there's always a product to buy.
I listen to Parker Palmer on Moyers years ago over and over. He talks about the moment in aging when you have to accept what you will no longer be able to do. And how important it is to weed through how much of what we wish for is a learned desire. My first experience of this was visiting a friend of mine in the hospital after the birth of her first child. Dad went home to clean up and Mom went to the bathroom. I sat with the beautiful boy in my arms and it hit me that I would never have my own baby. Even if I could have pushed through the problems of my age (I was 50) I didn't have financial means to care for a child. I had grown up without a father present. I didn't want to give that experience to a child. The grief that hit me was overwhelming.
I just read the Ruth Reichl memoir of her mother. She frames her mother's life in the ideas that were so constricting in her mother's time. To be successful a woman needed to be married and have children. Ruth's mother was never at home in those roles. Her anger and frustration made everyone around her miserable. At the end of her life with her husband dead and her children off in their own lives she had the freedom to be herself.
I've questioned if my desires for children and a partner are just something I learned. I love children and I love having them around. I'm not sure if I would have loved the relentless demand of raising them. I have never wanted to be married (too obedient to the state) but I have longed for a relationship. Although I'm very clear that at this point it would be a challenge to have someone in my life, I still pine and suffer from time to time.
Most of the take away (for me) from the Parker/Moyers conversation is about holding the tension of what you want and what you have. Not being an un-grounded, affirmation, positive thinker and not living in despair. Holding the tension of what seems to be oppositional. He calls the place of that tension the tragic gap. It may sound dire but it feels so real to me. Solidly real.
I'm don't hate the white hair and the wrinkles but I'm not sanguine about the stiffness in my joints, the slowing of my mind, the limits of my digestive system. My wobbly chin bothers me sometimes. Having lived though the mommie's decline, which in many ways was surprising, I am often overwhelmed by thoughts of what will probably be the cause of my death. I find myself imaging all sorts of horrors and harp a bit on the fact that I live in a right to die state. Sometimes I feel like I just want to get it over with but then ...
I went swimming a different pool yesterday. I had a view of the river and the rolling green hills of Dalles Port. The clouds were putting on their best fluffy show. The pool was warm and soothing. Beauty and comfort go a long way. I want a lucid open hearted acceptance of however decline may shape itself. I don't want to be driven by fear. I feel I may lean too much on an acceptance of death but ... I always have.
I swim. I read. I cook. Is that enough? I think it might be. I guess we'll see.