Tag: aging

Mercury in Retrograde

~ Linda Wright ~ 1 Comment

It started slowly, as usual. The airplane I was supposed to board was taken out of service for repairs and it took several hours before a replacement was put into service. By then, the connecting flights had to be rescheduled. I arrived at my destination, not at noontime, but during rush hour traffic on Friday evening. Tired, stiff, and cranky from sitting in airports most of my day, I had just enough time to drop my suitcase at the hotel before leaving for the scheduled dinner meeting.

The return flight on Monday was delayed by weather conditions. Arriving home I discovered that the cable television was out of order, the Internet connections were sporadic and my car had a strange rattling sound coming from somewhere behind the front tires. One night the refrigerator spontaneously began a loud grinding sound. The dog began to whimper and limp.  The vet could determine no visible reason and prescribed a pain killer. The cat intensified her compulsive tail-nibbling disorder (We call it CT-BD.) A spider bite on my leg became infected. The prescribed antibiotics left me fatigued and more irritable than I was already. Spending hours day after day with the network technical support personnel did not help my mood.

Was it Murphy’s Law or Mercury in retrograde? Or are those just two ways that we humans use to make sense out of these reversals. It’s now been four weeks and I believe that the minor catastrophes have begun to abate… for now.

It is a little early to tell. As of this moment, I have grown accustomed to the car rattling and the television not working. When life begins to spin backwards, I find it an opportunity to re-evaluate my priorities. Have I once again become too comfortable with things moving in a forward direction?\The cat and the dog, like me, are experiencing aches and pains of aging. Their symptoms remind me of their mortality and of my own. Mercury, I have been told, is only visible at sunset I believe there is a personal retrograde that comes with age. I am reminded that the best advice is to use back-up systems, find alternative solutions, and pay more attention to the details. At times that is difficult enough

Trolls cannot change truth, but truth changes Trolls.

~ Linda Wright

In the weeks following my 61st birthday I faced my troll. The fearsome creature usually lives in the caves of my consciousness. It pops up threatening to swallow me on occasion. This time it leaped out and surprised me while I was undergoing my annual medical examinations and subsequent tests.

First I made appointments with the hematologist, primary care physician, gastroenterologist and physical therapist. Because my back pain was increasing, I scheduled an appointment to check my orthopedic shoe adjustments and inserts. I also booked an appointment with my dentist to talk about my toothache. 

The physical therapist evaluated my flexibility and strength and adjusted my weekly regimen; doubling the days per week I should spend practicing my routines. The dentist custom-made a night guard to prevent me from grinding my teeth in my sleep. That troll was definitely emerging from the cave.

The other doctors wrote orders for the routine lab tests, scheduled radiology appointments, and set dates for follow-up appointments. Grimly I began attempting to cross the bridge, checking off the list, so that I could reach the other side to (at least temporary) safety. It looked like the troll was creepy crawly coming my way.
 
I find that lists have a way of growing longer even as items are checked off. This list was no exception. No sooner had I checked off annual mammogram than I got a call to come back for an ultrasound for the suspect breast tissue. The evil troll appeared, smiling and licking its lips. I am a stubborn goat though, so I banished the troll with a promise that soon there would be a fatter goat to eat.
 
When the new shoes I had ordered arrived they had been improperly adapted and had to be returned so that the work could be corrected. The mouth guard has been adjusted three times already. The toothache isn’t gone but the neck pain and morning headaches have disappeared.
 
The liver function blood tests were drawn on the orders of the hematologist and a month later the gastroenterologist wrote another order for a blood test. The troll was not alone this time. They looked bigger than I had remembered while I felt smaller. It will still be a few weeks before I get all the results and until then I intend to befriend those nasty trolls.

The Rose

~ Linda Wright

The only time I remember speaking with my Great Uncle Midge was when I was 14 years old and he was 91. I was in Nova Scotia with my parents to visit family and someone mentioned that Midge was in a nursing home and could use a visitor.

I didn’t want to go; in fact, the thought of meeting this aged relative for the first time frightened me a bit. I went anyway. Midge had been sent to the nursing home to recuperate after falling off his hay wagon. I was also told that during the previous winter he had gotten into a fistfight with one of his neighbors. Both of the elderly men wanted to be the one to shovel out the snow from around the house of a woman who had recently been widowed. I was somewhat shocked to hear about a man who had lived 91 years still mowing hay and fighting over a woman.

The bed Uncle Midge lay on was in the sunroom of the nursing home and his face spread out a welcoming smile when I sat down beside him. “You’re Horace’s daughter, aren’t you?” he said. Until then, I’d been told that I looked more like my mother than my father. I was surprised and very impressed that by looking at me, he could so quickly identify my place in the family. Then he said, “I’m old and probably going to die soon, but I don’t mind. I’ve lived a great life.” As I recall I could think of no response.

Then he proceeded to talk about our family. “You know,” he said, “we have a lot of ministers in our family but, it’s not our fault.” I giggled at his assessment, but he seemed quite serious and continued. One by one, he named each relative who had joined the clergy. Moreover, one by one he said, “Now he wasn’t our fault. He took after his mother, you know.” Or, for several he said, “He wasn’t our fault, because he always favored his father.” In each case, he ruled out any responsibility to our lineage. It was a large family, but to my knowledge, he didn’t miss one who had been called to the ministry. By the time he was done, he seemed quite content to have offered me proof and I was barely containing my laughter.

Now, I believe that he was trying to get the reaction from me that he did. He was trying to get his teenage grandniece to giggle. Perhaps, he was also trying to get me to let go of a few stereotypes and open my heart a bit more.

As the conversation ended, he thanked me for coming and announced that his lady friend (the woman he had won that fistfight over last winter) was about to arrive. He indicated that he wanted me to go now. As I was leaving his bedside, in walked a woman with white hair, no teeth and a big smile. She was caring a single rose.