What matters

I have not posted nor responded much lately nor visited my blog friends. Been busy. Will get to it.

***

With each passing year -- and yes, I am still quite young -- I become more aware that the greatest challenge of a person's life may well be this: how one responds to the reality of aging and the certainty of death.

Perhaps that sounds morbid. But I didn't invent the concept.

One can Botox from head to toe, squeeze into clothes designed for teenagers or sport a toupee -- and fool no one.

Or the opposite: One can let one's appearance slip to a frightful state, dressing like Hapless Harry or Frumpy Fran in oversized plaids and pastels and never trimming one's nose hair.

But one can also choose to walk the middle road, of staying clean and presentable without screaming for attention, being attractive for one's age and as fit as it is still possible to be.

Pain will come. Nobody will like your kind of music anymore. Your glory day stories will become boring. How will you deal with it? Will you become a complainer, a recluse, a grouch, a crank, a crone? Will you become obsessed with death, feeling intensely sorry for yourself and insisting to all and sundry on a daily basis that you are surely dying?

This week, an old friend of mine, a mentor to me when I first joined the staff of a local newspaper, passed away. His health had been poor even back then, but he still worked hard, stayed involved in his community and looked for ways to be of service whenever he could.

I will never forget when he drove all the way from another city when my car broke down and nobody at my then-office could be bothered to help me get home.

He was a good man -- no, a great man -- all the way up to the very end. Still jovial and loving the next-to-last time that I ever saw him, though confined to a hospital bed. Silent and virtually comatose the very last time I saw him, but that was no fault of his own: he was finally on his way out, after years of physical suffering -- a subject upon which he never dwelt.

Woman being beautiful

I was out on a lunchtime errand today and was taking a cellphone call from my car in a shopping center parking lot.

Noticed a vehicle going in slow circles, angling for a close-to-the-door spot. Nothing unusual about that.

Looked up a few seconds later and noticed the lovely red-headed Lady who had been driving the car was now parked in a disabled parking spot -- that's what She was looking for! -- and was unfolding a sort of chair apparatus.

Looked up again and saw that the apparatus was a portable wheelchair into which She carefully set a frail and ancient Woman.

And then They two disappeared into Macy's.

It is a beautiful thing and a necessary thing to care for our aged ones. And that includes not just trips to the doctor and the drugstore but also, every now and then, to Macy's.

People, especially older folks, need to feel that they are more than a biological depository for pills -- that they can still get out and shop for perfume or a pretty outfit like any other human being.

Where I went

I picked up my old friend tonight and drove him to see his Wife at the convalescent center.

Can I tell you, I hate those places. I hate the smell of them and the sad sight of shriveled human beings waiting around to die or moaning in their misery.

Some old gentleman was fighting with a nurse:

"Take your hands off me! Are you crazy? I know where I'm going!"

Five years ago, he could have been the master gardener of his neighborhood, with an adoring grandson in tow as he strutted through his neighborhood. Twenty years ago, he could have been a football coach or a lawyer or the kindly clerk at the corner store. Now he is just a confused old man who thinks his nurse is the one with the messed-up head.

My friend walked into his Wife's room, past Her roommate who was babbling something incoherent. He sat beside Her and held Her hand and never let go for 45 minutes until She finally said, "Boys, I'm falling asleep." Our cue to go.

She will not be in this world much longer and then what will happen to him?

Someone once said, old age is not for sissies. I've got a while to go but I still think about it and dread it. I don't care about wrinkles or grey hair -- but I don't want to be so weak that I can't fight off some 16-year old mugger or open a pickle jar. I don't want to lose my mind and cry out for people who've been dead 3o years.