Tag: old age

Sorry. Must Have Nodded Off. What Were We Talking About?

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20242 Comments

Dear Will:

The changing calendar has forced me to confront the fact that I haven’t written in a while. I’m so sorry. It seems 2023 sort of got away from me. I’m not sure “laziness” qualifies as an excuse, but it certainly makes for an excellent explanation. 

You could also blame old age, I suppose, inasmuch as there is so much evidence around here that Dana and I are not as young as we once were. Consider:

20 Ways We Can Tell We’re Getting Old(er)

  1. For the past decade-plus, roughly 30% of what we pull from our mailbox is from the AARP.
  2. We finally lived long enough to pay off our mortgage.
  3. The Red Cross will no longer accept our blood donations. They have standards, apparently.
  4. Between the two of us, each day we swallow roughly 29 pills and supplements, none of which seems to make any difference whatsoever.
  5. One of us is always cold. (Scratch that: This has been true for the full 37 years of our marriage.)
  6. Speaking of which: We have been married for 37 years. Pretty sure.
  7. All three of our children have moved out, graduated from college, and started their careers, except for the one who graduated and moved back home, and the other one who has recently returned to school. 
  8. At last count, 50% of our original hips and knees have been replaced. (Note: One of us still has all of his original equipment.)
  9. We legit could be collecting Social Security right now if we wanted to.
  10. If we can get the technology to work, approximately 98% of the time we are the oldest participants on any given Zoom call.
  11. Our children have started having children. (We have a granddaughter!!)
  12. We keep a different pair of reading glasses in every room of the house. Somewhere.
  13. Two words: Ear hairs.
  14. We are struggling to keep up with Dana’s 96-year-old father.
  15. Sorry. Must have nodded off. What were we talking about?
  16. Recently we have found ourselves repeatedly using the word sciatica. 
  17. We spend zero minutes per week on TikTok and never feel left out.
  18. Sometimes we remember stuff. And sometimes the stuff we remember is from a long, long time ago.
  19. People observe us carefully and then cautiously inquire when we are planning to retire.
  20. We’re not dead. Not yet, anyway.

But even so, life is pretty good around here. We keep waking up in the morning, working out and walking the dog like people do. They haven’t yet asked me to stop showing up at the office, and the checks keep clearing, which I always take as a good sign. The roof doesn’t leak, and when we open the fridge there is always food inside, which the kids still come over to eat from time to time. We’ve been blessed, is what I’m saying. Even if I forget or don’t quite get around to writing to you every month. 

I’ve promised to do better in 2024. But chances are that in a couple of months you’ll have to remind me that I made that promise. You know how it is with old guys like me.

PW

Photo by Hendrik Terbeck

Silent Conversations

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20091 Comment

Dear Will:

My dad is dying.

He has congestive heart failure and a mild form of leukemia (can leukemia be mild?). A damaged rotator cuff in his right shoulder makes his right arm useless. He has had both knees replaced and is recovering from a recently cracked patella. In other words, he can barely use his arms and legs. (Think of all you that have to depend on others to do for you if you can’t raise and lower your arms or bend your legs.) And a week or so ago, pneumonia sent him to the hospital where he “celebrated” his 86th birthday. Whoopee.

His doctor expects him to “recover” and go home, but it won’t surprise you to learn that my father is about out of patience with being a patient. “I wish I could get some dread disease and just be done with it,” he told me. “This business of falling apart bit by bit is nuts” (which shows that his mind is still sharp). Who can blame him for being fed up with life when the life that is left is so difficult to live?

He has put his affairs in order for the most part to simplify things for my mother when he goes. In fact, when we finally got him into the hospital and settled into his room, he insisted that I immediately retrieve his papers to make sure that there is no ambiguity: He does not want life support or resuscitation. If his body finally gives out, that will be that.

The only real remaining question is how effectively the rest of us will be able to entice him to stick around a bit longer. There is time, but who knows how much? Considering his condition, even if he returns home from the hospital, there may be little more that we can do together—and so we are all left to ponder the final conversations of our remaining time together in mortality. What do you say to each other when words become so precious and time so short?

Sometimes nothing. Before he went into the hospital, I went to visit him in his home. He felt so awful (his pneumonia had not yet been officially diagnosed) that mostly he lay silently in bed. But when I offered to leave him alone to rest, he asked me to stay put. “It’s a comfort to have you there,” he said. And so I sat in silence as we shared a moment in which words were not required.

Selfishly, I hope that once his illness is under control his spirits will lift and he’ll begin to fight for more time. I’d like him to see my daughter’s next ballet recital, to listen to my 10-year-old describe his team’s come-from-behind Little League victory, to discuss with my oldest the implications of what he’s learning in his Evolutionary Biology class at UCLA. I want to sit and watch the ballgame with him from time to time, to call him for advice as I so often do, to listen to him argue politics with my wife and tease my children. These are all things that have always brought him joy and that bring me joy to this day. And I’m not ready to give up that joy just yet.

But if, indeed, his time his short, I can tell you this: He is a good man. He has given 86 good years and created a legacy of integrity and honor. Come what may, he has made this world a better place.

PW

Something’s Wrong with My Magazine

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20071 Comment

Dear Will:

It’s official. I have become an old man.

It happened just a few weeks ago. (Yeah, right, you say. You look at my bald head and graying beard, you see me wheezing and hacking after just a couple of trips up and down the basketball court and you think to yourself, Who’s this guy think he’s kidding? He’s been doing the old man thing for years! At which point I say, Hey, whose letter is this anyway? If you don’t like the way I’m telling the story you can write your own!).

So anyway, like I was saying, just recently I became an old man. I looked down at my Sports Illustrated and I, um—how do I put this? Well, I couldn’t see it, see. It was all—what’s the word?—blurry. Like suddenly someone had smudged the lens. I did discover that if I held the magazine just a little farther from my face—PRESTO!—the words came back into focus. But needless to say I was a little shaken up. I was doing that thing the old guys do when they’ve left their reading glasses on the coffee table. It was not pleasant.

That first experience with old man eyes came on me unawares, as if one day I could see just fine and the next day I could not. Unfortunately, since then it has gradually gotten even worse. It’s not yet to the point where I have to get me some of those end-of-the-nose glasses that my parents used to wear (Used to? They still do!); but there’s no question the day is coming. Sooner than I’d like. And probably sooner than I’m willing to admit.

They warned me about this several years ago when I had my RK surgery. The doctor told me he would give me less-than-perfect vision in order to help me stave off the inevitable reliance on reading glasses. He said it happens to everyone. At the time I remember thinking: What a rip-off. I already spent my years in glasses. I shouldn’t have to do it again. I hoped he was overstating things. Or that maybe the rules would not apply to me. (The last time I remember hoping the rules would not apply to me was when I learned of the genetic certainty of my bald pate. That one didn’t work out so well either.)

My wife had eye surgery at the same time I did and heard the same, sad speech. So when her eyes went out on her two or three years ago, and she went down to Sav-on to get some of those super attractive granny glasses, I mustered all of the sensitivity I could and . . . teased her about it. I have also with great obnoxiousness poked unmerciful fun at my friends who now must balance glasses on the ends of their noses in order to read the menu. At this point, the word comeuppance seems inadequate to describe what is about to happen to me. And I don’t like it.

So as I await the inevitable trip to the drug store, I will continue to fake it until my arms are no longer long enough to get the job done. Of course, I would appreciate it if we could keep this just between you and me. What my pals and my wife don’t know won’t hurt them, am I right?

Besides: I think I deserve a little compassion. I’m an old man after all.

PW

P.S. Although I may be bald and gray and increasingly blind, I remain more than willing to lend a helping hand where needed. Is there anything I can do for you? Give me a call or drop me a note and let me know.

Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash