Sixteen

Sixteen

    That number represents the number of phone calls from my mother last night.  A loss of muscle strength in her legs and arms, something that has been happening over the past few weeks, worried her.  She wanted to see a doctor, something was wrong.  It could be fixed, she thought...or maybe not.  She was scared.  And as frustrating as it was for both of us, I couldn't help but put myself into her place and try to recognize all the thoughts that must be happening when you're in your 9th decade on this earth.  Surely, the feeling that the clock is ticking has to be up there, for even if you reach the ripe old age of 95 or so, that basically leaves you only a few years ahead at most.  Then there are the changes happening in your body, whether it is loss of strength or mental clarity (memory) or bowel control, all things that (as the majority of us now still feel) we once thought were fail-safe, things that would go on forever or at least for awhile longer...no need to plan for their diminishing or heaven forbid, demise, now.  Perhaps tomorrow.  But then here they all were, happening and other shutdowns waiting outside the door...embarrassing, inconvenient, limiting and scary all combined.  What was happening?  I am certain that even if your head and your body are nodding their acceptance that you are growing older, your mind is not.  How could this be happening?  I could always get dressed and go to the bathroom privately...why now?  Why?

    What was coincidental was that just days before I had finished the late Christopher Hitchens' book simply titled Mortality.  He was a journalist and a respected one so he tried to capture his thoughts through his journey battling esophogeal cancer, all the way to his scrambled and occasionally random thoughts near the end when his hand wouldn't properly respond to his thoughts to get it all down on paper, his speech also becoming incomprehensible.  But he was an atheist, much as the late physicist and recognized author, Carl Sagan, was.  And it was those thoughts that I found quite interesting...for as we grow older and grow very close to death, how would we respond?  Would we even know?  Would we want to just turn out the lights and be thankful for the time we had (how do babies or children feel, if this is the case); or would we want to go on and thus look ahead with hope to something more, something beyond this physical life (or in the case of reincarnation, another chance at life on this planet)?  Call it faith or religion of belief...how do those who profess to have none of those face their impending death?  It was a surprising view (and for some, likely a disturbing one).  When first diagnosed, he had this somewhat nonchalant view: The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kubler Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of "acceptance," hasn't so far had much application to my case.  In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.  But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.  Rage would be beside the point for some reason.  Instead, I am badly oppressed by the gnawing sense of waste.  I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it...To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

    Sometimes, I do think that my mother is not so much "ready" as much as accepting.  Her life now is one of boredom, try as these places do to keep their "residents" happy.  But at this stage, with no yard to keep up, no laundry to do, no meals to cook, no stores to visit, there is a lot of time to think, to let one's mind simply wander and wonder.  It's likely more difficult than we think, something we might all wish for in our busy-paced world, and yet something that might also become a curse.  Yann Martel, perhaps best known for his book Life of Pi (which Ang Lee turned into a beautiful film adaptation), had his character in his new book face such a dilemma, moving from a hurried city life to a life in a very remote village: And then he has nothing to do.  After three weeks --or is it a lifetime-- of ceaseless activity, he has nothing to do. A very long sentence--has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end.  For an hour or so, sitting outside on the landing at the top of the stairs, nursing a coffee, tired, a little relieved, a little worried, he contemplates that full stop.  What will the next sentence bring?

  I've ordered my mother a wheelchair, as well as made an inquiry into additional exercise therapy to try and strengthen her leg muscles, both in an effort to provide my own feeble answer to her constant plea of "what can I do?"  It is no different from any of us, at any age.  We get sick, we get injured, we get a terrible prognosis, we get old...what can we do?  At such times, we turn to technology and medical advances.  At other times, we turn to friends and family.  And perhaps adding to it all, we often turn to religion and faith.  Underlining all of this is hope, hope that we will get better, that we will have any few years or perhaps months, that there is still so much we want to accomplish and see and do.  And yet, the days go by at a rapid pace and our routines once again become routines and slowly, inexorably, our do-it-tomorrow attitude returns.  A recent issue of Smithsonian ran a piece on the "21st Century Life List," a list of new places to see and visit.  Said their intro: Some humans are content with a life well lived.  Most of us, however, want hard evidence: the vacation photos, the souvenirs, the Hall of Fame plaque with the lifetime stats...Others, less delicately, prefer "bucket list."...Life list, bucket list--the basic idea has been around ever since the fifth century B.C., when Herodotus' History sent Greeks eagerly across the Mediterranean to see Luxor and the pyramids...the life list has become in the broader culture: things to experience while you still have time.

    Still have time.  Our backs, our knees, our brains...we still have time, don't we?  But for many of us, we are seeing that clock shop up ahead now coming into view just around the bend; and even if we have so far made it safely along that long drive, we will soon be there, parking and getting out of the car and staring at the shop, a shop where we will hear the ticking of those clocks growing louder and louder as we get closer and closer to actually walking in that door.  Perhaps that is me, still sitting in the parking lot, still looking at the door through my car window but now hazily seeing my mother already inside.  Why can I do, she asks, the same question that I am asking.  What can I do?