Growing Old

I grow old. It’s not something I expected to do, that I prepared for, or even that I’m looking forward to, it just happens. I’m 66. I know 66 isn't that old, but at 66 I'm certainly more aware of impending impediments to the good life than I was before. I enjoy my life. I look forward to the rest of my life, but whereas long ago I eagerly wanted to grow up, growing old is not that attractive and not that easy. I don’t feel bad, but I don’t feel as good as I did thirty years ago, or twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. and it isn’t getting better.

People tell me I don’t look 66. So what? I’m still getting older. Occasionally someone quite a bit younger says, “You’re as old as you feel.” That’s a piece of crap.

I have arthritis in my back. More often than I'd like I feel nerve pain in my legs. Sitting down or even standing up for any period of time I begin to experience an ache in my back. If I keep moving it helps. I still hike. I still walk. I ride a bicycle and I ride a motorcycle. Most of the time I don’t let it bother me, but it’s there. I have a scab on the crown of my bald head that won’t go away. A year ago the dermatologist said it was nothing to worry about. This year I’m worried about it and I’ll ask again at my annual checkup. I have age spots on my hands. I hate age spots. Right now the muscles and skin on my neck don’t sag, but they will if I live long enough and probably soon.

When I went bald twenty years ago I didn't do a comb over. I think accepting myself the way I am and adjusting is good for the soul, so I don't do cosmetic surgery.

Sure age is an attitude.  That doesn’t mean you don’t get older.

It is all relative. Three years ago my back and the muscle pain there had been getting to me and I went to physical therapy group for back pain. The therapist asked me what I was experiencing? I told her that if I walked too far I experienced a burning sensation around my waist and at the top of my hips. “So how far is that?” she asked.

I said, “It starts at about three miles or so.”

“Three miles!” one of the other participants snorted. “I can’t even walk three blocks.". Her tone said I didn’t belong in this group.

Aging is different for all of us but limiting my walks to 3 or 4 miles, my bicycle rides to 20 miles and the time I can spend sitting at my computer to 20 minutes and then a break and I’m adjusting to it. I’ve been adjusting to it for a long time now. I first noticed things were changing and not for the better when I turned 40. I had an enlarged prostate. I had to be more careful about getting that last drop out. Before I turned 50 I was bald.  I began straining my back more often. Then sex was not always surefire.

Age is not an attitude, it’s a fact. How I deal with it has a lot to do with attitude but attitude doesn’t absolve me from getting it.

When I was a cadet at the State Park Ranger Academy at the age of 58 we had a physical training instructor, Dave Dixon. Dave was my age and an ultra marathon runner. He was a strong advocate for conditioning, good health habits and good nutrition. He drew two graphs on the board, one with a steeply downward sloping line that ended in death and another, a plateau that sloped very gently downward and then dropped off precipitously at the end.

He said good conditioning and nutrition doesn’t change when we die, just the quality of life we have before we die.

And that’s where I am at. I hope I can maintain a good quality of life, that I’m not struck by some debilitating illness, that I don’t begin to lose my mental capacity or get Alzheimer’s; that I can move and think and function. I had a heart attack three years ago. The attack itself was very minor and I received six stints for the blockages. I think Dave Dixon was wrong. It’s my theory that I survived my heart attack, that I did extend my lifespan because of my good conditioning and ancillary circulation around the blockages and I am very lucky. I think of James Gandolfini’s death of a heart attack at the age of 59 with blockages similar to mine. My closest friend in high school died of a heart attack two years ago.

Being old is not becoming aware that we’re mortal. I’ve always known I was going to die.  Today I know it more. Thirty years from now, 20 years, 10 years or tomorrow I will be gone. There’s nothing I can do to change the final outcome. I think the new feeling is not that I will die, but that probably before I die, I will deteriorate, that I will be less physically capable and maybe even less of who I am. I wonder, how will I enjoy life like that? What will that be like?

I don’t have an answer. So many people have done this before me and I've asked, what's it all about; why?  But it's one of those things you can't know until you get there.  The answer seems to be just do it. I have some good examples of how to do it. I know to keep going ahead, to take life as it comes and to realize in the end, we have no control over it. Maybe the answer is that all of life is a grace, the good and the bad, and then it's over.

My life is an adventure. I call myself a tourist. I’m curious to see how I do aging. I’m curious to see how it ends.  I am pretty sure the end is the end.  I wish I wasn't.  I’d be delighted to be wrong. So right now, this moment, life is good. Or as Bill Williams, an older friend, near the end of his life told me, “It sure beats the alternative.”