If you are old, you might not want to read this. If you are young, you probably won’t care about this story. Years ago, I decided I hated to listen to “old” people or any people for that matter bellyache about their aches and pains. I swore that when I got old or older or whatever comes when each month passes by, I would never sit down and importune anyone with my medical stories. As we age, our number of trips to doctors, dentists, and optometrists increase exponentially. Many of these visits recall vivid pictures of blood, surgeries, diagnoses, CAT scans, MRIs, and Ultrasounds. To the storyteller, these episodes are a significant part of growing old. To the listener, (unless it is your mother) they are generally boring as hell.
So today, I find myself sitting on a patio at the Dock Restaurant in Stillwater overlooking the St. Croix River with two dear friends and my wife Karen. I am drinking a draft amber ale. Karen has a glass of tea. Jane has a coffee, and her husband Roger has a draft IPA. The server is giving us time to decide what we want to order. I know from the start that I will have their Walleye sandwich. Karen orders a BLT. Jane also goes for the Walleye sandwich and Roger orders a Reuben sandwich.
As we sip our drinks and await our food, we watch the boats on the St. Croix River. Large and small speedboats, houseboats, canoes, kayaks, and a great big old fashioned side paddle wheeler can be seen meandering back and forth from out vantage point. The temperature is near 90 degrees, but we are in the shade of a large umbrella. We are also sitting right next to the river where a cool breeze is blowing over us. We could not be happier or more comfortable. Four retirees with enough money to eat out every so often, pay our bills and spend a Friday afternoon perusing the Stillwater tourist and antique shops for things that we do not need.
Suddenly out of the clear blue sky, Roger says “My hip has been giving me some trouble lately.” Roger is an avid bicyclist who at the age of 81 can no longer drive due to an eye condition called Macular Degeneration. He stays in trim shape by bicycling everywhere. You do not need a drivers license to drive a bicycle.
Jane laughs and says, “heck, every day, I have a pain somewhere. If it isn’t here it is there. I think they will only get more frequent as we get older.” Karen notes that she has been having back spasms for the past few months, but her recent senior exercise class is helping her cope with them. I bring up my knee pain which seems to come and go. “Sometimes it takes several months to deal with the pain, but I keep trying new remedies. I think it is very much a trial-and-error process.”
Roger rejoins, “It won’t really matter what you do, you will never get back to where you were when you were younger.” I reply that I have no illusions about getting back to the younger John. “I still think we do not have to accept all the problems that come with aging as inevitable. I think too many doctors see an older person presenting symptoms of pain and tell them ‘Well, you are old so you should expect that you will have some pain as you age.’ I don’t expect that I will have a life without pain, young or old but I know that some pains can be treated and others I must live with. But don’t write me off before you know which is which.”
Karen switches the subject to some recent bites that she has received out at our campsite. She attracts bug bites like Kim Kardashian attracts media attention. Mosquitos, hornets, wasps, deer flies, chiggers and more all love her smooth delicate skin. I try to stick close to her when we are outside. From experience, I know that they will go to her first. I guess I give up my husbandly protection when it come to bug bites.
I step out of myself for a minute to survey the four of us sitting at a table taking turns talking about our various aches and pains over the past ten years. Here I am doing exactly what I said that I would never do. Trading stories about medical issues mostly associated with growing old. Roger is 80. Karen will be 79 in July. Jane is 75 and I will be 77 in September. We are all college educated but in many ways none of us was ever really prepared for the travails of old age. I remember hearing years ago that we age like “Fine wine.” This is a load of BS. More realistically we age like bananas. We grow squishier and squishier and eventually get black spots then turn totally black and attract flies. Finally, someone throws us out as we are no longer edible or useful.
I come back into myself and say, “Let’s take a walk.” It is a beautiful day and a beautiful town, and everyone likes the idea. We pay our respective bills, head to the bathrooms, and meet outside. I suggest we walk the path alongside the river to PD Pappy’s than turn left onto Main Street where we can walk by the various tourist shops. We head to an old antique store that we last visited almost a year ago to the day. We spend a good hour or so in the store. We see oodles of things that bring back memories from our childhoods, our old dreams and our wish-we-had-done that pasts. We leave having bought nothing except a wistful yearning for the “Good Old Days.” Pre-Trump. Pre-Covid. Pre-Climate Change. Pre-Divisive Partisanship. A time when we could still believe in the American Dream.
The subject of death and dying is next on our agenda. As we walk, we discuss some of the various friends who have recently passed away. A regular part of our lives is now friends and relatives who have gone to another place or simply become fertilizer. Roger is a proclaimed Agnostic. Jane is Jewish. Karen a Lutheran. I declare myself to be 75 percent Atheist and 25 percent Agnostic. I suppose I am hedging my bets just in case a god really does exist.
In the past three months, Karen and I have been to three funerals of friends. I just finished planning a “Celebration of Life” for my friend Dick who took his life in January. We will hold the celebration next month in the park where we used to meet for coffee several times each week. Funerals as any old person will tell you become ubiquitous in our lives. I should mention that even though we never met them we are also deeply saddened by the death of so many ICONS from our lives who we have fond memories of. This past month saw Tina Turner, Treat Williams, Daniel Ellsberg, and Cormac McCarthy pass away. These four are only a few of the recent celebrities who impacted my life in more ways than I can describe in this blog. Each of these four people (as have many others) raised hopes and expectations that the world could be a better place than it now is.
My good friend Bruce was working this week on a set of Advance Directives for his wife Perm who has had major health problems over the past ten years or so. No one over seventy takes death for granted even though we all know it is coming. How, when, and where are unknown for many of us but WHY is easily explained. Perhaps we each have our own whys, but medical science seems to point to the inevitability of death. Immortality is reserved for the gods.
As we walk down main street, Roger tells me that he has seen a show recently that looks at the symbolism in the Catholic Church with a deep sense of skepticism. He asks me if I think the Catholic belief in Jesus would be much different if Jesus had been garroted or beheaded rather than crucified. I confess that I have never thought about this question, but I do find it intriguing.
I reply that my thoughts on religion deal more with the issue of theodicy, meaning “Vindication of God.” “Theodicy is defined as a theological construct that attempts to vindicate God in response to the problem of evil that appears inconsistent with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God (See Theodicy, Wikipedia).” I do not see how there can be any god associated with omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience when there is so much evil in the world.
Many theologians have tried to defend the idea of God by invoking a “Free Will defense” which argues that God is possible because of “man’s free will.” I am still not buying this argument. “Why”, I ask “would any benevolent God make smoking and drinking and gambling bad for us if he was also omnipotent?” I have ignored war, famine, poverty, disease, and pestilence since these have not really impacted my life directly. Nevertheless, these latter problems do not reflect well on the idea of an omnipotent God who loves humanity.
It is now almost three hours since we met for dinner. We are talked and walked out. I am ready for my afternoon nap. Karen wants to get back to her sewing. Jane is tired of listening to us and wants some peace and quiet. Roger is still thinking about God and whether there is other life in the universe. We both seem to have come to the same counter-intuitive conclusion that there is not. We are all alone in the universe except for a few Martians left over from the great Martian cataclysm.
Today we have touched Mars. There is life on Mars, and it us us-extensions of our eyes in all directions, extensions of our mind, extensions of our heart and soul have touched Mars today. That’s the message to look for there: We are on Mars. We are the Martians! — Ray Bradbury
Aging Capriciously 