March, 2023: For the first time I acquiesced.
I got on a plane and actually agreed to a gentleman’s offer to put my bag in the overhead compartment. It didn’t kill me. I was grateful.
This is a very big deal in my opinion. I’ve helped others in the past and it felt good. I’m trying to be more compassionate with myself and the onset of needing help. And I am smart enough to know that my white hair and wrinkles are a pretty clear tip off of advancing age. It’s just funny how these things creep up. Subtly. And suddenly too, it seems.
Of course, I try to hide decline. It is an embarrassment, but I’m trying to shrug it all off by saying, “Why bother being embarrassed?” As Buddhism teaches me, life is impermanent. So why am I surprised by changes in me?
I took a senior Tai Chi class and it felt good to be with people going through the same process … and laughing about it together.
Did I think I would be exempt from decline? No. I think I just wanted a few more years of the old Kathy (Not the “old” one!). The truth is, there is not just ONE Kathy. We go through stages.
Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for Social Security (thank you FDR) and Medicare (thank you LBJ) and my union (PEF — AFL-CIO) and my New York state pension and health assistance.
Here’s the thing: Enforced change requires change! I should choose to cooperate and even be somewhat graceful about it! I am, after all, alive! But it’s hard! And we often LIKED the life we had before aging showed up.
I can cognitively understand what is happening to me but I’m really accustomed to the activities I’ve done since I retired 17 years ago. I love planning adventures and visits to the kids. But now the adventures have become less adventuresome. And they are much, much harder to plan.
Now everything is done electronically and that is just so very hard for me! I know there are probably many, many 80-year-olds who do not have trouble with this, and this even makes me madder! When I did the Tour du Mt. Blanc 30 years ago, I bought an airline ticket over the phone! And we needed no lodging reservations at all! We just went. With our backpacks. There were so few people doing what I was doing then, it was easy. (Not the hiking, but the logistics!). Now the hardest part of travel is not the footwork. It is the planning. Impermanence has changed all this.
As I started saying about dealing with aging, I need to find my own path to staying useful in this world, but also re-evaluating that path regularly.
Sure! I’ll put that on my calendar! Not the calendar on phone or computer, either; the paper one with all the marked out stuff.
I should be downsizing. Cleaning out. I’m picturing myself as an old tyrant stomping my feet and professing, “I don’t WANT to leave my trees and birds and foxes — nor the hazards of steep steps and icy rocks.
It is, I realize, unfair of me. I know that it is not loving to leave my kids with a mess. I know that cognitively, but the little tyrant rants on.
In the same way that I found gratitude and acceptance with my carryon on the plane, that same acceptance will show up. I’m sure of it. When? I don’t know … yet.