House of Fears

I began writing to myself and a few limited others recognizing that some/many of the Older Adults (as they may be called in civil company) confuse the restrictions on their activity as sufficient reason for giving up ... life becomes, for them, a series of visits to a veritable stable of mostly young physicians, television, food and feeling miserable. A major liability in the Fourth Quarter -- or so it seemed to me -- was confusion and conflation of the words used to describe their conditions of day to day living.

In the early postings and from time-to-time since, I've emphasized the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is a later form of the night-time baby cry: 'I am hungry or lonely or my diaper is cold and wet; please come and sit with me.' Sadness seeks to bring people closer. 'Come hither, I want you near to me. I miss you. I love you.' Depression pushes others away. 'I'm taking to bed. No one has anything for me. What can anyone do for the dead? Go, away!'

Sadness can coexist with Glee. Depression knows but its own smelly sheets and isolation and, if it ever comes out of hiding, it shows itself to be saturated with rage. 'You've never wanted to be with me, anyway, and now you've troubled the little bit of peace I get by withdrawing from you all; I hate you.'

But the confusion of Sadness and Depression is but one of the many conflations of meaning that occur in the Last Quarter.

Pain is confused with a necessary misery  ... what the Buddhists call Duka and Judaeo-Christian types think of as an absence of gratitude. It is true that the Docs have discovered with controlled electrocution (the tests are called EMG's ... right, Doc ... I call it torture ... jest jesting, folk) that the nerves in my legs don't transmit data as they once did. The results are fascinating. While some balance is lost due to the numbing of toes (who knew that toes were these microprocessing balancing devices that keep 6 feet +(with most of the mass above 3 feet) from toppling over. I don't walk downstairs without holding on to the railing),... still my feet are exquisitely sensitive to walking on pebbles or shells at the beach. Ouch!

I think it's a hoot.

Change in function is confused with disability. The heart-Docs say that the sinus bloc, the part of my heart that is supposed to give me rhythm and is only supposed to get excited when there is danger or sex or a moving treadmill nearby, tends to get all hot and bothered when I swallow quickly or sip a bit of alcohol. I was jogging in a 10k (6.2 miler) run ... just for fun ... the fast young folk are finishing in 28 minutes or so and I throw a party if I finish in 'less than my age.' My heart rate which sits around 40 beats per minute when I'm jogging usually goes to 105. This time after a half mile, I was at 228. Not quite 4 beats a second. Shewwww! Damn. It was a good day. I got to talk to nervous paramedics who saw me walking back to the finish line and tell them to chill ... I'd be fine. 'I'm not goin' in your truck.' Felt wonderfully adolescent like the days when somethings could 'take my breath away.'

Our functions change as we mature. A visitor came in after surgery ... he was constipated. I asked him: 'Have you tried prune juice ... most everybody in the Last Quarter drinks prune juice!' He came back two weeks later smiling.

Another visitor kept hitting other cars on his way home from his office AND coming to mine. 'Hey, Bud ... ever think of cutting back from 65 to 40 hours.' He came back happy, as well, though some years later he had to be driven.

People with limitations (hearing, visual, ambulatory, ...) have been saying for years that their differences don't make them "disabled people" but people who do things differently.

Am I beating a dead horse? I suppose.

Let me end by thanking the manufacturers of Cialis for explaining that Older Adults can still have sex; they just have to soak in the bath-tubs of their childhoods, claw-footed tubs, afterwards, for half an hour and, then, apparently, 'start all over, again.'

What does the song say: Keep on truckin', Mama ... truckin' them Blues away!