Playing in the Fourth Quarter .... Playing in the Last Quarter ..... Playing in Overtime ..... Reflections on being older in the 21st Century
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
Writing about Old Dogs?
Dreaming about memory! I kept having dreams that I was presenting the Belgian film, Ben X, again, this time? with daughter, which we are, indeed, doing 3 weeks from today to an audience of School Counselors and Therapists. An older psychiatrist who visits me weekly was sitting at our table and I had forgotten to bring the film and didn't want him to know. An old estranged friend was due to come, as well. We were students, together, 40 or so years ago in post-professional training institute until he was kicked out of program ... unjustly, I suspect. He never came. He had, years ago, gone on to successful life helping people with issues around death. I had lent the film to my closest friend who lived c. 80 km away from venue. I didn't want anyone to know about my memory loss and how I'd forgotten to retrieve the film for the agreed-upon talk. I had annoying variants of Dream all through the night.
In it, I was stalling by talking about my work in the 1980's. Another shrink was there who had been present (one, though, that I'd never met before) the very day I began thinking about those ideas that led to the work.
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I don't know when I began dreaming about changes in my life. Maybe? I always have. Change is everpresent. Change is the rule of the Universe. But change in the Last Quarter seems often to center on loss of function. I see a lot of people each week who are between 60 and 83 years old. They are my friends ... they are the visitors to my professional office. Most of them drink prune juice! Some take meds that help them pee. Others meds that keep them from dribbling into their pants. Some, like me, have a degree of numbness in their toes and feet. I never knew until the past few years how import the imperceptible adjustments made by the ten toes are related to balance. I know, now.
Memory is maybe most disturbing to people. Word and name retrieval from the aging archives of the mind .... (is that an old Moody Blues song?) .... I have a lost and found in my office for things left behind; it is never empty. Pincer and hand control? Raisins fall out of hands ... glasses meet the faucet in the sink .... glass bowls break on the floor ... arthritic pains are not news, any longer. For me? cardiac arrhythmias were becoming quotidian (thank you, God ... I found a word for "everyday things" ... well, truth be told, "everyday" woulda been better but was momentarily lost) .... a new med has made them less frequent. M's beginning to develop some arrhythmias, as well. Did she catch them from me? Hard to say. What we seem to remember best is that the other's memory just ain't what it used to be! Maurice Chevalier and Hermine Gingold sitting on a bench in the (was it) 1958 production of Gigi singing: "Ah, yes, I remember it well." Well, I remember some of the lyrics to that duet but, to paraphrase my grandparents: "Thanks God for the Google."
Maybe all this relates to going to see my Doc, today ... he must be 45 or so. I think his Dad musta died young because when I and M gave him news I received from an overzealous Derm suggesting I had a terrible skin lymphoma (one of several misdiagnoses I've received over the years), he blanched. I had to spend the next 15 minutes calming down the young fella who I know has a penchant for hypochondriasis ... I worry about him growing up!
Enough for today. Think I'll go and drop some raisins in the kitchen.
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But change in the Last Quarter seems often to center on loss of function...
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting, Dr. Covitz. Perhaps that explains many older persons' resistance to change in general -- in society, in politics, in technology. (Perhaps, that's a bit of an over-generalization) Perhaps, narcissism kicks in: if change is bad for my body, it can't be good for much else. Perhaps that explains why the young idealist loitering in the First Quarter with me welcomes change: change in the First Quarter seems often to center on "functional" improvement: if change is good for me (my body), it must be good for this, that and the third; it must be the panacea for (all) our cultural and political dysfunctions.
I dunno. But it's an interesting thought that I never thought about.
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