Golden Age? Yeah, right!

Who are you kidding? I'm not thrilled with getting older. I still cannot grasp that I am, and neither can you. Are we supposed to be happy? About what? Hooray, my bladder is "compromised"? Are we supposed to cheer? Leapin' Lizards, my stool looks normal? Good Googamooga, when people with expressions of pity gently but firmly take my arm and ask, "May I help you, sir?" Terror strikes. "Don't touch me! I have leprosy!" Do I really look like I need help? Really?

The rocking chair was invented so old folks could set on the porch rocking back and forth dawn 'til dusk to keep the blood moving. Well, I'm here to say, I'm no more ready for that rocking chair than I am for the electric chair.

The face that looks back at me now from the bathroom mirror is not the same face shaving off his first moustache with Ivory soap and a single-edged razor blade that's not even made anymore. Moustache? Might as well call a trike a Harley. A dust mote barely visible through an electron microscope. I was sixteen then. I'm not sixteen now. Big diff!

I read about all the pluses of getting older but I have yet to find one that fits. Senior's breakfast at Denny's? Free bus rides to the petting zoo? Ten percent off shower stools at Target? Half price Tuesdays on selected items at Dollar General? Golden Age? Yeah, right.Try pig iron. What are the advantages of getting older? Tell me. I'm listening. It's like the Chinese torture of a thousand cuts, one by one until it gets to your heart. Your family stands on the shore watching helplessly as you fight the riptide, remorseless and relentless, taking you away from them, taking us away from each other. That riptide is following its natural course, and so are you. I cannot conceive of myself as nothing. How to bear it? I don't believe in Pearly Gates. I don't believe in fire and brimstone. All that stuff happens while you're still alive.

So, quick! Where's the solace already? There isn't any if you think about it, so don't think about it. There will be sadness. It will never go away, but now is not the time. So, if now is not the time, what's the time for?

I want to die well.

We know how our loved ones are going to feel because we've been there, by this time, more than once. It's not my wish to make it harder for them while I'm still here, so I need to tweak my whereabouts, suss out the trouble spots. Weed out the niggling glitches and ancient, nagging sorrows. Lingering resentments. Social detritus. Bonehead  mistakes. Ditch the chum. Go for the prime rib. Much tastier, and easier on the gut.

No more time to sweat the small stuff. Leave 'em laughing. "Take my wife, please!" Saunter instead of hike. Chew instead of bolt. Sip instead of slurp. Spend more time spending more time. Stand outside under the night sky staring at the stars, seeking patterns. It's a different world, but it's still yours. I have no answers. I've stopped looking for them.The circumstances of my life have delivered me to this place. Now, where to go from here?

I want to die well.

Stephen Foreman, I say to myself, you are one lucky guy. You get bumps and bruises, some broken toes and a broken nose but nothing organic, mental stuff but nothing psychotic. You've escaped the worst of it. It's been rough at times. So what? There's worse. You're in a good place. Why's that? Because I say so.

Yep. Because I say so, not you.

Sixty years ago I wrote:

"This I know and only this, that I am given a life, a gift that only once I will receive, and I choose to wring it dry of all it's pleasures so that when I am wombed in death's certain eternity I shall not reflect in anguish that I have had but birth and death and nothing more."

Corny, I know. Words from my first play, many lifetimes ago, originally written and performed at Morgan. I was so young when I wrote those words. They just came out. I'm not even certain I knew back then just how determined I was, how, consciously or not, these words would shape the rest of my life. I knew the answer without knowing I knew it. My answer. The one best for me.

Way back up in our first meadow I planted a grove of trees. Our family grove. Each tree planted for a family member. One pear tree for Jamie and me. We gave birth to this life. The pears are small and hard but slice up well then add brie. An apple tree planted for Sevi Donnelly Foreman on his first birthday. It's flourishing now, three decades later, flush and brimming with sweet, crisp, hefty macouns. Take one. An exotic crab apple tree radiant with burgundy colored leaves and bright red berries the size of pearls. This one, Madden's, Madden Rose Foreman, our daughter with the auburn mane. The newest tree is an oak, planted for my grandson's first birthday, a white oak, already sturdy. Dorian Alexander. There are other trees, too - weeping peaseblossom, birch, another apple, a struggling cherry, but the family grove is at the center of it. I'm planning on planting two or three peach trees next Spring to shorten the distance between my son's tree and my daughter's. A wooden bench would be welcome, nothing exotic, no teak or tulipwood. Ash is on the way out. Local maple will do fine. The blueberries didn't make it through the winter, but that's no big loss since wild blueberries are all over the place. When I sit in the middle of that grove, everything makes sense. I won't be here, but it will.There are no words.

Four Months After The Fall - #4

 The really, really cute neurosurgeon (the one wearing heels) (O.K., O.K., so I have a little crush on my neurosurgeon. What about it?) She said the brain injury was healing remarkably well, surprisingly well. Hematoma down 50%. No need for more brain tests. No need to drill and drain. No need to see me again. I admit to mixed feelings on that one. I did not dodge a bullet. I dodged a nuclear bomb. Six months to normal I'm told. Assured. Maybe all those push-ups finally paid off. Uh, wait a minute. I didn't know I was normal when I was normal, so what are we looking at here? The "normal" normal or a New Normal? Do I really want to go back to the same old thing? And, if it's new, how can it be normal? This "new normal" business is like calling a used car pre-owned, pretending it isn't what it really is. 

"Mendacity", rails Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams', Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. "Mendacity!"

Lying there all those hours and days and nights, tended to and cared for by nurses, aides, technicians, cleaning staff, physical therapists, EMT's, kitchen workers, maintenance workers, clericals, and, yes, of course, doctors, too - more of them persons of color than not, so many immigrants or children of immigrants. Isn't it ironic that those very people - the ones we don't want as neighbors - those very people will be the ones caring for us at the time of our death?

The care was great. The food was hot. I'm getting better faster. I can almost remember my name and where I live.This crush I have on my neurosurgeon is not enough for me to make a special appointment to drain the blood from my brain, which we all agreed was unnecessary, anyway. Some balance issues but physical therapist teaching me how to train the muscles in my feet, so if I fall, I fall forward not backward. Neat trick. I keep forgetting where I left my cane, but I still remember the names of my children (at least, I did this morning), do not drool, and do not lurch when I walk. Wave when you go by.

More to come.

I hope.

Four Months After The Fall - #3

As he was dying,  Bob Lemond, my wife's manager, told me, "It's who you love that matters, not who loves you."  You can't (at least, I can't) spend a week in the hospital with a brain injury without thinking about "things". I couldn't walk without falling, so what else was there to do? So, I thought. I doubt I discovered anything new, but I did go deeper into a lifetime of wondering what everything was all about, why I'm here, why you're here, what happens when we're not here, what do I want my final thought to be? My idea of Hell is when, at your last breath, you are bitter, angry, resentful, carrying a grudge with you as you fade to black and enter whatever eternity is. When I awakened in that hospital bed, I had no idea how I got there or what I was doing there. Something surely had happened, but what? I was told I could have died. "You didn't see yourself," my wife and children told me, "It was horrible" -  a wake-up call, yes, but really one for me. I know I was late on the electric bill that month, but customer service couldn't have pulled this off in revenge. They have payment plans, for Pete's sake. I could not wrap my mind around what happened. I didn't believe it happened, could ever happen, To Me? Are you sure you've got the right guy? Wake up, boychik, it really really did. There were witnesses. I remember very little, hardly anything, and so I figured what could have happened? What could be so bad? Why am I on a stretcher being loaded onto an EMT truck? What I do remember, a snippet, I swear, was being in the emergency room with the neurosurgeon staring down. At me. She was tiny, wearing a white lab coat, and heels. I wouldn't lie. What the hell does it say about me when that's all I remember? My final thought is a cute neurosurgeon in heels? I need to do better than that. Much better.

Einstein claimed God was in the details. I thought about that and came to disagree. Nothing deep. I don't believe in any supernatural entity who keeps an eye on me. What I thought was,"Life is in the details." Look closely. Stay awhile. Inspect, examine, dawdle, wonder. My theory is if you stop and watch and wait and wonder, life is longer than when you rush through it. It goes by more slowly, and it's chock full. Take your time. Give yourself over. Examine the tiniest thing. Lose yourself. Yes, lose yourself. These things take time, and isn't that what we want? Time! "Be here now." Not my original idea at all. Many saints and sinners eons before me have said the same thing in their own way. Right this instant, out my window, I am watching summer turn to fall. Different bird songs. Pumpkins. Crisper air. What am I watching? Nothing changes except me. I slow down and search for color. It will be there whether it is now or not. 

There are people I love, people I have loved, people I may come to love, people I will never love. Those are the ones I banish. Those who have loved me are fun to play with. I enjoyed myself with many of them. Sometimes I even enjoyed them a lot, but what stayed me as I lay in that hospital bed were the people I have truly, deeply loved. Not too many. A few. What would I have done without them? Who else would tolerate my quirks and foibles, my corny jokes, my mistakes? Who else would truly cheer my victories? No ulterior motive other than sharing the pleasure of life at that moment in time.

And I love and have loved each one. The beauty of it is that each love carries its own feelings. Every season is the same and new. 

I don't want to look away. I want nothing more than to be here right this instant doing and seeing exactly what I'm doing and seeing.