GETTING OLDER - NOT BETTER?

“Older and wiser” may just be an empty aphorism. It may also be a last stab at some kind of justification for carrying on; some kind of vindication. I hope it is the latter – o0therwise “looking Ahead” is just an empty boast, a kind of nearly senile hubris. You be the judge.

We found ourselves with a few days to spare while visitors from Mexico inhabited our apartment. I muse that every visit to old friends could be the last, not meaning to be morbid, but I am acutely aware of my mortality, future travel plans notwithstanding.

First visit to my oldest friend and his wife who have lived in Cleveland for longer than they lived in Toronto. They travel widely so I’m not sure why he commented as he did: “You people are crazy. You’re both suffering from different things,” (Shirley walking in pain with a cane waiting for a possible hip replacement. I with an assortment of ailments which could send me to a hospital in the blink of an eye.) He went on: “You travel all over the place with no thought to your physical condition.” He may be right. For whatever reason he is pretty fit and has no aches and pains or dire symptoms. Shirley and I do have them. She walks painfully with a cane, awaiting a possible hip replacement. I carry on with synptoms that seem ready to fell me at any time. But so what. Back to the title of this piece, I intend to be better AND inevitably older. Why not? I have no illusions about the future. I am a committed atheist so for me, this life is what I make it, When it ends – it ends. I have no trouble with that.

But our next visit came with ominous consequences. Shirley has two elderly cousins, both therapists, who live in Detroit. I wanted to visit them, We don’t know how much longer they’ll be around. He’s nearly 90 and enfeebled by an untreatable circulatory problem. But his mind is sharp. His view of life is impressive. His sense of everything from human behaviour to political realities is as sharp as ever.

We visited. We went out for dinner. Later than night we got a call at our hotel. He’s in hospital. The doctor thinks it may have been a stroke. There is nothing to be done. He is awake, alert and functioning. Earlier in the day he complained of a pain in his left arm. (Most people understand the significance of that symptom.) He told us the pain was diminishing so we were fit to go out. We went. He ate. He did not complain but you could tell all was not well.

Earlier in our visit I said: “Don’t go dying on us while we’ve come to visit.” He’s the kind of man you can say that too. Was I prescient? Who knows?

Today we will, we hope, visit him at home. It may be our last chance to sit with this brilliant, thinking, caring (and successful) man. His passing would make our world less of a place.

The two of us will trudge forward, seeing things for the first time. Later this week we will go to Ottawa where we will visit old friends whom we haven’t seen in more than 40 years. They “discovered” me after my Globe and Mail piece about turning 80. That was two years ago! Where has the time gone??

Just a footnote: we went to Blossom in Cleveland for a concert by the Joffrey Ballet company accompanied by the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. It was my first visit to the ballet!! More in a later communique.