Old Age: Sneak. Thief. Guide.

If you live long enough, old age will some day begin to sneak up on you. There's a pain here, a strain there. Some food you've always loved starts bothering you. Too much cabernet or champagne will suddenly make you snore. Or at least, if other people's reports are to be trusted. It doesn't all happen at once. And each thing, in itself, can normally be explained away. 

What makes old age such a sneaky thief is that when it starts to take things away from you, it typically most often brings them back - at least, at first, and for a time. You're hobbling around with a back injury, unable to do your normal stuff. And then a few days or a few weeks later, the pain goes away. The stiffness disappears. Oh, Ok. I'm fine.

Or age takes away, bit by bit, your natural ability to sleep solidly through the night. You have lots of fitful evenings. You're exhausted. And maybe cranky. And then you have one or two or more deep slumbers again. Oh, Ok. I'm fine. It was just the full moon, or the dog moving around too much, or those neighbors, or that spicy burger.

That's what makes old age so tricky. It takes away and then often gives back, and it's typically so subtle about its depredations that you can almost always, for a while, blame something else. 

Now, I'm saying this as a youth of 62. I'm stronger than I've ever been in my life, and vigorous and energetic in almost every possible way. And yet, when I go crazy in the gym, it's easier to mess up that rotor cuff, or those hip flexors, and then I'm semi-benched for a while, until I come back, full force, but a little more cautious. My greatest strength and weakness at once is that I'm a person of extremes. And youthful resilience will tolerate extremes that middle age, and the early onset of maturity may not so readily indulge.

I have a friend who at 92 just published his memoir and has been on book tour promoting the autobiography on most of the major talk shows. He gives me hope. But he may even slow down in ten or twenty years. Most of his peers are already not as full of life and energy.

It looks like old age is going to eventually take away pretty much everything we have. It will take away beauty and power and all sorts of possibilities. In some cases, it seems to rob people of most everything they are, at least in this world. And yet, that's an important qualification. There's a wild option here.

In the end, it may be that old age isn't just a liar and a thief of the worst sort. Maybe it's a teacher and a guide. We say it has its compensations. And wisdom can certainly be one of them. But maybe this thing called wisdom goes far deeper than we suspect, and part of the wisdom that age has to convey to us is the realization that we need to shed a lot of the baggage of this world before transitioning to a new adventure in the next one.

Some may object that part of the baggage that age has helped them shed already is such a belief that there is something more. And in their journey, perhaps, that shedding in its own way has helped in their preparation for what does indeed come next. But it's my view that they'll be surprised. They think nothing is on the horizon. I suspect something big is. And I realize we can't both be right. But I can't help but feel that I am.

Age. I'll still wrestle with the joker, while laughing at his pranks. And the more I fight him, the more I'll get of him, if I'm successful. But of course, in the end, I can't win, because there is an end. Or, wait. What if somehow we both win, in the end, age and I, if we do it just right? Maybe old age is the guide it needs to be, in many ways - if we take the right attitude about dealing with it.

I know, I'm still young. But we need to plan ahead.

Age well, my friends.

I'll Rise Up and Fly

When I was young

I thought I could fly.

If I ran just right,

I’d rise into the sky

and go over the yard and

the house and the trees

until, floating a bit

I’d catch a good breeze

and neighbors would see

and squint into the sun

and say “Come here and look

at what this kid has done!”

I'd continue to rise

and with such a big smile that

my grin could be viewed

at least for a mile.

And even today,

I think, if I try,

the time may yet come

when I'll rise up and fly.

Goodbye to a Great Old Dog

On Sunday, in Wilmington, NC, it was a gloriously beautiful sunny day, and our hearts were breaking, tears flowing down all the human faces in the house.

Our old dog had experienced a very difficult month of rapidly deteriorating health, and the past week had been the worst - with at least a couple of serious diseases in advanced stages, plus a bad form of cancer, she was barking pitifully on and off throughout the night, just feet from our bed. The medications that were supposed to help her no longer could. Our other two dogs, much younger, stayed busy trying to comfort her and lick her wounds. The cat was just perplexed, but hovered and stayed close, as if wanting to help.

As the new dawn had come, the old girl refused her favorite food, as she had, for the first time ever,  just the day before. And then, when she somehow made it out the door and into the backyard, barely able to walk on swollen and weakened legs, she did something very unusual for her. She snuck off alone to a part of the property that's more heavily wooded and lay down near the perimeter fence, looking out. This extremely social animal wanted solitude. This house dog wanted to hide in nature. She yearned for something beyond the confines of what she had.

I first saw her there from a distance, lying down, and looking through the fence. The broad yard and large fenced in area that had so long protected her and given her a place to frolic and play were now not where she wanted to be. She looked out through the fence as if she wanted to go beyond it, far outside it, and she seemed, at the same time, to be in a similar way looking beyond her failing physical body, wanting and needing to get outside it, as well. The physique that had made her tough and agile and great fun was now her great impediment. And she knew it. She needed release. So she lay there and looked through the fence as if, somewhere out there, somewhere beyond all that she had known, and had physically been, was the freedom from pain and growing restriction that she needed in order to continue to be herself.

The previous day, my wife and I had been at a graveside service for an elderly aunt who had lived a long and vibrant life before she began to suffer severe dementia, a fate that took her away in bits and pieces for ten years before her heart gave up. Her death freed her from a prison that had seemed to obliterate the person she was. The old animal at our house seemed to be aching for a similar liberation of the soul.

The dogs in our family somehow tend to end up with multiple names. This one, a female rescued eleven and a half years ago, at the age of one, was at New Hanover County Animal Control, on the day she was originally scheduled to leave this world, when our daughter woke up and had the urge to go there, and adopted her, hours from what would have been her leave taking from this life. Her name was Lexie, and that's what we called her, when we weren't calling her Boo, or DevilDog, or Debolt, or Dibs - all names that arose under certain appropriate circumstances. She was an entertainer. She was a bull of a dog. If you ever told her "No" in a serious voice, she would bark wildly and back away from you as if her life were on the line, no matter how gentle your correction might had been. And in the midst of the Mad Dog routine, all you had to do was say "Good dog" in an overly friendly voice, and she would instantly change back, wagging her tail and approaching for a hug.

And then the day clearly arrived. We cried all day, on and off. But we also talked of her being with her old sisters that she had grown up beside, other mixed breed rescue dogs that had been ours and had gone on years ago, far too young. We hoped they would soon greet her and introduce her to the other Morris dogs that they had known, and they, also, in turn. We have quite a pack awaiting our own arrival on the next shore.

And so, we worked to convince ourselves, what seems so sad could actually be gloriously good for the old girl and her former companions. May it be true. For them, and for all of us, their grieving owners, and great, forever friends.

The old girl at the vet, finally at rest, one minute after her spirit's departure, and a minute before I kissed her head one last time.