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Musings on Mortality

Mark my words, there will be an Outrageous Event for very single one of us. It could be as disastrous as a stroke or a heart attack which leaves us permanently impaired and weakened or a bad fall which breaks fragile bones never to heal right again or an overwhelming infection which careens through our ignored immune-weakened body and forces us to inhabit the most dangerous and germy place in the world - a hospital. It could come from a sneaky intestinal parasite which gives us permanent gut damage or even something like malaria or something worse from that trip to Africa.

It could be an unexpected cancer diagnosis or another shocking and serious illness popping up out of seemingly nowhere, like Parkinson's or ALS or some designer disease we've never heard of. Anyway, we could experience a disastrous O.E. that will be something awful with a diagnosis from which we are never the same again. But worrying about a devastating event like this is like being at the very top of the roller coaster, looking down at what's coming ahead... you know that a precipitous belly-whomping drop is coming, and it's going to be scary bad! So, don't bother. Just substitute a lovely little platitude when you find yourself in those dark places.

The Outrageous Event, on the other hand, could be much more subtle, like an ever-increasing inability to breathe (COPD) due to our misspent youth smoking Marlboros or an undiagnosed iron deficiency anemia or thyroid issue or dementia which robs us of our energy and love for life. Or it could be osteoarthritis which slowly and insidiously takes our comfortable movements away, but you learn to make do. It could be a questionable mammogram or something weird on the lab test, or elevated blood pressure which your doc says requires medication. Then something else which "needs" medication and so on until we are taking a slew of self-canceling, sick-making pharmaceuticals. No way is this going to happen unless you agree to it. My opinion is that we are by and large in complete control of these subtler break-downs in the form of prevention and personalized life-style modification.

And it could just be that we are a healthy albeit aging person. Nothing is really wrong - we are simply getting old, then very, very old and we find ourselves slowly but surely unable to navigate as well, think as well or take care of ourselves as well as we used to. Well, folks, that's just inevitable and is called aging and there is not much we can do about it except to do it as gracefully and as discreetly as possible.

At some point, our well meaning children might find a lovely assisted living facility for us and there you go, the oh so subtle kind of Outrageous Event that presages the beginning of the end and as Henry James said, "We await the Distinguished Thing." And we find that instead of the Distinguished Thing coming for us kindly and compassionately by way of a massive stroke or heart attack or plane crash, it will come to us with many small increasingly frequent and painful stings, little annoyances that we want to brush away like that pesky mid-summer mosquito, but find that we can't.

The O.E. can happen when you are just 30, or 40, but most likely it will happen after 70 or surely, 80. See, we toddle along doing our life, watching the calendar pages fly by - months, then years, then, yes, decades, faster and faster and faster until we think time can't go any faster. However, as the nonagenarian said when she was asked how she felt about being that old, she said, "Oh, its O.K., but it seems like I have breakfast every 15 minutes now."

Before the O.E, we are too often blissfully unaware of its journey towards us. We still feel reasonably O.K. We are still exercising, walking, doing the elliptical or spinning, having fun; we are not too fat, not too thin, the lab work looks good, the yearly physical looks good, the dreaded colonoscopy came out well, bone density suggests mild osteopenia, but, hey, you will never have 25 year old bones again, we know that. We still feel 30 inside, our mind is still like that steel bear trap and our interests remain varied and occupy a happy part of our life.

We are not liking one bit the aging stranger staring back at us in the mirror (Who are you?!) but we have made peace with the new-me, more or less. In this case, "Death is like the sound of distant thunder at a picnic." (W.H. Auden) Subtle, faint, yet traveling towards us with an obdurate finality. We hear it in the distance. Feel it in our bones. See it in the mirror. Know way deep that it is coming. ("Every year without knowing it, I have passed the day when the last fires will wave to me..." For The Anniversary of my Death: W.S. Merwin.)

But, we still feel good. And we avoid thinking about "it" and when we do we may find ourselves saying, "Hey, maybe I can be one of the immortal ones."

(Hear loud obnoxious buzzer sound now.)

No, I wouldn't count on it, but do think about this depressing little essay

... when you want to blow off your supplements.
... or when you want to blow off your daily exercise.
... or maybe when you are on a sugar or alcohol bender.
... or before you light that cigarette.

Think of this right before you tuck into that 16 oz. well-marbled rib-eye or when you know you are not honoring yourself and your allergies and your specific needs, or getting enough good sleep or rest.

And finally, think of the Outrageous Event when you blow off seeing me for regular check-ups where we can try to avoid the O.E. for as long as it's humanly possible and both of us are consciously making sure that you are investing appropriately in the "outlay for the upkeep of the downhill."

I don't guarantee immortality - look around you now: "A hundred years, all new people." - but I will go out on a limb and guarantee that your journey towards the Distinguished Thing will feel a heck of a lot better if you love yourself enough to take exquisite care of yourself.

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