Aging Daily

It seems like my cognitive circuitry, given the MS add-on, which of course is really a subtraction, is equal to negotiating about one-quarter of a typical day's demands. Try to squeeze in more, and the lights begin to go out. In other words, I fall asleep.

There are certain warning signs associated with these immanent shutdowns--a general hanging of the head, a stiffness in the neck, an achiness in the limbs, a taffy-like quality to the procession of thought. Think of a music box that is reaching the end of its most recent winding.

Having started out sharp and able, I become progressively more slow and stupid. It's like living from youth to old age in the space of a few hours. Sometimes I wonder if it looks the same on the outside as it feels on the inside.

Whoa, dude, you've aged like 20 years since breakfast!

And it's true. I start out straight, and reasonably agile; I end up with a cane, or holding onto the walls.

Ah, the good old days, of 9 and 10 o'clock in the morning. I remember them well.

A Race Against Time

Though I grow old, though I become ill, though the endurance of youth has been traded unequally to the years, I find yet that I have just barely begun in life. I find myself, much surprised, not with paced gait on the final turns, but back under the starting gun, still in the blocks, anxious, pressed, and most of all impatient. Everything to this point had been training, had been practice, and now the real race is about to begin.

I look back and realize that my life has been a serious of false starts. I find that I often ran blindly, or ran without confidence, or ran without poise. There were times when the finish line was not worth the race, and there were times when my effort was not equal to the goal.

And so I begin again--though this time, this last time, the course to be run has changed. It is shorter, it it straighter, and its limits are not only of length, but of time.

It is a race against time. But time to do what?

Something, anything, everything.

There are a million things to do, a million people to meet, a million places to see, a million ends to be tied and a million knots to be freed. I have wasted far too much time, not knowing how short time would turn out to be.

And yet I could not until now have run with the same assurance, an assurance of good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. To take, at this point, the merest thing for granted would seem a luxury open only to the young and the well.

One thing more about the course shall I mention. There is not now a single competitor to be seen. No, not one; though there be countless companions by my side.

Happy, Happy, Birthday Baby

For all my complaining and melancholy, not to say melodramatic ruminations, I cannot help but observe at the same time that turning 55 (almost) is just about the best thing that has ever happened to me. Given a choice, I’d just as soon stay this age for the rest of my life.

I remember feeling the same way when I was 12. It was not that the number was somehow magic, nor that 12 was the same for anyone else; it is simply that at 12, and now at 55, things seemed to fall in place, become aligned, like the meshing of gears. My life proceeds almost without effort on my own part.

I think less and less of the past, less and less of the future, more of today, this minute and hour.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

And it is. We need not compound it with admixing the sand of the past with the mercurial future. It is what it is, as the popular saying goes. Experience has in many ways been the schoolmaster of hope for long enough now, that hope, at last, has comprehended the face of its Christ, which is faith, dividing want from assurance, dream from vision.

One of the great ironies of self knowledge lies in the recession of self and the raising to preeminence of all that is other. If one would live, he must first of all die. And not only once, but over and over. I die daily, St. Paul said. And so do we all. It is willingness that finally differentiates growth from a sense of persecution and victimization.

Take up you your cross. And enjoy it. In heaven it is what they do for shits and giggles.

The Fountain of Youth

Okay lets get this straight. Multiple sclerosis has absolutely nothing to do with old age! If people would endeavor for themselves to discover the first thing about it, they would find that most people diagnosed with MS are between 20 and 40 years of age. But no, I hear again and again, from people who do not know what they're talking about, that MS is just another malady arising from old age--like senility or arthritis or death itself.

Because I am a good deal older than my wife, certain of her friends insist on advising that this--the risk of illness, or some other form of creaky incapacitation--was an avoidable part of such an arrangement from the start.

My objections, however, cannot help but seem a bit impotent as I totter into the debate on my cane looking exactly like . . . well, like an old man.

Does it sound a little too weird for me to wish I'd been diagnosed at 20?

I figure if anything MS makes me young, because it drops me statistically right smack dab in the midst of a much younger age group.

Put that in yer pipe and smoke it!

Wow!

Wow, I just read about a guy, a fellow Oregonian, with secondary progressive MS. Eight years younger than I, and all but completely crippled. No use of either leg, no use of right arm. Dude, that's messed up. I guess I take my rather benign relapsing and remitting type way too much for granted. On a positive note, I am already old, and so there is not that much time left for MS to do its thang. Good to be old, so good. It's all relative, right? Damn right.

Still, how old would I have to be for being crippled not to matter so much?

I don't think there's a good age for that. Even at 80, I'd prefer to still be walking on my own two feet.

Seriously. I mean, even when I'm 80, my wife will still only be 56. About my age now.

Gad!

Hold on. I have an idea. Maybe it's best just to live day to day. Yeah?