THE INEVITABILITY OF UPKEEP

Having to be a puppet-master with the aides completely fries me. I have to think about and find a way to convey every detail of my life - where are the light switches, how to make coffee, what is a towel. I suspect it is partly a language problem. The capacity of people who do these jobs is so varied. Sometimes I get someone who can learn my ways, but more often I am trying to explain and often suspect I am not being understood. If you need help and can't communicate what your needs may be, you are further isolated and the stress magnifies. I look around and see all the details of keeping up with living that need doing - most of which I can no longer do easily or at all. Oh how aging makes us wait for what we need, no longer able to act on the moment.

When one has trained as a dancer, body awareness has been keenly implanted. So when we age in this super-aware body, each twinge, ache, cough, or pain screams at us. We are forever practicing symptom follow-through, chasing the alarm to discover the source. Sometimes the investigation leads to a solution - Tylenol, ice, heat, steam, special exercise. Sometimes it becomes an issue for the doctor and a visit, test or prescription is called for. Too often it is an old familiar failing one has learned to cope with for years. Sometimes the coping continues, sometimes it fails and the despair of having no idea what to do next in this long life hits us over the head.

Which leads me to thinking about that elusive last straw.

We never know when it will happen, when living approaches the impossible, when we simply can no longer cope with the circumstances of our life, when the emotional tsunami bursts forth announcing the breaking point, when we just can't take it any more.

It is when all remedies and pathways forward seem impossible and we are like that mouse in the cartoon who is caught in a trap to whom the other mouse says “I’m sorry-here I am going on and on and I haven’t asked you a thing about being caught in a trap.”

I have been there so many times it becomes part of my unique cycle of life.

 Sad to report I am there once again. No idea what to do about this painfully deteriorating ankle that was never repaired after the accident. After I had waited 3 years for the orthopedist who promised a total ankle replacement kept putting me off, I took the ankle in hand and seriously and coaxed it and worked on it until it semi-held me up. Doctors were stumped as to how, but it seemed to serve a life with serious limitations and I was able to live like that for another 10 years. Last week something changed and the once coping ankle presented me with impossible weight-bearing pain and an inability to hold me up AT ALL.

 As of now I am deep in the middle of quandary. I can't get down the stairs to get an x-ray or get to any doctor, even if I had an ankle doctor I knew to call. I tried to live with incapacity when I knew I could semi-function, but now I can barely do that. 

 Giving up has never been my style, but I am as close to that as I ever remember. Don't even know what "giving up" would mean. 

 I don't always show up in a receptive state. I am often overwhelmed by a life that often seems to get the better of me. But when I do dig down and give out, it is coming from a genuine attempt and need to bring you into my world, to let you see how I see, what I feel. I know from the shared experiences of a long life this is often uncomfortable to hear. I present as a bit too much. My expressions are far from subtle, but they are coming from deep within, dredged up with the tools I have forged to rid myself of lingering regret and devastating anger.

 And then I think of those I love, of the many kind and generous souls who have accompanied me on this extremely challenged path and I remember to send a Valentine to all, to celebrate love in all its many aspects.

In the meantime I can enjoy this bouquet of dried flowers that accumulated over the Holidays from fresh ones. It came into being over December/January as the flowers seemed to dry naturally - sort of creating itself – like a repesentation of elapsed time.