Sorry to Break the News: You Don’t Get to Choose

(from the Why Aging Sucks Dept.)

Tell the truth. At one time or another, you’ve been stuck behind some old person shuffling along at glacial slowness, blocking your passage through a doorway or down an aisle and thought, “Jesus shit, get out of the way!” Followed by “Why the hell can’t they walk any faster?!  Just because they have all day… I have THINGS TO DO!”

We might deny it if asked outright, but we all know this goes through our minds when we are twenty- or thirty-, even forty-somethings. Because we are, by then, adults and at last in total charge of our lives. Our health, wealth, place of residence, kind of car—everything is what we have chosen, or the result of choices WE made. That sense of power colors all our thoughts and feelings.

Because we don’t know yet that it’s only temporary.

As adults in our prime, we secretly carry the idea that how we age is our choice, too. That whether we get dementia or lose our hearing is a decision we make, at some future point in our lives. I think there’s a half-formed idea that, just as you get a notice that your library books will be due in three days, you must get a notice that you are about to become old. Young and middle-aged adults seem to think the incipient old receive a list of symptoms and characteristics of Being Old and instructions on picking the ones they will have. Like ordering from a drive-through.

“Yes, I’ll take gray hair, hearing loss and not-keeping-up-with-music-and-movies.”

“I’d like dry wrinkled skin, a saggy butt and boobs and a hunched back.”

“Give me the painful arthritis and a heart condition that messes with my circulation so much my memory turns to soup.”

Oh PUH-LEEZE!

Nobody. Chooses. How. They. Age.

Uh-huh, uh-huh, I can hear the yeah-buts now. Yeah, but if you don’t exercise regularly—or eat healthy, or give up caffeine or smoking & drinking, or learn to reduce your stress, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah—you gotta expect bad results.

Really? We all know of the young man in his prime who went out for a jog and fell over dead at 28. We also know about the centenarian who started smoking at age 12 and drinks whiskey every day.

These are extremes, yes, but they underscore the truth that, while we may influence our individual outcomes to varying degrees, we do not actually choose our aging process.

Living righteously and following all the expert advice in the world about maintaining your health, active lifestyle, whatever, is only so helpful.

Because, though it matters how we play the hand we get, we don’t deal the cards.

To continue with that metaphor, taking care of our health might be like holding three of a kind. Maybe even a jack-high straight. But mortality is the Royal Flush; it always wins. The lucky go to bed and never wake up, or they start to say, “my head—” and before they get to “hurts,” they are gone.  Or they’re thinking about having a cold beer after this shift is over when BAM! An IED blows them to pieces before they recognize what is hap—

The problem for young and old alike is that few of us get that gift of grace known as sudden death. Note that I am not talking about the survivors’ experience in grace-full terms, only about the person whose process of aging comes to a sudden, unannounced end.

The rest of us, the unlucky majority, go through a drawn-out process of aging—and dealing with it—until we become those slow, tottering assholes, blanketed by deteriorating senses and tripped up by physical incapacities, unable to get the hell out of your way or even know you’re behind us, muttering impatiently. That’s not the worst, of course, that awaits the old. They get to look forward to being denied even the luxury of shuffling through a grocery store; their future consists of sitting alone in a warehouse for dying. If they are lucky.

Like adolescents who revel in their hormonal rushes, rush to act upon their every risk-taking impulse, indulge their ricocheting emotions and trust the underdeveloped executive decision-making region of their brains, plenty of old people embrace their infirmities and expect the rest of the world to make room and time for them.

So I’m not as steady on my feet as I used to be (thanks to changes in my inner ear due to medication I take because I worked at a plastics plant or as an exterminator to buy all my kids cars for graduation), I’ll just quit trying to merge with the “traffic” in the grocery store and trudge slower and slower and slower, now that I have fewer places I need to go.  Other people should treat me with respect and courtesy just because I’ve survived this long.

Other oldsters apply the reverse logic with which they survived marriage to an alcoholic, a lobotomizingly-dull job and/or their disappointing children. As in— I am not walking slower. YOU are in too much of a rush. MY brain has not slowed so much I can’t grasp new technology, laws or social realities. THE WORLD is changing too fast.  In other words, it’s not the aged who have changed for the worse, it is everything around them.

News flash: no matter how we address or present our deterioration, we do not like it any more than you do. In fact, I bet we dislike it a hell of a lot more than you do. Because we have to put up with it all day, every day.

Who looks forward to clearly-spoken, separate words to which you can respond wittily, devolving into fuzz and mumble, like a conversation in another room where a loud TV masks half the words? Do you seriously want to drive while joint pains weaken your grip on the steering wheel and strengthen your fear that you won’t be able to wrench the wheel fast or hard enough to avoid an accident if that idiot backs out of his parking space without looking because he’s 20 and has lightning fast reflexes and, therefore, thinks everyone else must too?

Do you want dangerously high cholesterol, even though you haven’t even looked at red meat in years? Or diverticulitis that for no reason decides to break open your intestinal wall—and a blood vessel or two—while you’re driving alone down a country road? Can’t wait for your pants to fill with blood as you search in vain for a cell signal until you pass out, still bleeding? Did a couple of grandparents who suffered from “hardening of the arteries” actually pass along Alzheimer’s genes? Or one for brain tumors? Or weak lungs that working in a hair salon during the weekly shellacked hairdos era only exacerbated? Did you know your lungs were “weak” when you chose cosmetology at age 18?

I didn’t think so.

See? That’s the rawest deal about aging, about getting old and enfeebled. We don’t choose how we age. But we have to live with what we get, until we die.

So. You’re pissed at getting stuck behind me as I totter down the aisle? How the F**K do you think I feel?!?!

More than once in every person's life, it becomes appropriate to pause, reflect on your life and consider making changes. Being at one of those points, I began looking backward at my life.

Concurrently, I came across a scrap of paper on which I'd written, "No matter how you tell your story, that's never the whole story." I'm sure that little gem of brilliant thinking (yeah, gee. nobody else ever thought of that before, did they?!) arose from an encounter with my daughter's version of our shared reality— i.e., her childhood. Her narrative and mine seem completely unrelated in many instances, another  rare occurrence between mother and daughter, right?

Anyway, as an exercise, I began to write a "memoir" that included only the events I actually remembered and left out all the stories/reminiscences the family has told through the years that become so ingrained they may pass for memory for many years.

I'm not ready to draw any hard and fast conclusions from this exercise — I'm only up to about age 5 so far — although I will say that already a pattern has emerged. This pattern consists of being abandoned in the grip of terror.

I do not, however, leap directly to searching for someone to blame. Having been blessed with some years in recovery and the opportunity to discover a whole new perspective on the people who participated intimately in my early life, I remain open-minded/undecided about whether painful abandonment is the reality or simply the way my personality rolls. It seems a good idea to let the indecision stand. Let me uncover more memories vs. stories before I make up my mind. (And perhaps the answer will be some third or fourth possibility, instead of a poor-me personality or a cold, heartless mother.)

Wait and see? No need to erect a rock-hard opinion and defend it to the death? What a change that is from the family of my childhood, who fervently believed and judged everything as right or wrong. There was only one right way to do anything, only one right way to act. Only one right way to feel, too, apparently, since I DO remember being told many times, "No, you don't" after expressing how I felt about something.

Only now, after some years in Al-Anon recovery, do I see how ridiculous, obscene, dismaying and demeaning that is. I love new clothes. No, you don't. I admire those who sacrifice to fight injustice. No, you don't. I hate winter. No, you don't.

The other thing that occurs to me now about my childhood memories of being left to drown in fear is that I didn't drown. Regardless of who or what "caused"those painful times being the only recollections of that childhood, I felt overcome...but in the end, I overcame. Maybe I was left (or left myself) to drown, but I learned to swim through my fear, to find a shore on which to stand.

Have you seen this woman? When Ms. Nice isn't so nice

I have a MIL whose career is Nice-ness. She lives her life to look nice and "be nice" but of course, she gets to define what Nice is, which is always whatever she wants. Unfortunately for me, she is so good at her career that she has convinced her entire family to crown her Queen and live to obey her slightest wish. I am very jealous, I must admit, because I have not mastered the art of forcing others to my will without leaving a mark and never accumulating blame, no matter what I've done. This woman is also a black belt in masking her motives, so that she cannot be called out on that basis, either. She is Untouchable and worshiped as a saint by her family. Not a negative word may be spoken about her, no wish she makes known may be left unmet, her every desire must be instantly fulfilled no matter who else might get trampled in the rush. Yet her family believes that she is selfless, loving and The Perfect One. Our Lady of Guadalupe is an abused woman compared to the blind worship this MIL receives.

It is frustrating to watch, to be on the neglected end of a relationship with one of her children. It seems to me that this affliction is rather common in certain ways, though. For instance, the elevated level of Family Love seems to be in direct proportion with the reduced size of the family that it encompasses. For example, this woman's one stated aim is love, her one driving purpose is Family (well, it's more like making sure her family is Nice by her definition), but the Family in question consists only of blood relations on her side. Her sisters, her brothers, her children. I didn't have such strong family feelings in my family of origin, so I am much more able to feel concern for and take action to help a larger family: co-workers, humanity, life on earth.

I wish I knew how she did it, to tell the truth. She makes you think she is all-giving, all-loving, all about caring for her family. But when you step back, she's really all about getting, being loved, and being taken care of. Without having the label "selfish" attached to her, ever! How's she do it?!

And boy, do I hate her. Not only for getting everyone to dance to her tune while thinking she's so generous and thoughtful of others, but because in the 37 years I've known her, I've never seen a shred of evidence that she's ever felt even a moment's guilt or doubt about her behavior, motives or treatment of others. And of course, with this reputation for saintliness, anyone pointing out the Empress really isn't wearing new clothes (i.e., isn't so saintly, loving, unselfish, etc) is labeled as petty and nasty and deserving of their neglect in the Queen's favor. Again, she wins, you lose.

The only way to survive is to play it her way, either by just going along with whatever she wants or by coming up with 'thoughtful', 'selfless' reasons to ignore her wishes and do what you want. Like, "Oh, no, we're having Christmas at our house--I wouldn't dream of asking you to have it. You're so busy, I'm sure you don't have time to get your house ready for guests." Ha, masterful! It not only sounds sweet, but implies she doesn't keep a clean house--which is one of her Prime Values--and can't manage to get it that way. Bwahahahahaha.

Hmm, maybe some of the Master's techniques have rubbed off after all... She's got a big (and OLD) birthday coming up. I'll see what I can do. 

F.E.A.R.

How do you get on with living a sane life when you are busy worrying about things that concern you, but are out of your control? I don't know.

I mean, I know all the 12-step suggestions and a lot of the psychology industry's approaches, and I guess they work as well as possible, but when you're a caretaker/fixer like me, none of it works well enough on such situations.

What situations, you ask?

Well, how about some puzzling behavior on the part of your husband that has as its only likely explanation young-onset Alzheimer's? Or how about a beloved 5 year old granddaughter who is hitting and jabbing other kids with her pencil--at a Montessori school chosen over day care because she got so bored at daycare? She is a complicated, emotionally needy (or maybe greedy is the more appropriate word) who is usually verbally advanced, but whose only explanation for being sent home from school today for stabbing kids with her pencil was "I'm tired."

How can my heart not ache for her and him and me and the potentially difficult futures we may all face?

I know, but I've just never been very good at denial. It was too dangerous in my growing-up household, which I learned by being oblivious and then being blindsided.

Okay, okay, you're right. Detachment isn't denial. Accepting what you can't change, that's good, too. One Day at a Time, Let Go and Let God, the Serenity Prayer, etc., etc. If only they were permanent fixes, but they're not.

Not when I'm in FEAR--Future Events Appearing Real.

The solution to fear is faith. It's just kind of slippery right now, hard to hold onto!