October 4,
2024
The Golden Years
“Damn it,” the
old lady said as she eased herself down into her wheelchair.
It’s not that
I don’t appreciate my knees, she thought. They carried me through life for
decades before they gave out.
Their ruin had
been set in place years ago: a beach hike camping trip with a full backpack
when she was 26; a meniscus torn while holding the leash of a dog who dashed
off after something when she was 53. Neither insult to the joints ever recovered
and became worse as the years went by.
Then there
were those two broken vertebrae in her lower back, which made standing for any
length of time unbearable.
Bad knees, bad
back. She could walk when she used a walker, but most days the pain decreed
that “this will be a wheelchair day.”
So there she
sat.
She wheeled
over to her computer to check her email, the weather, and the news.
Email was the
usual: one message from someone she wanted to hear from, and dozens of
advertisements and duns for donations and mailing list texts. She thought about
how when personal computers and the internet became a thing in the 90s,
she was so excited and had so much fun, despite the squawking and screeching of
those old phone connections. This was before Amazon and Google and Myspace and
Facebook. Before all of it.
She remembered
how cool it was the first time she was able to send and receive email.
Thrilling.
It’s a whole
different thing now - as usual, humanity started playing with the new toy and
ruined it. Scams and money pits and hackers, and cults, oh my.
An old person
can still find a community online, though, on “Fogeybook” or “Boomerbook,”
because people her age use it to stay in touch with each other. It started out
as the great new thing that the young people loved. The young people who were
in their thirties and forties now.
Oh well.
She
went to the site of the local paper to see who had died this week. There was
almost always someone she knew or knew of.
When she got there, she hit the paywall. Subscribe! It said.
Not this again. A few months previously she tried to subscribe. Took out
her credit card, filled in the form … and the site would not accept it. No
subscription.
She
tried again with a different card. Nope. Still no subscription. Feh, she
thought. What is going on? She knew the cards were good and up to date, but the
newspaper site wasn’t having it. Pity – how was she going to know who had died?
So many friends and acquaintances are already gone. There’s at least one she
wishes was gone, but the less said about that, the better.
It
had been a few months. She thought she’d try again.
She
was told she already had an account. How? When they wouldn’t let her subscribe?
But she pressed on: got a new password, recovered her username(!), filled in
the blanks, and was then told, “Don’t recognize username or password.”
“F******
technology,” she swore. Technology and gravity – both seemed to have turned on her
the last few years. Everything either didn’t work, or fell, including her.
Oh
well. Another day in the Golden Years.
“That
gold is leaked pee,” she thought.
She
now realized that she had reached an age and condition where it took courage to
get up in the morning and navigate through her painful days.
“I’m
too old to have to summon up courage,” she thought, but there it was. Physical
pain was a constant. Every day when she woke up, she thanked God for another
day, and thanked God for her unexpectedly long life and the many things she had
done and been, her children and grandchild, and people she loved and people who
loved her, and the dogs.
Especially the dogs, those affectionate goofballs. She had cats now, and even though they clung to her like Velcro every time she sat still or got into bed, they were not the same as dogs.
Anyway.
After thanking God for all her blessings, she had to summon up courage to get
out of bed, because she knew it would hurt. Oh, the pain would lessen as she
moved around, and she used CBD balm and arnica gel and acetaminophen to get the
noisy joints to quiet down a little, and she got through her days, but she realized
now that it took courage. No one hands out medals to the courageous people who
get up and deal with pain every day. She felt more understanding and compassion
for people who got hooked on pain pills.
Here we are, a generation on the way out, she thought, the Boomers who are now the older generation, chock full of wisdom no one wants to hear, and skills that have passed out of use, but still kicking and screaming and thinking and voting, keeping on in the face of our body’s opposition and young people's indifference. Grateful for all the history we lived through. The wars, the music, the space travel, the internet. Except for wars, nothing was the same now as it was when we were young.
Now
we are old. The golden years. Barf.
Velcro cats
