Hard and Scary

I did promise people that I would keep writing even though the Loop has ceased publication. A couple of people have come up to me and said, “So?”

The thing is that ever since last May 26, when I lost my balance and fell on the concrete behind Sporty’s, my main activity has been to recover from the fracture of my L3 vertebra. It has been a long, long, slow slog.

Really slow.

This experience certainly broke up any boredom I was feeling when I was isolating for more than a year. Suddenly I was the center of attention, more the center of attention than I wanted to be. Sheesh. For example, people in rehab facilities put a lot of stock in bowel movements, which I did not feel was their business, but God help you if you miss a day.

But all that fuss is over. I was in the hospital five days, and in the rehab facility for a little over three weeks, and when I came home, my house had been cleaned out by Episcopalians and Company, and I had lots of visitors, some of whom brought me food.

I was confined to a wheelchair most of those first weeks. Learning to navigate without running into walls or door jambs or anything else was a steep learning curve for me, and when I started using a walker, I had to learn how to navigate that without having a collision with something.

Near the end of August it was pointed out to me that my beautiful, sweet Marley, my canine pal, was coming to the end of her life.

She was not well. She was peeing and vomiting in the house, which she had never done unless ill. There was a haze of pain in her eyes.

I took her up to the fields by the Food Bank so she could run around, and she wouldn’t get out of the car. That poked a big hole in my denial.

I spoke with a vet who said Marley had outlived her life span already, and I was lucky to have had her as long as I did.

Oh.

So, on a pleasant Tuesday in August, the vet came down and saw Marley on her way.

I miss her. A lot. Her beautiful, sweet spirit, her unconditional love … okay, not the constant barking so much, to be honest, but all the rest.

Not having a dog feels like a huge deprivation, but it’s Marley I’m feeling deprived of, not some dog I’ve never met, for those of you who think I should get another dog, the sooner the better.

The Delta variant of Covid-10 came along this summer, and the novelty of my hard times has worn off, so people are not coming over much anymore, so I’m back to feeling isolated, and feeling the accompanying squirrelly-ness. I have started going to water walking again, which really helps. Those women are family, even the ones I don’t know yet.

I signed up for an Alzheimer’s Prevention study a few years ago, and every three or four months they have me take some memory tests, mostly to see if I remember whether I have seen playing cards before, and so far, according to their lights, my memory is not deteriorating. I’m coasting along about the same.

It doesn’t feel that way to me some days. I’m always trying to remember people’s names, and specific words for what I mean, and I’ve become adept at working around the inability to pull up the right word when I want it.

A lot of my friends talk about having the same issues. So many people I know have said that they feel the same inside as they always have, in their thoughts and feelings, but their bodies and memories are letting them down.

I do not want to be one of the people whose bodies go on while their minds and personalities have sailed away. Who is going to take care of me when I can’t take care of myself? It’s frightening to consider the possibilities.

Of course, my body is fairly disabled now, I have had breast cancer, and I have an ongoing relationship with a cardiologist. Perhaps I won’t live long enough to become demented. There’s a happy thought, eh?

I am old and getting older – I will try to live my aging life with as much grace as I can muster, but this confronting and accepting the loss of memory, loss of the use of my body, and, the unknown date and manner of my death, is hard, and scary.

Fortunately I’ve lived my whole life dealing with hard and scary. That could be a plus now.