Alas the normalcy of this time of year is here, 49 degrees under cloudy skies that are trying to allow a peek of sunlight at the Mini. The view from the 14th floor is at least momentarily pleasant. A break in the clouds has allowed the sun to remind me of the blue color of the lake, instead of a reflection of gray. On the other hand, Larry the Doorman was in an up mood this afternoon. Larry reminded me that it's only 3 days until the Vernal Equinox. His enthusiasm was positively infectious. Too bad he didn't know that I had already, in these pages, declared it officially spring several days ago.
I found out today that a good friend has prostate cancer. While they caught it at an early stage and they are very certain that they can excise all of the cancerous growth, other issues beckon. In the aftermath there may be impotence and incontinence, at least for a while. Considering the possibilities with cancer, that may not sound so bad. He'll still be alive and active, but the quality of life will not be the same.
When aging relatives began to have issues related to getting old, it never really bothered me. This, however, is another issue. This is a friend, an artist, a person I talk to about ideas and have drinks with, a person who's not supposed to get old and suffer from those issues that grandfathers and fathers and aunts and uncles suffer from. This shoves the issue in my face that I too am getting older. What if Mr. Marathon Runner, Mr. Looks Good For His Age, suddenly went in for that checkup and found out that something fatal was oozing through his system? Damn, is that depressing or what?
Babs is eleven years younger than I and she constantly has fantasies regarding health issues and death. They never are about her. They are all about me, and I'm generally dead. Her fantasies about herself usually include severely reduced income and her living alone in an apartment with a skinny German Shepherd, maybe sharing the canned dog food with Rover. I hate knowing that she is thinking about post-Rex life, but the thing I hate the most is the logic behind it. Being eleven years older, I will most likely go before her, and I want to keep that at bay as long as I possibly can.
Facing one's own mortality sucks. It seems like only yesterday that we were all twenty something and life was forever. Now at age 58 I feel like the same person, but logically I know that there is less life left than has already been lived. Some people seek refuge in religion and it's promise of an after-life. I only wish it were that easy. My logic leads me to other conclusions. Better get all I can out of this go round. Won't be anything more. It leads me to Dylan Thomas, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light...." What a pisser! All too soon we'll all be dust and the echos of our existence will be tiny little ripples on the waters that will be gone, gone, gone.
I find that I am not yet ready to make peace with my short lifespan, and ready myself to give it all up. I still have a great many things I want to do. I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I have a feeling that a great many of us arrive at this point. Is anyone ever ready to get old? Is anyone ever ready to finally give it up and die? No time is ever the right time. I suppose the thing I'll do is just keep on keeping on as I always have and finally when the time comes that the body won't do it any more, I'll just go while I'm in the middle of yet one more unfinished project.
In the meantime, this is all about me, and I have a friend who is facing these issues a great deal more seriously than I. He has cancer. We can do our best to put on a happy face and try to be supportive, but when we go away he will still have to face reality, and we can go home to our non-cancerous lives and forget about it until one day something equally dire sticks its ugly maw in our faces. I wish I had something clever, something profound and enlightening to say here, but the truth of the matter is that we're all very centered around ourselves and life is short and that sucks. Don't dilly-dally. Try to get the most you can out of life while it's here, and do try your very best to care about others. They need you, as you need them.
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