Borrowed Time
Writing involves a lot of start and stop. I know you probably think that's just you, but I'm pretty sure it happens to every writer. You get out of the gate and you're cruising. Nothing can stop you. Until it does. Then you sit and stare at the page, check your social media accounts, shoot a couple baskets on your Nerf basketball hoop, and maybe doodle a little. A glimmer of an idea comes. Then as soon as you start typing, it vanishes.
It was like that for me two weeks ago. I sat down with a great idea. Personal, sentimental, close to home, and timely. I got three paragraphs in (the first three paragraphs below) and then everything dried up. All the eloquence that existed in my head didn't translate to the page. After a few frustrating moments, I shut down the computer and went on with my day. I figured one of two things would happen, (a) I'd never come back to it. Some ideas are finite; some don't need the light of day; some are just not meant to be. I have probably fifty such drafts in my Blogspot account, or (b) Something else would come, a new, fresh idea, and I'd finish what I started eventually.
Turns out it was Option B. Which came in the form of two trips to the ER in one week, pneumonia, and an as yet un-diagnosed mass on a a ninety year old liver. Life is never static.
~~
This week my older sister lost her step-father (same father, different mother) and another friend lost her father. I feel a time coming when this isn't a rare occasion, when at least daily a text will come in or a post will appear on some social network or another. I'm aging and has happens so are the majority of my friends. We are now in our forties, fifties, and sixties and, if we are lucky, our parents are still alive. But we all have to admit - we have to - that we are living on borrowed time. If we are this age, our parents are in their seventies, eighties, and in some cases, including mine, nineties. What's the average life expectancy in the U.S.? I just Googled so I can tell you. It's seventy-nine. My dad blew by that eleven years ago and my mom did likewise four years ago. Talk about borrowed time.
After her step-father's death, my sister said that life goes on. It's true. Life goes on and things return to a normal, albeit a newer, different, and maybe not so welcome kind. Maybe that's the tragedy, what makes me saddest. One day it will be like they never existed at all, except for a series of fading memories. Then on another day however many years down the road it will be like we never existed. Because if we are to consider our parents' mortality, we must also consider our own. Time marches on as they say and age comes for all of us. Eventually, perhaps. Some of us may do a better job of holding it off than others or maybe they have been blessed with better genetics, but we, each and every last one of us, will one day face down the inevitable.
For now, though, my friends and I watch and wait. And hope against hope that some day isn't today. I don't know what I will do when that day comes. If I could hold it off forever, I would. But that is a childish and unrealistic impossibility. I suppose I should embrace the time I do have - spend time, talk, get them talking, and write it down (Yes, Mom, at a minimum, I should call more). Let's be honest. We're not talking about decades of my life. We're talking years. Maybe. That's why I'm putting some dreams off and making different plans. For now.
~~
Turns out, someday maybe be a lot closer than I thought when I wrote those words two short weeks ago. My dad is back in a rehab facility growing weaker by the moment. He has pneumonia - nothing to play with at his advanced age - and while bed rest will help him heal, it's also killing him. Look, if you don't use, you lose it, and - let me tell you - at ninety, that process works at light speed. If he does manage to kick the pneumonia, he'll still have a huge uphill battle to regain his strength and mobility. And seriously, at some point he's going to get tired of trying. What then? It's a rhetorical question because I think we all know exactly what "what then?" is.
And we haven't even discussed the mass they found on his liver. Need I reiterate that he's ninety? There won't be any extreme measures - no major surgeries, no high power treatments of any kind. That it's still un-diagnosed doesn't really matter in the grander scheme. We're staring down palliative care... at best.
My dad is dying. Slowly maybe, but I can feel "eventually" and "the inevitable" creeping ever closer. Funny, just two paragraphs ago I was concerned about him recovering from pneumonia. Two paragraphs before that, it was someone else's father and I had time to procrastinate and be complacent. Now I feel like I should be on a plane. To Hell with my life here - my job, my bills, my half marathon training. All that will be waiting for me on the other side. As I try to make sense of a new normal.
There comes a point when there's no going back. You can't spend the time you didn't have time to spend when you should have been spending it. You can't say the words, make the memories. The opportunity has passed. They have passed.
I guess I will end this here and hit "publish". The words are drying up and I'm at a stopping point. I don't want to let this one languish another two weeks because there's no telling what the ending might be at that point. I'd rather close it here, with eventually still eventually, however borrowed the time may seem.
~ If there are typos or other stuff I coulda, woulda, shoulda edited out, I'm sorry. Like I said, I wanted to post it before I had to change it, add to it. Before eventually. ~
It was like that for me two weeks ago. I sat down with a great idea. Personal, sentimental, close to home, and timely. I got three paragraphs in (the first three paragraphs below) and then everything dried up. All the eloquence that existed in my head didn't translate to the page. After a few frustrating moments, I shut down the computer and went on with my day. I figured one of two things would happen, (a) I'd never come back to it. Some ideas are finite; some don't need the light of day; some are just not meant to be. I have probably fifty such drafts in my Blogspot account, or (b) Something else would come, a new, fresh idea, and I'd finish what I started eventually.
Turns out it was Option B. Which came in the form of two trips to the ER in one week, pneumonia, and an as yet un-diagnosed mass on a a ninety year old liver. Life is never static.
~~
This week my older sister lost her step-father (same father, different mother) and another friend lost her father. I feel a time coming when this isn't a rare occasion, when at least daily a text will come in or a post will appear on some social network or another. I'm aging and has happens so are the majority of my friends. We are now in our forties, fifties, and sixties and, if we are lucky, our parents are still alive. But we all have to admit - we have to - that we are living on borrowed time. If we are this age, our parents are in their seventies, eighties, and in some cases, including mine, nineties. What's the average life expectancy in the U.S.? I just Googled so I can tell you. It's seventy-nine. My dad blew by that eleven years ago and my mom did likewise four years ago. Talk about borrowed time.
After her step-father's death, my sister said that life goes on. It's true. Life goes on and things return to a normal, albeit a newer, different, and maybe not so welcome kind. Maybe that's the tragedy, what makes me saddest. One day it will be like they never existed at all, except for a series of fading memories. Then on another day however many years down the road it will be like we never existed. Because if we are to consider our parents' mortality, we must also consider our own. Time marches on as they say and age comes for all of us. Eventually, perhaps. Some of us may do a better job of holding it off than others or maybe they have been blessed with better genetics, but we, each and every last one of us, will one day face down the inevitable.
For now, though, my friends and I watch and wait. And hope against hope that some day isn't today. I don't know what I will do when that day comes. If I could hold it off forever, I would. But that is a childish and unrealistic impossibility. I suppose I should embrace the time I do have - spend time, talk, get them talking, and write it down (Yes, Mom, at a minimum, I should call more). Let's be honest. We're not talking about decades of my life. We're talking years. Maybe. That's why I'm putting some dreams off and making different plans. For now.
~~
Turns out, someday maybe be a lot closer than I thought when I wrote those words two short weeks ago. My dad is back in a rehab facility growing weaker by the moment. He has pneumonia - nothing to play with at his advanced age - and while bed rest will help him heal, it's also killing him. Look, if you don't use, you lose it, and - let me tell you - at ninety, that process works at light speed. If he does manage to kick the pneumonia, he'll still have a huge uphill battle to regain his strength and mobility. And seriously, at some point he's going to get tired of trying. What then? It's a rhetorical question because I think we all know exactly what "what then?" is.
And we haven't even discussed the mass they found on his liver. Need I reiterate that he's ninety? There won't be any extreme measures - no major surgeries, no high power treatments of any kind. That it's still un-diagnosed doesn't really matter in the grander scheme. We're staring down palliative care... at best.
My dad is dying. Slowly maybe, but I can feel "eventually" and "the inevitable" creeping ever closer. Funny, just two paragraphs ago I was concerned about him recovering from pneumonia. Two paragraphs before that, it was someone else's father and I had time to procrastinate and be complacent. Now I feel like I should be on a plane. To Hell with my life here - my job, my bills, my half marathon training. All that will be waiting for me on the other side. As I try to make sense of a new normal.
There comes a point when there's no going back. You can't spend the time you didn't have time to spend when you should have been spending it. You can't say the words, make the memories. The opportunity has passed. They have passed.
I guess I will end this here and hit "publish". The words are drying up and I'm at a stopping point. I don't want to let this one languish another two weeks because there's no telling what the ending might be at that point. I'd rather close it here, with eventually still eventually, however borrowed the time may seem.
~ If there are typos or other stuff I coulda, woulda, shoulda edited out, I'm sorry. Like I said, I wanted to post it before I had to change it, add to it. Before eventually. ~
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