ThinkingThoughts

Well, it seems that I really should be able to get something useful out of all this drama and angst that I have been experiencing lately…so let’s see where we can wander with it.

I am turning 35 in two days.  Now, I am sort of odd in that the big “milestone” birthdays – 21, 30, 40 – have never seemed like a big deal for me.  30 was nothing…25 packed quite a punch though, philosophically speaking, and it appears that 35 will do the same.

I think it makes me feel a little old…not as in “aged” but as in “dated”.  So yesterday, in other words.  35 is not the age of someone you lust after, it’s the age of someone’s mom. It’s a minivan age…a mammogram age…a moisturizer-with-retinol and soy-supplement age.  It’s not a sexy age…it’s a mature age.  It’s an age where you don’t try to appeal to young men, you try to mother them.

Part of me thinks I should care about that…part of me doesn’t want to care.  Part of me wants to be sexy and attractive and alluring…and part of me thinks it’s really a lot of fuss over nothing and is sort of anticipating a time of my life when that doesn’t have to be my priority.

Except it does…my husband wants me to be sexy and alluring and attractive, so I will care for him, though I don’t care for myself.  I want to look my best, but I don’t care if anyone finds it sexy!  But I will care, I guess, for him.

I am scared of getting older, because of the physical limitations it will impose.  I do not want to be unable to do things because of my physical condition.  I do not want to develop thinning hair and poor eyesight and muscles and joints that will not do as they are told; I do not want to be dependent upon others for things.  I do not want my world to shrink to the size of a small apartment, and the voices that I hear on the phone or the words I read in emails.  I do not want to begin to shrink, when I do not feel that I am finished growing! 

Much of this is prompted by watching Mother, the past few days.  She was hospitalized for pneumonia, because she did not go to the doctor for treatment as she had assured me she had done.  My long weekend at the cabin was cut short – it amounted to one night – and I came home to be with her.  Which is fine, I don’t begrudge her that – but it really made me stop and think about things.

I cannot ever be very far away – because I don’t know when she might need me, and there is no one else here to care for her.  She can’t do things for herself – and it breaks my heart.  It destroys me, one little piece at a time, to watch this woman who was my rock, who bore me and nourished me and nurtured me and sustained me, slowly becoming helpless.  It gnaws at my soul to watch as she has to wait for someone to take notice of her before she can perform simple life functions – to know that if I do not do things for her, she must go without them being done because she cannot do it herself.  I cannot bear to think of her lying in a hospital bed, needing something, and not getting it because a nurse hasn’t gotten around to it yet – and she can’t do anything about it.  She is at the mercy of those around her – this woman who arranged my world for so many years to keep me safe and sheltered and protected, now cannot even protect herself.  So it falls to me to do it.

And it is fair, I know that, and I do not resent it…I do not think, “It’s not fair, why should I have to…”  I don’t.  My reluctance is not in the nature of resentment or defiance…it is in the nature of heartbreak, because it is not fair.  It is not right.  What did she do, or not do, to relegate herself to this fate?  She was a good woman, a good wife, a good mother, a good grandmother.  She was never perfect, but no one is, and her imperfections were in the nature of loving too much, of giving too much, of trying too hard not to hurt or make unhappy.  She erred on the side of love and generosity and tenderness, always.  So why, why is this her fate?  How is this fair?

Worse, I see the slow and gradual progression toward further decline.  I know that in the coming years, she will be able to do less and less, and will require more and more from me.  I can foresee the future in that I know that she will not experience a sudden death, but rather a gradual decline that will be worse, harder, more brutal, for those around her than any sudden cessation could ever be.  She will become helpless to the extent that she will require constant care, and that was always her worst fear.  I cannot do it for her – I am not in a position financially to be able to quit work and render round-the-clock care, and so it will have to be strangers.  Her very worst fear of all, and mine for her.  I will be visiting her and trying to talk to her, and she will not know me, or if she does, she won’t understand what the situation is.  I know this; I can see it, and I am terrified.  I do not want this for her!!  She deserves a long, healthy life, and a quick, easy, peaceful death.  I truly believe this, but I cannot give it to her.  I do not have that power.

I am scared, so scared, of the pain and trauma of watching her decline and knowing her suffering…and I am also scared that it will happen to me, as well.  I have always seen my life as paralleling hers, though in most ways it really hasn’t, and I cannot shake this terrible fear that not only must I watch her go through it, but that one day I will be traveling that same path and my own daughters must make the choices about my care.  I am so afraid…and there is nothing at all I can do about it.

I guess I am feeling not only my own mortality, but my own fleshly inadequacies.  Death is not so much my fear right now, as decline. 

Though I am thinking about death as well, as I always do.  I am afraid of that also.  I am far too strongly attached to this world and I fear and dread leaving it behind.  I do not know what comes after, no matter what my beliefs – I cannot visualize it.  And what if there really is no after, and I just stop?  I will no longer be, and I cannot imagine that.  What is the point to an end of suffering and pain, if you cannot enjoy it? 

And what of those I leave behind?  How can I do that to my children?  How can I leave such an emptiness, such a vacuum, in their lives?  No matter their ages, there will be a vacuum, and it tears me apart to think of it.  They need me and I cannot imagine leaving them behind to wonder why, to think of all the things that I will never be able to do with them or that they will never be able to say to me…

Death seems more real, more possible, with every day you live, and it scares me.  I have lived for 35 years and many many people don’t live any longer than that.  I am at an age where every day from here on is questionable.  At this age, everything starts to become more common – cancer, heart disease, stroke, you name it.  I feel that I’m living on borrowed time and it scares me terribly; my babies are still so young.

I know I think about it too much, but I can’t help it.  That’s what I do.  I think.