as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine
RaisingDad
by Jim and Henry Duchene
Getting Old Is Not For Wimps (Part Two)
“it’s not the bending over… it’s the getting back up”
When my father thought his radio was broken (October 2022), and all it turned out to be was he had the volume control knob turned down, it made me laugh... but it made me sad, too.
There was a time when my father could do anything he set his mind to. At twelve he’d fix his uncle's car in exchange for the opportunity to take it for a spin. I’d bet, even at that age, he tried enticing the fairer sex with a ride in his borrowed jalopy.
When he was stationed in the Philippines during World War Two, he built a washing machine for his platoon. He used a metal barrel, a jeep, and his own personal smarts. I don't know if washing machines had even been invented then, but HE had one. I have a picture of it. He's posing next to it with a big smile on his face, proud as all get out.
Years later, after he was married and I was old enough to pay attention, I remember watching him fix the vacuum cleaner. He took it apart, piece by piece, and laid those pieces on a tarp in the order he removed them. That way, he knew the proper sequence of reattaching this to that. “The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone,” as the song goes.
However, when you get older things begin to fail. Your vision. Your hearing. Your, um, aptitude for friskiness… or so I've heard. Your thinking process, which used to be crystal clear, becomes muddled and, like your vision, blurry.
I remember watching a documentary by Desmond Morris called The Human Animal. Desmond Morris is a zoologist who studies human behavior. One of his observations was how, when we're young, we can almost defy gravity. We run and jump and practically fly through the air. Yet, as we age, that same gravity grabs us hard and drags us down. Walking is an effort. Getting up from the couch an impossibility. That reminds me of a joke:
An old married couple is sitting on the couch watching TV.
“Let’s go upstairs and get frisky,” the elderly lady tells her husband.
“Pick one or the other,” the old man says. “I can’t do both.”
When you're a kid you can fly off the couch like a bullet fired from a gun. Zero to sixty in less than a second. However, when you're old, you develop a fondness for the phrase, "Help me up." I'm not saying my father can't get off the couch on his own. He can. Eventually. It just takes some grunting and groaning.
I’ve learned not to help my father unless he asks for it. "You don't think I can get off the couch on my own?" he griped when I tried. A second later, he held out his hand and said, "Make yourself useful.”
If my grandson makes an appearance when my father is shuffling from one part of the house to the other, he will freeze. He gets nervous when his great-grandson is around. All that running and jumping means only one thing to him: "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" My father will stop, hold onto something for dear life, and wait for the Tasmanian Devil that is my grandson to pass.
Why is it, as we get older, we become so unsteady on our feet? Why is it the simplest of problems requiring the minimum amount of mental effort to solve--like turning the volume control knob on the radio--becomes the mental equivalent of climbing Mount Everest?
I like to people watch, and it always saddens me to see the elderly lumber along, some so slowly they appear to be moving backward. They almost seem to be traveling in a different time stream. Maybe they are. A time stream slower than the one the world that’s left them behind lives in. Kids, on the other hand, zip along in a faster reality. Looking at my grandson run and jump is like looking at my TV set when I'm fast-forwarding through the commercials. On the other hand, watching my father is like watching a documentary where those underwater explorers with the big, round metal helmets on their heads dreamily stroll along the ocean floor.
Getting old is not for wimps, my friends.
Every morning, rain or shine, my father walks around the neighborhood. I think he thinks that as long as he keeps moving he won’t die. Sadly, that's not the case. His 98-year-old brother died just a few days before Christmas last year, and the wife of the pastor of our church died just a few days after. She was 62. Still, every morning, in the heat or the cold, in the dry or the wet, he'll force himself to get up and go.
"Pop, it's raining," I'll tell him. It doesn't matter.
"Pop, it's hot," I'll warn. He doesn't care.
To him, walking gives him a continuing purpose.
Of course, he's walking slower these days, and not as far. His aches and pains don't completely go away, but what’s the alternative? Regretfully, I realize that's what waits for me at the end of my own personal time stream.
IF I’m lucky enough to live that long, that is.
Hmm… lucky…
One man's dream is another man's nightmare, I guess.
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I’ve reached the age where it takes me an hour to make Minute Rice.
@JimDuchene
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