 |
YEARS ONLINE |
|
YEAGER-MOORE |
 |
|
GETTING OLDER
|
They never promised us
a rose garden, did they?
of TheColumnists.com
In my case the
aging process seems to have speeded up at an alarming rate this
last year. Circumstances beyond my control, such as hearing the
dire pronouncement by the doctor that I could now join the rank
and file of my maternal relatives. I had diabetes.
Why is that when one seemingly small area of your body goes awry…some of the rest of them slink along behind trying to start trouble when your back is turned? Just about the time I had the diabetes to a low fear factor on my terror thermometer, a really dirty word began to worry me like a dog with a bone.
That’s right and before I could say colonoscopy: “I’m not going,” I went.
I knew little of the procedure, but, I learned to be very careful of that word. A procedure can be anything from cleaning your teeth to removing your gall bladder. I had already lost that part of my inner workings, back when it was a close to death experience.
Anyway, that’s one medical mountain I don’t have to worry about climbing.
Suddenly, one day I forgot how to walk. Oh, I could manage to get to a certain destination, but it was a Trip fraught with dangers…like falling on my face, or, swaying like a drunk.
I’ve known some people to wear a bracelet
telling anyone interested that you are only burdened with diabetes.
Don’t ask me why this happens to some and not others. I
have no idea, but I became a statistic this last July. I was
with family and friends at a pool-side wedding reception for
one of my grand-daughters at another one’s home. I came
around the corner, someone called my name, and I looked up. I
won’t say my entire life flashed before my eyes, no, it
was only the ugly grey cement of the pool bearing down on me
face first. There were shouts of “Call the medics!”
I lay calmly while asking for a pillow, and to be left alone
while trying to assess the damage. Surely that was Heaven I heard
calling.
I lived to wander through numberless cubicles,
while swinging my legs and waiting for one doctor after another.
Why DO they leave you in this precarious position so long you
are in danger of tottering over one side or the other--until
you get really brave and slip off of your perch onto the floor
to grab a magazine before the physician returns?
Because, for some reason known only to we who suffer these indignities,
we would feel an awful sense of guilt to be found perusing any
of the literature in the small box you find yourself in. Why?
Who knows? Maybe some tiny bit of the child still remaining.
But, of course, I am grasping at straws, for little Miss Audrey
has not been seen, except for a mole or two on my neck, for many
years
Have you noticed how things seem to appear on your body until you look something like an old tree? Maybe that hasn’t happened to you…yet.
I would like to mention prescription drugs and the side-effects they come with. Commercials are full of them. I shudder as I try to measure the alternative to certain death.
Woe is me.
So, moving right along, I will remember what my mother had to say on the subject when she was 93. Very sweetly, she uttered, “Well, what IS the alternative?"
I have not grown old gracefully. No, I have fought it vigorously with every tool at my disposal. Which, I must say, was not much.
A friend of mine who recently lost her husband said her first great-grandchild partly filled the void. And in a special way that does help. But, I don’t have any beautiful words to help us as we reach different milestones.
©2011 by Audrey Yeager-Moore. The Audrey cartoon is ©2001 by Jim Hummel.
You can comment
on this column online via our TALKBACK page. Please address your message to either "The
Editors" or Audrey Yeager-Moore at SYNDPACK@aol.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|