Ode: Intimations of Mortality

As I sit in a relatively uncomfortable chair in an 8th floor hospital waiting room, I consider that this is a relatively different challenge than the one I was expecting to face today. I was visiting my parents preparatory to attending a martial arts camp in Missouri, when my dad had a heart attack. Now he has a history of heart disease going back 34 years, to his first massive heart attack, and his continued survival (he's almost 80) is a miracle. In the event, it was providential that I was here, to call 911 and ferry my mother to and from the hospital. My parents were, in fact, well prepared for this eventuality, with detailed lists of my dad's medical history and medications. The first responders were impressed. But that's not my topic at the moment.

I find myself in my high school hometown, a 55-year-old with a CPAP machine and cholesterol medication. I'm surrounded by pictures of my grandparents in various venues, many of which (the venues, that is) I recognize. I remember my grandparents as old, but I now see that, for one set of them at least, when these pictures were taken, they were the same age as I am now.

I look at my sister, two years younger. She shows some specific signs of middle age (far be it from me to list them here.) I've been fighting this sense that I am now among the old, but being surrounded by so much of my past, it is difficult to escape the sense that I am aging. I still feel 30 or so, despite a few aches, pains, and pounds. But everyone else has worn down. How did that happen? I know (intellectually) that it all wears to an end at last, that things slow down, that the center does not hold, but I'm having to confront this young image of myself. I think-- "All I need to do is exercise some, lose a few pounds, and the clock will turn back." But it ain't necessarily so. One of my brothers-in-law, a few years older, has always seemed young, and has never had heart problems. Until three months ago.

Surrounded by aging and illness certainly points the issue of mortality. Someone said "Old age isn't for sissies," and I have a new appreciation for that, revisiting my old hometown and watching over my dad.