When I find myself drifting towards arrogance and righteousness, all I have to do is look back to almost any point in my life to regain a sense of humility and perspective. I feel like I never got the memos about life that other people got, I had to figure it out for myself.

Just a few years ago, I wrote in this space that I would never join in the modern system of health care, I would not spend much of my life in pharmacies or talking about my health. I would avoid the system of pills, the fear-mongering, the agonies of our health care system, the sense of dependence and fear that comes with getting older in America.

In the corporate nation the elderly are seen as a vast profit center, manipulated and frightened into wanting and needing all kinds of care, and then blamed for costing so much. That is not my idea of a meaningful life.

Shortly after some of those declarations how I would live, I learned that I needed to treat my diabetes very differently, it was threatening to damage me quite severely. And then, I had open heart surgery. I don’t remember having a heart attack but my doctors, clutching their data and graphs, insist that I did.

So instead of writing pompous declarations of independence, I got to work taking care of myself. My heart is sound and my blood sugar very much under control.  I do not talk about my health much, if at all, but I do spend some time navigating the health care system, going to see doctors, hanging out at the pharmacy, taking and remembering medications. Our medical system is good in emergencies, it is just kind of a mess the rest of the time.

So I did cross the bridge I swore I would not cross, the arrogant are always held to account, and I have learned not to make so many declarations about what I will or will not do in the future. The truth is, I have no idea.

I am  learning the other lessons of getting older. Something hurts just about every day, often in different places, and I have learned to be nimble about responding to what I need to respond to, treating what it is treatable, accepting what is not. The health care system is a daunting thing to navigate, everyone agrees on that, and no one seems to have the will to even try to fix it or bring it under control. But it did  save my life, and is keeping me healthier than I have been in many years. So I don’t care to speak poorly of it, I owe my life to it.

Next week, I will get my 10 minutes with my Nurse-Practitioner, and hopefully she will throw me out of her office with a Sponge Bob  sticker and tell me to come back in three months. She sees more than 20 patients in a day. She and I love each other but I feel guilty taking the time to ask how she is, so I have learned to talk fast, like a 77 RPM record. I wouldn’t even think of having a long conversation with her about my health, she checks my heart, takes my pulse, looks me over and says goodbye.

I am not somber about getting older, I am much better at getting old than being young, which was a nightmare for me. I am finally learning a few things about life, I love my life (and my wife) very much. My editor told me last week that my writing has never been better. For once, I believed that, I am learning about life. People are even beginning to subscribe to my blog. I am just getting underway.

To some extent, aging in a healthy way is both challenging and exciting. My noble feet have kept me upright for years, but my arches have abandoned me, and my medications affect me and it began to hurt when I walked, which I love to do. I got some new fancy insoles, they adjusted my feet, the pain is fading away, I am walking all over the place again. I understand that one day I will not be able or willing to stay ahead of it, but I can do it for now.

It’s a kind of chess game, I think,  the body makes a move, I make a move. Sometimes a doctor can help, sometimes not. Sometimes the chiropractor can do what the orthopedist won’t bother to do, sometimes the massage therapist can do what the chiropractor doesn’t do. Sometimes the pharmacist can do what none of the others can do. You have to keep your eyes and ears open, be curious, shop around.

Woody Allen said once that as you get older the body simply begins to fall apart. This is true. But the mind does not , contrary to popular opinion, nor does the spirit.  I don’t do old talk, I don’t hang around with people to want to discuss their health or prescriptions. I do not look back with nostalgia, patronize the young, romanticize the past.

I am beginning to get older and feel older sometimes. Every day is a gift, a new beginning. I will not give up life, or live for the future. In 20 years, if I am alive, I won’t really care where I am. Hopefully Maria will have pushed my wheelchair to the Battenkill RIver in January and kissed me goodbye on the nose. Like the Pharoahs, I’d love to take my dog Red with me, but he will be long gone.

I expect to have love in my life to the end, my love for Maria only grows. I fear sometimes that she will tire of me when I falter, but I am neither blind nor interested in hiding. Our love cannot last forever, nothing does, and I am very like to die before her. I tell her that I know she will have a second chapter, as I did. She doesn’t care to talk about it but I definitely want to speak the idea out loud.

So that’s what I am learning about getting older. Face it, admit it, don’t let people tell you that you are not old when you are. But accepting it doesn’t meant being subsumed by it. It is a part of who I am, it is not who I am. It is not the whole story. Recently, my daughter started asking me how I was feeling – she has done this ever since the open heart surgery which, I imagine, was  upsetting for her. I said thanks, but I am not sick. If I am not feeling well, I will let you know.

 

Once in a while, I will look in a mirror or in glass store window and wonder who that old man is looking back at me, it can’t be me. But it is. Age has given me a great gift, it has given me what I have always wanted. It has given me myself. I have failed enough and succeeded enough and messed up enough and triumphed enough and loved and hated enough that I know who I am, I see how it all works.

It has not been a perfect life, or even the life I always imagined for myself. But no matter, it is my life, and I love it and am proud of me for living it. It was, when all is said and done, quite an accomplishment. Against all odds, life can triumph.

In my head, I am not the face in the mirror. That it isn’t me, it couldn’t be. I am quite young and full of ideas and energy. I am just starting to live.