Aging Sucks!

Aug 08, 14 Aging Sucks!

Posted by in Dear Diary, Family, Featured

Watching my parents age is excruciating.  They are kind and lovely people and I want them to defy aging.  I want to choose a moment in time and freeze them, exactly like they were, at their best – healthy, full of energy, and happy… probably in the early 1990s and keep them exactly like that forever.  I want them to be whole and perfect and not to feel any pain–much the same as I feel about my children. My mother has had Multiple Sclerosis since she was in high school.  She’s fought it bravely her whole life and has been happy and very healthy.  She has used a cane for most of my life and is now using a walker.  When I’m with her, I cannot accept the changes that are happening to her.  I want her to fight harder and to defy the aging that is happening to her.  I don’t know if she can fight hard enough–start physical therapy again, do exercises, build strength, and stay out of the wheelchair for a couple more years.  I know she’s struggling to accept the changes that are happening to her.  It is the proverbial “bad thing” that has been looming over her for my entire life:  The Chair.  Immovability.  It is the thing to fight against and I am watching her give up. I am pushing her to fight, fight, fight.  Maybe what I need to be doing is telling her it’s okay.  Some of the agony is in me not wanting to say the wrong thing and I don’t want to contribute to her giving up. Years ago when I trained to be a hospice volunteer, they taught us to be willing to just talk about death.  So many people in our patients’ lives wanted them to get better and sometimes they needed someone to just be with them to talk about dying and what they were experiencing.  I wonder if this is the same for my mom–that she is facing losing her ability to walk and...

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My Aging Brain

Jul 14, 14 My Aging Brain

Posted by in Dear Diary

I can tell I am aging from the way my brain works. It isn’t as flexible as it once was. I used to find it much easier to go with the flow…to let things happen and to make it all work. Now, I am more attached to my schedule, to having things the way I want them. I like having a plan. I don’t really want to be flexible. I want things my way. I see the change and I imagine it means I am aging, but I don’t really care. I like the more planned version of my former self. I love the way I can orchestrate my life to be about how I want it to be. This new-found desire to plan shows me all the places where I don’t have the time to plan, too. Like when we invited people over for drinks and Mel and I were both too busy to go and put the cushions out on the patio furniture and to make it all “nice” before they came. I realized that I don’t like the stress of entertaining in a half-done sort of way. But, with 3 kids, two dogs, two acres, full-time (ish) work and a myriad of friends and family, we don’t have the luxury of a well-organized life so I am still flying by the seat of my pants even though I desire a carefully planned life. I sometimes dream of retirement as if it is a kind of time porn—endless time to move slow, make decisions, talk over coffee, read the paper and feel in control. Instead I feel like a puppy tied to the back of a station wagon loping along behind trying to keep up with a life that pulls me along with a variety of the kid’s activities, work meetings, and social engagements. I keep up most of the time. Every now and then, I check myself. I look around at the chaos and think to myself, “this is as good...

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