Well, here I am, at the age that Paul McCartney and John Lennon made proverbial  forty-odd years ago. Since I do the needing and feeding around here, I’m not asking any questions.

I was going to say something about Tyler Brûlé this morning, but I’ve just learned what I ought to have known days ago: an old friend in a faraway city has been in hospital for almost two weeks, and I believe that he is seriously ill. His stoicism has always obliged him to make light of poor health. I have sent him my love, but I’ll refrain from peppering him or his wife with questions.

Yesterday, I ceased to be a sick person and became a normal person with a bad cold. I haven’t had such a bad cold in years. It seems wildly solipsistic to say so, but I blame my vulnerability to the virus on the shock of my aunt’s sudden death last month. I say that it was sudden because that’s what it felt like, even though my aunt was in the hospital for nearly a month. She was taken ill, but she was expected to recover — and then she didn’t. Facing the prospect of long-term dependency on oxygen tanks and the other ministering angels of geriatric medicine, she elected hospice care. She made her decision very quickly and would not be talked out of it. It was sudden.

We say that we don’t want the elderly to suffer and we’re dismayed when a loved one lingers on in semi-consciousness or worse, but until we have tasted pity and dismay, we want to keep death at bay.

For days, I’ve been saying to myself, “And this is just a cold. What would it be like to be really sick?”

And that’s the view from 64.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, January 6th, 2012 at 8:57 am.