MID WEEK RUMINATIONS

For some reason, there is a lot on my mind tonight.

Not much of it is connected, but it is, nevertheless, on my mind.

I had a conversation with an old high school buddy this afternoon. He is a couple of years older than I am and he is feeling his age even more than I am - and that’s a lot.

Every couple of years or so, we would meet up with him at a place he had in the Pennsylvania woods and enjoy possibly one of the most wonderful cocktail venues on the planet. Yet, as things go, even that runs it’s course. He declares that this was his last year. It’s just getting too hard to make the drive. Over 2000 miles. That’s a lot for even a healthy younger man.

He was talking about needing a week to recover from the drive back to Arizona. What’s hard to understand about that? There’s a time to cut your options and it seems that this is the time. It’s no fun compiling a list of the things you can no longer do.

I realized that he was talking about me. You can tell when someone is connecting to you at an intimate level. You say things like: “I could have said that”.

A LOAD TOO HEAVY

It goes without saying - but we say it anyway: the longer you carry a load the heavier it gets. Big revelation, huh?

I think that’s the best definition I can come up with for aging. One day, you just won’t be able to pick it up and that will be the end of the road. You probably get tired of me saying this but it’s the truest of truisms. CS Lewis once said that when the ability goes so does the desire. One day you come to the place that you can’t go on and voila - you don’t want to go on. I’ll be sure to let you know if that works out. If you are sound of mind, you’ll find it out for yourself.

I’ll not forget that time that Tinkie, J-Boy, Tyrus and I were finishing off a couple of bottles of Delaware Punch and Tinkie proposed that he could hold a Delaware punch bottle out at arms length longer than any of us. Guess what? He could. I think he had been practicing. I gave it a try, While I’m talking, why don’t you try. It ain’t easy. One minute. Two minutes. Three. Five? Feel it yet? After a while your arms just get lower and lower. Nothing you can do about it. You still want to but that doesn’t seem to count anymore. I guess practice would help but how would you know?

Growing older is sort of like that, but without the Delaware Punch bottles. As time goes on you just can’t do some things you always did without thinking.

This week on Monhegan Island is, for me, a Delaware Punch bottle event. The trails that crisscross an circle this little paradise are in places very rocky and steep. Once I could hop from rock to rock with ease and sureness of foot. A few years ago I began using one of those adjustable hiking sticks with a carbide tip that will stick on a rock like a third leg. This week I have been experimenting with a second stick and it truly helps going down steep rocky pitches.  I's the balance.  It's just not there anymore.  And all it takes is one little misstep - additional walking sticks notwithstanding.

It’s all about accommodation. The happiest old people I have ever known are those who were smart enough to adjust to their diminishing abilities. Growing old is not an option, if one is lucky. Not being able to hold that Delaware Punch bottle out at arm’s length as long as you once could is one of the more normal things you will ever run into. There is no rule that says you have to be able to keep up with people twenty or thirty years younger than you. Do I hear, “Act your age?”

This could be our last week on this wonderful piece of paradise. I’ve held this bottle out about as long as I am able to. Doing many of the things that bring us back year after year have now become too dangerous to do. There are easier trails. I know that, but I am soon to be 85 and hopefully counting. A trip and a fall could be disastrous. I recently had such a fall in my home and it took me a month to recover. It was very painful but I didn’t break anything. I was very lucky - that time.

I do still have the desire. And there is a lot of walking I can still do. That I will do. Incidentally, I am comfortable giving up the Delaware Punch bottle test for manliness. It never proved anything anyway.

JOHN KENNETH HENDERSON

JOHN KENNETH HENDERSON - BORN JUNE 13 1935 - DIED AUGUST 29 2016.

As brothers go, we were not that close. The four years that separated us seemed to place us in different worlds. Grades apart in school - different sets of friends . I was told by my parents that I seemed to resent his coming into the family and actually took a toy rubber hatchet to him as he lay in his crib. Of course, I would rather think that is part of the apocryphal family lore, always good for a laugh at gatherings.

We did not share friends. When he did tag along with me and my friends - which as I recall was something he loved to do - (Isn’t that something common among younger brothers?) we didn’t make him feel particularly comfortable. We were never cruel but we did not encourage him either. I find it interesting that we never spoke of those years. Our lives were parallel, not intertwined.

Except for the four years that Ken spent in the Air Force, he never left Baton Rouge. He worked at various things, among which were managing one of those large merchandise outlets, being a butcher and driving a route truck - which he seemed to like. He used to talk fondly of the people he met as he traveled around the countryside
.
He married Audrey Bourg and that proved to be the best thing he ever did. They always seemed to me to be terminally happy together. In later years they both suffered from multiple physical problems. He had by-pass heart surgery and back issues while Audrey was a long time diabetic. This resulted in her becoming a double amputee in her last years. In a freakish accident she fell from her power chair and within a short time died. From that point on Ken became depressed and disoriented. When we talked, he could not hide his sadness and sense of loss. I asked him to come and stay with me for a while to get a break from what seemed to me to be a bleak self imposed existence, but he would not.
Recently he began to exhibit signs of dementia. He fell and broke his arm and became unable to care for himself completely.

His passing leaves me as the lone survivor of our immediate family. Our points of contact were few and at times far between but were, nevertheless, essential. I will miss him sorely.

Epilogue :

The last time I visited the old country, it felt like I had never been there before. How can this be, I wondered. But that’s as it should be, isn’t it? Time changes everything - and time will be served. If we are wise, we will move on with time. This is the hard work of aging.