At a Loss

By Ralph Maltese

I woke up this morning and my neck ached.  The pain could have been caused by the position of my head which was at a 45 degree angle to the rest of my torso.  Somehow during the night my body, without my conscious consent, contorted itself into that position. A few clicks of my head to the left, a few to the right, and the pain subsided.  As per my morning routine, I performed triage on myself.  All checked out, a few cracklings when I stretched legs, arms, head.  Even though my brain was telling me “All systems are go!,” I thought I might lie in bed a while and think. For me, thinking often involves couching my thinking in metaphors, in literature.  There is a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Doctor Heidegger’s Experiment.” https://www.commonlit.org/en/texts/dr-heidegger-s-experiment To four childhood friends, (now quite old) Doctor Heidegger administers water –water supposedly drawn from the mythical Fountain of Youth.  Before they drink, he asks them if, returning to their youth, would they commit the same follies and manifest the same foibles that doomed them to become social misfits and failures?

They all claimed that they would not be so foolish as to commit the same mistakes that cost them lives of happiness and respectability. They ask Dr. Heidegger if he was going to partake of the waters. “For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again.”

That is the line that pops into my gray matter once or twice a day.  For me, the worst part of growing old (post retirement) was the losing.

Over time, the losses start piling up.  Loss of hair, loss of smell (Parkinson’s), loss of eyesight, loss of voice (Parkinson’s affects one’s vocal chords—gone is my Teacher Voice), loss of hearing (there goes three of the five senses), loss of my legs (still working but wobbly, Parkinson’s), loss of balance (also Parkinson’s), loss of memory (“Polley, didn’t we see this movie?”), loss of weight…and mostly loss of relatives and friends.  Yep…it is all the losses that plague and lead to a loss of dignity.

Take last week.  The week before last week I purchased hearing aids, and the week before the week before last week I had glasses made just for reading the faint Philadelphia Inquirer print. And many weeks before all those weeks I had lost twenty-five pounds.  My favorite belt with eight notches was using the eighth notch and still the pants were baggy. So, when jumping over rain puddles, I needed one hand to hold my belt lest I offend bystanders.

Polley and I decided to burrow out of our winter hibernation and go to the local supermarket despite the fact it was one of those bone chilling rainy, dreary, Edgar Allan Poe days.  As Polley drove I became aware of a teary, blurry vision in the upper portion of my eye.  I thought “Damn, now I am losing my sight because of Parkinson’s.”

I turned to Polley.  “Hon, when’s my next appointment with Dr. Eckleberg, our optometrist?”

“Not sure…what’s this guy think…he’s at Daytona?” Polley was observing a four by four pickup going over the double line to pass us.   “I’ll have to check the calendar.”  And then a neuron fired in my brain. I still had my reading glasses on from my post breakfast perusal of the Philadelphia Inquirer.  I shared this with my driver.

“Do you want me to turn around and go home and pick up your regular glasses?” she offered.

My brain factory considered the analytics and produced a negative.  “No, we’re almost at the store.  I’ll just try to look through the lower part of my glasses.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”  Big mistake.

After we found a parking space, the rain gods, realizing that we were getting out of the car, started to make it rain harder.  Not having wipers for my glasses, the blurriness increased twofold.

Drenched, chilled, and blind, I followed Polley into the warm, dry supermarket and immediately my glasses fogged up.  We decided to divide up, Polley scouting the vegetable and fruit section, while I navigate the cart toward the fish and meat area.  I managed to wipe the rain from my glasses, but strolling down the aisle and trying to read the signs explaining what section of the aisle

harbored what product was taxing.

I finally made it to the meat section and looked for a nice roast, but it was difficult unless I lifted up my glasses slightly and held the roast up to my eye to read the weight and price.  Hmmm.  “Twenty-eight dollars” I muttered to myself.  I looked up to see a lady staring at my close inspection of the meat. She looked at me with my face inches from the hunk of red meat and was probably thinking “Is he going to buy it or sniff it?” I felt an explanation was in order. “I wasn’t smelling it…..I was just trying to read the label…”  She just stared.  How could I end this?  I simply bowed and said, “I’m Mr. Magoo.” She didn’t even smile, but just turned away and sauntered down to the Bologna section.

I told Polley I would meet her at the bread and dairy section, but it was more of a challenge than I expected.  My blurriness seemed to deepen, and when I have been walking for a while, the Parkinson’s kicks in even more and my “strut” includes wobbly knees and twisted ankles and feet crossing over each other.  Imagine a person who has imbibed ten martinis staggering on a moving-in-the-opposite-direction conveyor belt.

I manage to meet Polley and we compare notes.  Next we have to choose what cashier aisle to use.  I never use the self-checkout. So we find the shortest line which has about five people.

The other aisles have even more people waiting.  Some people in the other lines are staring at me, possibly because they witnessed my apparently drunken stroll down the aisle.  Just then, simultaneously, two weird things happened.

A sound like a live microphone at a heavy metal concert bouncing off a steel floor boomed through the supermarket and I realized that I had maladjusted my hearing aids and everything was louder….that or some rain water had seeped into my ear.  “Gene, report to customer service.”  But to me it was “GENE REPORT TO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THEN A LARGE TWANG.”

((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))))

At the same time, I realized that my body had tensed because of the ear shattering announcement, and my pants started to fall down.  The customer line moved forward.  One of my hands quickly grabbed my belt..  The other hand fiddled with my hearing aid.  I saw the headline—“Old deaf man arrested for indecent exposure in supermarket.”   I was able to help Polley check out using one hand, thus avoiding mooning all the staff and customers at the supermarket.  We’ll not visit that supermarket for a little while.

So for me, the worst part of growing old is the losing.  But I always tried to teach my children and my students that perspective is a very useful tool. Yes, I have lost a number of parts of my life that I dearly loved. I might be losing any ability I had in writing (my last blog was read by perhaps eight people). And I will lose more, including our democracy if some people have lost their courage, lost their study of history and lost the ability to choose representatives who, in making important decisions, use evidence and facts and reality rather than celebrity worship.

“We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.” Thomas Jefferson

On the other hand, I don’t get excited or stressed about things that plagued my youth.  Once you experience a lifetime of human nature, things people do and say that seemed unbelievable when I was twenty-five do not increase my blood pressure now.  I respect and learn more from just studying the birds feeding in my backyard.

Perspective grows with age, and though I fear future losses, I stay focused on the reality that many many good things, good friendships, good people, good colleagues and especially a wonderful soulmate have graced my life. I see everything around me, from soft bright white snow to squirrels shomping away on peanuts taken from my hand, in a different way.  The things that were important when I was twenty-five are less important now.  I enjoy things more because my expectations are not grandiose. For example, each moment I sit with Polley watching a British crime drama on a Saturday night is a..a delight that I cherish.  I see what was previously unseen to me.  Perspective reminds me of my gains, and that is what I hang on to….greater clarity.