thinking ahead

Exchanges with an email friend in New York City. 

 

Miriam,

Your health is certainly more messed up than mine.  Let me quickly say that I am not complaining about where I am in life, just observing.  But I can begin to relate to situations such as you are dealing with.  Just having to go from point A to point B can be wearing when the entire body hurts or the legs don't behave.  I remember wondering why my Grandma Ludwig didn't try harder when she just gave up and sat in her wheel chair.  She could get up and go to the bath room or to her bed, but she finally even quit doing that.  I had no idea of how much it cost her to pull her sore body up and make it move. 

I watch younger people become impatient with their aging parents, actually pulling or shoving them along like little children.  I think to myself that one day they will understand, but it doesn't help their parents now. 

We have had many conversations with family members regarding some of our older clients who just want to sit down and wait to die.  "Sometimes that in itself is a hard job", I have said.  It's one thing to work with a person who is immobilized with fear over their vision loss, and quite another to try working with someone who is prepared to die.  Not because they are now becoming blind, but because their bodies are now ready to lie down and be done with it. 

I just hope my family will understand when that day comes for me...as it certainly shall.  . 

 

Carl Jarvis

******

From: Miriam Vieni

 

Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 5:35 PM

 

Carl,

So we do have some symptoms in common. Mine are just much more extreme than
your's and I have more issues than you do. My lower back problems have been
going on for years and escalated and now I have severe stenosis which means
there's pressure on the nerves in my spinal cord which translates into
numbness in my feet and very poor balance. I cannot walk independently
outside anymore because of this. So when I sold my house and moved to an
apartment building in the center of town so that I could walk to all the
stores, it was all for naught. Within two years, I couldn't do that at all.

Miriam  

*******

 

From Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 6:52 PM
To: 


Miriam,
Yup.  That's me.  Just slower and many more coffee breaks.  and of course a
coffee break tends to lead to at least two bathroom breaks. 
So I do still get the wood split and stacked and the windows washed, etc.
But the way my old back has been behaving, I am definitely having to pace
myself. 
The arthritis in my lower back seems to have affected my legs.  I'm no
longer sure footed.  I always look for hand rails going up or down stairs.
It is a different world that I enter each day.  It's been a few years since
I could hop out of bed in the morning.  Now I swing my legs over the side
and sit until I am sure my head is not going to float off into space and my
body isn't going to flop around on rubber legs. 
I know that I need to go back to my exercise routine, but I have far more
fun sitting here and running off at the fingers. 
 
Carl
******

 
Miriam
blind-democracy@octothorp.org> 
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 1:27 PM

Carl,

I don't believe a word of it.  You're the guy who digs holes for
fence posts
and chops wood and stacks it on the wood pile. I remember what
you've
written before. You also wash those big windows that you have. I
suspect you
shovel snow too. And didn't you write something about putting oil or
something in a generator?

Miriam

******

- From Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 1:44 PM

Miriam,
It would be great if we were all put together like that Wonderful
One Horse
Shay, the one that lasted for years, in perfect working order, and
then one
fine day it crumbled to nothing but a pile of dust. 
That's my plan.  But it's not working out that way.  I wake up each
morning
feeling pretty good.  I lay there listening to the birds or the wind
in the
tall Evergreens, thinking of all the things I plan to do.  Then I
sit up.
Sometimes I just lay back down and sleep another hour.  But usually
I rise
up, driven by that aging bladder, and face the day.  Yesterday I did
some
telephoning to clients, spent 2 hours on the phone with a former
client,
helping her unscramble her Jaws and Outlook Express so she can
answer the
emails I've been sending her.  Then I thought about exercising.
After
thinking, I had lunch instead.  I take a small dish, put in a large
spoonful
of peanut butter and a large glob of Blackberry Jam, mix them
together,
smear the mess on bread, put a dab of Mayonnaise on the outside of
the bread
and toss it onto the grill. 
I find that eating my lunch in my recliner in the forbidden living
room
makes it possible to not move following the last bite.  I simply set
my
plate on the end table and lean back in the perfect after lunch
napping
position. 
Of course I'm talking about those days we are not actually in the
field. 
But after a short...or long snooze, I rise up, staggering to get my
lousy
hip working, and strut off into the office where Cathy has been all
along.
But she's 17 years my junior, so it's only proper and fitting that
she be
hard at it.  Just don't tell her I said so. 
I then do my entries into client's running records.  God bless the
fool who
devised these forms.  They need all the help they can get. 
When bored, I jump over to my email and respond to other bored
folks.
Around 6:00 PM.  I wake up, realizing that I dozed off with my
fingers on
the keyboard...again.  So I travel back to the living room and
switch on the
ABC nightly news.  Well, what passes for news.  In between listening
to the
commercials, I tidy up the kitchen so Cathy can toss together one of
her
amazing dinners.  I see a thick steak and a large baker sitting on
the
counter for tonight.  Dinner usually finds its way to the plate
around 7:00
PM.  just in time for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. 
I take the full hour, often hearing Cathy call my name to awaken me
so that
I might finish my dinner. 
After I have missed more answers than I answered, I shut off the TV
and
bustle about cleaning up the dinner debris.  By now it is 8:30 or
9:00 and I
am wide awake.  Maybe a pan of popcorn or a bowl of ice-cream will
settle me
down.  But I'll need a big cup of fresh coffee to wash it down. 
And then I settle down and think about how different life is today
than it
had been back when Cathy and I were first married. 
Sure, I do miss those days, and I'd live them again if I could.  But
I get
to thinking, my brain is still working just fine.  Of all the parts
of me
that are slowing down or breaking down or falling apart, my brain
continues
to hold up pretty well.  Sure, I have to play the alphabet game when
I reach
for someone's name...Albert...Alan...Bruce...Zeke...no, it's none of
them
letters. 
But whenever I forget an event I just Google and hunt it down.  That
Google
is like having an extension on my head. 

And yeah, I do get down from time to time.  And arthritis is taking
its
toll.  But as long as the old brain works and as long as I can peck
out a
few notes, I'll be contented just to be alive and peering out at the
world.
We do live in exciting times. 

Carl Jarvis