Last Third

Some days I wake up with a sinking feeling, scared of I don’t know what.  It could be that my partner and I would like to move, but have to wait until he finishes his internship as an addiction counselor – over a year away – but I have no idea if we will then be able to afford Bend, where both of my daughters live, in that distant future.  His kids live in Oakland, and that’s out of the question.  I hate living in limbo-land and have long planned in advance so I wouldn’t have to.  These days, given my age, planning ahead feels more difficult, even without the constraint of my partner’s work life.  I do find myself thinking ‘if I”m still here’ which feels weird.  I am really healthy, as my family doc keeps telling me – I only see her once a year because I haven’t needed to traipse to her office more frequently.  Week before last I got this hacking/coughing flu, which she called influenza; it took a week and a half for it to go away.  I was felled, spending almost all of that time in bed or on the couch.  Being ill for that long probably was partly a function of age, although the doc did tell me that several of her patients have contracted pneumonia  from this damned thing, so I was fortunate, my strong constitution winning out.  Or that’s one way of looking at it. Feeling so awful for that length of time was still quite disconcerting.  One of my friends has a disease called Raynaud’s , and will have to have surgery.  She will have pins in all of her toes on one foot, and won’t be able to move, literally, for a month.  She is alone, which has given her, and me, pause.  How do you cope with things like that if you’re aging and alone?  Another friend has been through illness after illness since her husband passed away, and has faced all of it by herself. Yes, each of them has friends, like me who drive them where they need to be, but the rest of the time, they face what they face by themselves.  This is another aspect of aging, of course, but one that I find daunting.  If something were to happen to Wonono, how would I cope with everything that’s bound to come down the pike year in and year out?  I know I would – you just do, somehow – but the very idea of doing so by myself is pretty frightening, at least to me.  Which gets me back to the move to Bend: the girls have been pushing because they are worried about the same thing.  Moving closer to adult children seems a good idea to us, if we can afford it and still live surrounded by beauty.  Looking out at Puget Sound, surrounded by woods, hiking trails, and the natural world does much on a daily basis to lift my spirits.  If I can’t afford to live in a beautiful area there, then I guess we’ll stay here , and face whatever we face together, as long as there is a together.  I’m sorry this is not a more cheerful blog, but I don’t seem to be feeling cheerful.  Bright spot: went to a new eye doc, and discovered the lenses I have been wearing were not giving me the best possible eyesight.  The new ones give me 20/20 vision in one eye and 20/25 in the other.  What a difference!  So I travel an hour to see this new doc, which is obviously worth it.  Goes to show that some aspects of this part of life can be righted, or improved.  I also believe I’m wiser than I used to be, and handle life in a more positive way than I did even ten years ago.  I find myself wishing I could ask my mother how she coped!  Which makes me smile.  At least I got to talk with her in depth about many of life’s vicissitudes  on our last, healing visit with one another,  one of the many things for which I feel enormous gratitude.  Maybe I should list the others on a piece of paper before I step away from my desk.