Our new dog might be all of 12” from nose to tail, but he has
the ability to reach his tail, bite on it and spin like a top.
I don’t have a tail I can grab and it gives me a sense of
panic, right this minute that I don’t. Faced with the reality of my newly, 70
year-old, father’s psychotic depression I wish I had a tail …or at least
something to grab onto.
Aging is something I try and push to next year. I tell
myself that when life calms down then I will get a better diet, workout more
and figure out that retirement plan. I am a lot like my father and today, this
very minute I realize that scares me. Planning for aging isn’t something that
comes naturally even though we have platitudes that say, “Every day is a gift.”
Aging is not a tomorrow thing, it is a minute by minute approach to the next
moment. It can’t be put off because it is happening right now. By the time I
finish this post I will be older.
Knowing I can’t stop this train I am on, which seems to be
literally headed to an eternal sunset, makes my heart beat a little faster. Fear?
Excitement? It is so logical when I think about time in decades, centuries. A
favorite refrain, “Let’s just do it next year,” plays over and over. Some people
are responsible and plan ahead for those days of retirement, saving their
pennies. Other folks live hard and fast embracing the moment. For most of us we
live somewhere in between. Just happy to pay the next set of bills and get the
kids thru the next season of soccer games. And in times of retrospection we
start to think about laying some plans for that far away and distance time.
My father did that in bits and trickles. He kept it going
during tough times and has a good life to show for it. However he kept thinking
at 60 to take care of business at 70, and at 70 to take care of it at 80.
Time is finite. And having that tail to chase might take my
mind off it for a little while. But then again the minutes tick by and the
calendar creeps forward. I can’t relive what is done.
I wonder if all these logical time devices (phones, watches,
etc.) we have constructed have made it easier to dismiss the passage of time itself
as just another moment and nothing special.
My father says he is falling into a pit. There is a knot in
his head that makes this happen. If there is a chasm, is there a bottom? We are
all trying like hell to make sure there is no bottom for him. But you can tell
he is barely holding on. Nothing tangible is there. No tail. No nothing. And
all the love I can give is ethereal, non-substantial. I could try and weave
metaphors that turn love into ladders, but that is mere imagery. It doesn’t
help.
I look out my window at the world covered in ice, artistic
webs in the trees, still as death. I know that something bigger, timeless,
cares not about these small things.
I might as well be
chasing my tail.
