Photo by Tim Mossholder

I thought I knew myself pretty well, but then this old-age thing hit . . . hard. Both physically and psychologically.

I’m still in Appleton, Wisconsin as I write, awaiting my second cataract surgery, right eye, tomorrow. The first one went well. I’m not concerned about number two, at least not in and of itself. But I’ve felt myself plunging into a sense of deeper stress, feeling, with increasing regularity – as I stay here with my loving family – like a shrug of nobody.

Only minimally am I a participant in the basics of life. Yeah, things are essentially taken care of for me, which is great – it’s why I’m here – but nonetheless it leaves me feeling like a spectator of my own life. And it hurts to get up! Achy thighs, wobbly knees. Plus I don’t hear well, don’t see well (yet), and am good at pummeling myself into a state of uselessness: what I call I-don’t-matterness. As Leonard Cohen said shortly before he died, speaking of his body, “I feel like I’m being evicted.”

And that state intensifies the aches and wobbles. Prior to standing up, for instance, I know the pain is coming and psychologically start cringing and grimacing, feeling the pain before it even starts. I’m just an old fart and this is what I get. This is what I deserve. Ouch!

But then something happened. This was just a few days ago, as I stood up from the kitchen table. A sense of awareness clicked – I’m not sure why. – and my looming pain was not the focus. Instead, I just stood up . . . oooh, ahhh . . . and it simply was what it was. What I felt wasn’t the pain, it was the effort. What? The feeling was there, but I didn’t torture myself with it. It wasn’t pain, it was simply reality. And my legs pushed against it. They did their job. I was up. Life goes on. I had a smile on my face.

I’m not saying all is good, all of a sudden. I’m still this old guy and my life is full of challenges. But this click of awareness at the kitchen table has reverberated. Think positive – my God, that’s just a cliché. But I don’t know how else to put it. It doesn’t push away life’s difficulties or make life pain-free. It just clears away some of the psychology – the shame and anger, the fear and despair. You know, all those emotions that intensify the hurt.

OK. Life goes on. But loosening the psychological impact pain had on me seemed to matter. I don’t mean in a full-blown way, with life now problem-free. I simply found myself, much to my astonishment, letting myself focus beyond my depression and self-annoyance. There was a bit of a sparkle in me, a sense of self-caring, a sense of . . . yes, yes, self-respect, which I had angrily snorted out of my mind.

I was, and am, staying at my sister’s part of the house, which she shares with her daughter and family. One day when she was off somewhere, and I was alone, instead of simply losing myself on my computer and staying invisible – unwanted – I called my niece and asked if her husband was interested in doing a drawing with me, as he had once mentioned to her. It was Sunday, so they weren’t working, so this might be a good time, maybe even the only time. She asked him and his answer was yes.

So I went over there and we sat together for an hour, maybe more. We danced with drafting pens and colored pencils and magic markers, and I felt a gleeful fullness in me. I wasn’t just “the guy they were taking care of” but a participant in their lives. When I came back to Sue’s place she was there. She looked and me and said, “You’re in pretty good spirits.”

And the words stuck. I was! I had reclaimed a sense of agency. I wasn’t just living a shrugged-off life of I-don’t-matter. I could stand and I could connect. I felt the return of a forgotten self, an abandoned self. And a couple days later, Sue and I went to visit a nearby retirement community – just to look, y’know. Just in case I decided to leave Chicago and move up here.

The place had a slogan: Strength. Purpose. Belonging.

It was also pretty costly, so I probably won’t be moving there. But the words pulled something huge together for me, and still do, as I continue to absorb them. They’re all of us, standing up together at the kitchen table.

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