Paring Down, Letting Go

“Depend upon it, sir,” observed Samuel Johnson, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” I’m not about to be hanged, at least not in a fortnight. But for the past three years, I’ve dealt with an intractable decline in my balance and mobility that doesn’t seem headed for a happy ending.

It began with the onset of the pandemic. I was hospitalized for nearly a week with high fevers, body aches, and a general weakness. Several rounds of testing indicated it wasn’t Covid. Tests for Lyme disease and a host of other tick-borne diseases were negative. I was left with the unsatisfying medical determination of FUO (fever of unknown origin).

After a course of antibiotics, the fever went away. A month later, it roared back. I was re-hospitalized and had more testing. The diagnosis remained FUO. The weakness in my legs grew more pronounced. My neurologist prescribed physical therapy. I spent seven months with a skilled therapist. Despite her best efforts and mine, my condition worsened.

I went back to see my neurologist. Parkinson’s was ruled out. An MRI revealed the possibility of hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluids in the brain that can affect balance. A three-day hospital stay for a “lumbar drain” yielded no result. Sixty hours of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) had no effect.

I consulted several other doctors at two prestigious hospitals. A variety of unpleasant possibilities—MS, ALS, progressive supranuclear palsy, etc.—was eliminated. I’m still without a diagnosis. As one therapist told me, “You’re special, but not in a good way.”

The accelerating inability to function on my own has radically altered my life. I’ve gone from a cane to a walker. A wheelchair seems only a matter of time. Running, jogging, and walking, activities that were once routine, have ceased. Getting out of bed or a chair grows more challenging. Dressing myself is a chore. I live in constant fear of falling. Unable to handle the stairs, we’ve had to move from our home of thirty years to an apartment. Without my wife’s constant support and compassion, I’d be lost.

My hope that decades of exercise would cushion any setback didn’t pan out. Despite the cheerleading of the AARP and the endlessly repeated promises of the pharmaceutical industry, age only added to my frailties. I’ve gone deaf in one ear. Arthritis has crept into my hands. My brain is no longer a hive buzzing with new ideas for novels. My body tells me that seventy isn’t the new fifty or sixty. The immutable truth is that I’m old.

Confucius wrote that “old age is good and pleasant.” It’s unclear whether he was speculating or writing from experience. Either way, his opinion is not universally shared. Like youth, old age is bespoke, tailored by the love and loss that befall or bless us. No matter who we are, all that is certain is if we live long enough, old age is inevitable and, no matter what we tell ourselves, none of us comes prepared.

Watching my relatives and parents age, I noticed that the older they got, the more the recent past receded in their minds and the distant past grew prominent. In her late eighties, my mother found it difficult to recall events from the day before yet could recite the names of the guests at her wedding a half century before.

The telescoping of time is a phenomenon with which I’ve become familiar. It’s recollections of long-gone youth and not yesterday’s events that arrive in blazing technicolor. I re-encounter myself, the boy who’s been there all along, alive and well—who, beneath wrinkled flesh, ruined gait, never changed. Who will be there until the end.

I’m in the process of paring down, of letting go, of stripping away decades’ worth of accretions. My disguises are put away. I’m free to be the adolescent who, beneath the carapace of adulthood, I’ve always been: thirteen going on fourteen, awkward, dreamy, afraid, expectant, confused, fearful of what’s ahead, hungry for it, unsure of what I’m looking for, eager to find it.

We’re born ignorant and helpless. We grow up and grow old. We gain experience and perspective. Happenstance plays a part. Some discover faith or feel it deepen. Others confront the void. The fortunate come away with a modicum of wisdom.

Youth and good health push us forward and outward. Age and debilitation pull us inward and backward.

Looking through the eyes of the boy I once was, the unfolding of my life leaves me bewildered and amazed. The good was never planned. The bad was never expected. Each had its day.

My mind is concentrated wonderfully: I’m grateful for it all.