I’m up…at two fifty…voluntarily. This aspect of recovery has been batting around in my head for a few days, and I need to spit it out.
A couple weeks ago, I send a copy of a book I have been appreciating. I had been briefly a part of a process that guided him in his vocational choice, for ministry. I though this book might actually be helpful to him along he way.
He was pleased, I realized, when put uploaded a photo of the book on my FB Timeline, saying that he had gotten this book from “old man James Strachan.” I felt slapped in the face. His words felt like an epithet, and an epitaph! I responded with some brilliant and tart remark – “old man? Sheeeesh!”
The penny dropped for him, slowly and late, which is often the case with this young man. And he phoned me. Awkward conversation followed. He’d gotten my point and was clumsily remorseful; I’d seen his point and tried to be gentle and reaffirming. When we ended all was well.
But the whole thing left me pondering a sharply revealed truth: I am an old man. Most of the time I can deny it because my life is filled with people younger than myself with whom I relate enthusiastically. Many of my real and FB friends are my children’s age…even my grandchildren’s age! I consider myself peers with the bikini sports at the pool. I avoid being or acknowledging ‘old man’ virtually all the time. This struck me firmly in the face when Beatrix, seventeen years my junior, and I had coffee at Tim’s with a couple from her congregation…my vintage. The woman is sharp as a whip, the gentleman shows the mental deterioration that age wreaks: not dementing, but reduced and aware of it.
We had a lovely forty minutes, during which the sharing was easy, the sharing old people with similar experiences and similar health limitations. I thin of it as ‘soft and friendly bitching.’
Since that afternoon, (my short-term memory problem won’t allow me to tell you accurately which day it was; yesterday? Two days ago? Does it matter? I came away pondering that I am an old man. My ailments are those of the well elderly, but I am moving into the group our beloved twit of a PM is deliberately taking aim at. He wishes to reduce our capacity to lie well, in hopes that more of us will live shorter lives. The budget, you know…and Conservative (as it is called thee days) logic.
This dawning revelation has helped me to think a bit longer before I make cheeky Timeline comments that might sound inappropriate from a grandfather. I want my love to show, and even my wisdom, without looking the fool. I want to embrace and use the windows of my age to deal with my ongoing recovery, to celebrate the baby steps rather than being frustrated slowness, because I think I’m doing very well for an old man. An old gentleman, an elder. I like the sound of that, even if I am a brain-damaged elder.
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