Aging, and all it implies, is inevitable. At 88, I thought I was old until I listened to two NPR stories featuring active folks in their 90s and above.
The first described a planeload of 66 WWII veterans arriving in France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. On June 6, 1944, Allied troops established a beachhead on the Nazi-held coast of Normandy, a turning point in the war. The oldest veteran was 102. The youngest, 96, had enlisted at 15 by lying about his age. The other broadcast featured Willie Nelson’s 75th solo album. He’s 91.
As a natural consequence of my age, I’d recently been thinking about dying. Now 88 sounds so young!
Reflecting on my life helps me appreciate where I’ve been, especially the last 63 years with my wife, Jolie. Fifty years ago a friend observed, “There’s no such thing as a perfect marriage.” (At the time, she’d been married 37 years and we, 12.) “A good marriage,” she said, “deals with inevitable controversies in ways that nurture and strengthen the relationship.” Thankfully, we’ve been able to do that.
But the bigger picture is life itself. I view it as an “arc of aging,” which begins at birth, blossoms into a full life, followed, inevitably, by death. We learn early to negotiate that arc — from childhood through midlife and into aging, hopefully with good fortune and good health. This is an ideal. Realistically, Murphy’s Law kicks in. Things go wrong, often at the worst time, yet we cope. We adapt to circumstances beyond our control. We develop creative workarounds to reduce stress.
I consider myself blessed — lucky, if you prefer — to have come this far. I’m basically healthy except for age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common form of serious vision loss among the elderly. Since being diagnosed about seven years ago, I’ve adapted to encroaching blindness. At first it was barely noticeable until I developed what I call “visual menopause.” As tiny punctuation eluded me, I started missing my periods. I was able to drive until a couple of years ago. Since then, the sight has continued to deteriorate, slowly at first, then more rapidly.
I’ve recently been receiving “pokes in the eye with a sharp stick,” i.e., monthly eye injections. Last month, my ophthalmologist and I agreed to suspend treatments for the right eye but to continue with the left. I’m not optimistic. Deterioration continues. So, what are my choices?
It’s tempting to feel sorry for myself, but that doesn’t get me past the “Oh, God, how I pity me!” whine. A positive alternative is to modify my lifestyle and behavior. That’s the path I’ve chosen. We all do it throughout our lives, often unconsciously.
For example, getting married requires major adjustments, first to someone who has habits we never knew about. Later come children, intruders who shatter the routines we’ve developed. They dominate our lives, everything from scraped knees to teenage heartbreaks and possibly major tragedies. As the nest empties, we adapt to another phase.
At one point in our lives, Jolie and I uprooted the family and moved 1,000 miles so she could attend chiropractic college. That left me to supervise three teenagers. Jolie graduated at age 46. A few years later, at 57, I quit a secure job with a state agency to teach English in China with Jolie for 11 years. We never looked back. Eight years after retiring, I returned to my first profession: writing. In 2015, I began publishing occasional columns for the Daily News, moving eventually to biweekly opinions. In 2020, on alternate weeks, I started posting columns on FaVSNews (https://favs.news/author/petehaug/).
I’ve dropped both schedules because of encroaching AMD. In mid-May, I could no longer read my cellphone without a pocket magnifying glass (3x). It has a light, great for reading on paper, but the reflection renders electronic screens unreadable. It does, however, magnify those tiny numbers and letters. My next step is to have my tech-savvy son Tom help me get a larger tablet I can use as a phone and on which I can surf the internet a bit longer.
So we adapt. We adjust our attitudes. Each of us knows someone in worse shape than we are. We can appreciate what we still have, what we can do, the positive aspects of our own situation. Taking stock of where we are in the arc of life, we can envision new possibilities we’ve never considered. Sometimes that’s our only choice.
Haug and Jolie, his editor and wife, work together on many projects. Contact Pete at petes.pen9@gmail.com. His internet archives are at https://favs.news/author/petehaug/
