Editor’s Note: This is a marvelous muse on the measure of a Boomer’s journey through time, space and emotion.
– Vic
Marlow Note: Dear Reader,
During the plague, I penned various dark pieces that hid in the dust bunny filled corners of my Draft email folder. As our country was on the cusp of exiting the enveloping Chinese-delivered, take(America)-out darkness, I sensed I should have a personal100,000-mile maintenance check done. Hence, a visit with and requests to my primary care doctor.
Below is one of my dusted off and updated musings on this Seven Seas journey.
-Marlow
Treading Water in the Deep Blue Sea
The offshore deep blue
I should have known I was in for trouble when I grabbed my primary care doctor’s attention towards the end of my annual check-up visit in early December 2020 and asked, per my rehearsed list, for a series of consults with specialists. It had been many years since I had seen a gastroenterologist, dermatologist, pulmonologist or cardiologist. Yeah, I had quit smoking five or so years before, maintained my weight, had no abnormal readings or test results, was feeling fine save for occasional shortness of breath, and was planning to be plague vaccinated despite W and I having survived this epidemic’s infection the previous January. But still, I threw myself overboard into what we in America consider to be the supposedly tranquil seas of medical specialty.
I was fully in control, so I thought, not stumbling as someone would as they teeter-tottered off a boat’s flat, no-rails deck into a roiling ocean. Time hadn’t frozen nor was it moving like molasses. There was no emergency or niggling small changes in my affect or overall quality of life. Naw, I was “just being prudent” a la Dana Carvey’s long ago spoof of President Bush.
Somewhere down deep, I should have suspected I was about to begin an endless treading of water in the deep blue seas of old age health. I should have known it — I had led an almost irritatingly impure life, but what sailor could deny such? There were no surprises when I fell, just an unrecognized continuous slow-motion sense that I had put myself into a situation that I could not get myself out of. Surprisingly, I didn’t reach back and try to regain my foothold and balance. I just slowly with an amiable SEG slid off the smooth sailing SS Marlow and became airborne. Into the drink.
Splash.
Warm. Confident. In control. Those were my initial feelings and thoughts as appointments were made, calendars updated, and schedules rearranged.
As the months passed, multiple office visits were scheduled and conducted, procedures were performed, samples assayed at distant labs, scans read, orifices probed and HighDef videoed, and results tabulated and reported on the infinitude of various patient portals.
So, there I was more than six months later with a series of ever more regularly scheduled follow up testing and monitoring visits and rehab sessions stretching off into the future ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Nothing was pressing let alone serious or threatening, just murmured parenthetical expressions of risks of future developments. Scans, invasive sampling surveys, new high-tech serum assays were my fate their courses of treatment — the modern medical system’s early warnings and indications system sensors. I considered taking notes post-office exiting, since recording their latinized mumbo-jumbo seemed to be off putting to lawsuit-wary and plague-weary docs. I finally said to myself — nope — these would be the first steps along a personal journey of obsessive, compulsive fear and loathing.
When I reached for and undogged the hatch to my weather decks, I should have known, just known, disaster loomed beyond.
No freaking out, red hot adrenal gland surges, gasping seawater swallowing, arm flailing, water thrashing, garment rending, nor screaming “f@@@@ck” at the top of my lungs would be part of the plan.
A calm and centered treading of water was now job #1. Or at least it should have been. Life must go on, so travel, visits, and nights out on the town continued though were somewhat squeezed by all this doctoring stuff.
Still my past life of damn-the-torpedoes, carefree living seemed to be putt-putting away from me, despite my slow Australian crawl swimming after it in chase. I had no trouble keeping my head above the gentle swells, but that lovely past was edging away from me as its bright lights dimmed and became smaller in the distance. I knew and accepted the answer to “How could this be happening to me.” Circle of life, you know.
Whining as my former life, its pleasures, rhythms and supports steamed away was counterproductive. No one would hear it, plus you can’t fight the ocean. Gotta find new things and ways to keep my feet moving and head above the waters. There are no wearable floatation devices or driftwood to grab for this new situation. Screw the gloom and doom stuff. Just a good attitude and an even strain on the line, trust in others and acceptance of “shit happens.” And consistent personal agency in pursuing the possible, since things fall through the cracks despite our modern, networked, always-on e-world.
My past ways were still far away from passing over my visual event horizon when I decided to re-orient myself to my situation and life position, and where I needed to swim towards. With the past’s sounds silent, there wasn’t really any sound. You forget that when you’re drifting out at sea, waves don’t make a sound. All that you hear in the deafening silence of open waters is your flailing and splashing about. Wanting to hear the waves crash once again upon the shore became a focalizing agent. I figured out which direction that was, the currents’ flow, and how to slowly get within that hearing distance once again.
Next were my shoes — waterlogged with dim regrets over my now past ways. Water survival training at Officer Candidate School in Newport and air intelligence survival training at NAS Pensacola had taught me and countless sailors before me that soggy footwear like these were anchors that would drag me under. So, I kicked them off to sink below. Instantly I felt how much more buoyant I was, more regular my breathing, and lower my pulse rate. Thus, decreasing my mental thunderings and emotional terrors, the briny taste in my mouth, and the panicked buzzing in my ears, a calmness and clarity of heart, body, and mind surfaced to assist my continued floating.
One out of one of us die. That we know, but the when and how of that outside of our DNA destiny are subject in some small part to our choices and attitudes going forward. Grasping onto that upon awakening each morning buoyed me a bit more.
It felt to me that the deep blue water’s surface layer was now beginning to warm. I now needed concentration and focus. Not just on “staying alive” but on “thriving.” Reading these things off the computer screen out loud made my mind switch fully on from the top of my skull to the tips of my toes and gave me a microscopic seat-of-the-pants sense of control.
So, what actually did I know? Well, there were indications and warnings of:
· Continuing declining lung capacity due in large part to — no, not smoking – mostly asbestosis and some GERD induced fibrosis
· Worsening old dude skin and stomach lesions
· Vision acuity issues — operations in the future but a mew glasses prescription proved remarkably beneficial
· Old man teeth failures — lots of procedures performed and on tap
· Infrequent but bothersome elder crankiness
· And quite possibly worst of all, a declining tolerance for alcohol
Not exactly a DEFCON I moment, I laughed to myself.
As the morning skies lightened with my new appreciation for the day, I looked below at my pale legs and chest and then outside upon our side garden as the birds started chirping for the sun to fully rise. I saw them fluttering in from their marshal pattern overhead for a drink or splash in the tiered fountain. I spied the neighborhood cats laying in hopeful wait for an early feathered snack amidst W’s treasured flower beds. Unannounced water sprinkler washings would soon be their rewards for such juvenile misbehavior and flower bed vandalism.
Neighborhood cats getting the early morning watering system treatment
It was no longer dark, and I was no longer alone or without hope. Yes, I am powerless in and of myself to fix these problems. But my assets are not inconsiderable — decent medical insurance, enough capital to pay out of pocket expenses for uncovered advanced treatments/therapies, should they be desired, a mostly clear mind, and, first and foremost, my W.
I had been at home on the ocean for most of my life, but now I was in the ocean. This was an unknown for me. I had spent a lifetime destroying all unknowns including the unknown unknowns.
Another four corners, or more likely seven seas, journey awaited.
The challenges here are that the medical team members have no exact idea what and when stuff might happen or develop. In large blue strategic campaign arrows on a world map fashion, yes. Small tactical engagement arrows, no. I was overboard. That created in my mind a potential floating drift area and search time-period the size of Wyoming.
Nothing like living your own Monte-Carlo late-in-life search and rescue simulation.
W and I aren’t getting richer — maintaining several hotrods, a motorcycle, wine and dining habits, and a thirst for travel, both foreign and domestic, are expensive undertakings — but we are doing more than just alright. And we are still loving and laughing side by side, long after we first dropped our hooks in that distant coral island’s water together until death do us part.
Bought the ticket, so I am taking the ride.
PS. For this new phase, no soldiers and no airmen. I upped my previously low standards. So, up theirs.
Were you on the off chance to stop by our Park Avenues digs late on any given afternoon, you’ll very likely find us quaffing a wine or cocktail and talking about God knows what regarding our next adventure. You’ll very likely, too, hear us talking, sometimes overtly, sometimes not but always ever so briefly, about the loss of the American way of life with each passing year (What is unspoken here is how fast we returned to our former pie-eyedness about the inescapable risks of our choices and our ingrained expectations for life everlasting and unchanging. Gotta love our American optimism.).
So, if you have the time, regardless of whether join us or not, sit a spell, have a drink, and enjoy the eternally aching-body comedy of expectant youthful minds in decaying meat sacks.
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