My daughter thinks I’m fearless, and with her I probably was. My son knows that his safety depended on my fearlessness; my fear that I wasn’t parenting him well enough scared him more than any mistakes I may have made, so with his therapist’s help, I sucked up my fear and kept going. All my life, I pretty well have run headlong into anything that frightened me ––supervising CPE students “correctly,” conducting memorial services at Ground Zero on 9/11 with a brand-new chaplain, riding a motorcycle, touring the five ’Stans whenever COVID and their political situation quiets down.
But tonight, while I was sitting in silence with my zoom contemplative prayer group, my hands took so much of my attention that I could not concentrate on my usual prayer of gratitude. Nearly two years ago I had “trigger finger” surgery on both hands, and the compassionate unhurried care of the weeks of physical therapy were actually rather enjoyable. Tonight, however, I felt quite a bit more than the constant tingling that I was told years ago was peripheral neuropathy. Until tonight, my hands caused me considerably less pain than the same condition in my legs and feet, so I didn’t pay much attention. My hand surgeon is very good, and he is getting clearance from my insurance to look for other causes. My bilateral deep brain stimulation implants do not work very well and left me with disappointing balance problems and an unnerving speech issue.
I could not bear to look at my head or chest for a long time after the first surgeries, and when I did, I felt unredeemably subhuman and ugly. My weekly dinner partner asked how I was one Friday morning when we were both alone in the weaving Guild room. I told him I thought that if someone could just touch my hand or shoulder, perhaps I would feel human once again. He came around to my loom, gestured to his defibrillator scar, and unbuttoned his shirt. I unbuttoned my blouse, and we placed one hand on each other’s scars for a long moment. After that, I breathed once more. I felt as though I could go on, after that.
He has been gone for a year now. I’ve “always” been fairly sanguine about my death. But tonight, I realized that there is a long distance between now and that moment. Ah, there’s the rub. I fear that getting from here to there is not going to be pretty. At Pilgrim Place, suffering in silence is our stock in trade. “Organ recitals” are simply not tolerated at lunchtime, and I’m embarrassed to say that I worked on call in the ER for so many years that now I leave quietly ––or sometimes not so quietly ––when a newbie gets specific with blood and guts descriptions. Sitting there tonight in my rocker, I was frightened. I use a cane in crowds; what if, eventually, I can’t go out at all? I told Tuck one night that I was terrified to tears after I coasted backward through a crowded McDonald’sparking lot because my numb feet couldn’t feel the brake pedal. My car is my independence when Pilgrim Place feels stifling. An outing to the birdseed store in the next town restores my appreciation for community. How will I handle it when I can’t do that anymore. And how fragile is my sense of humor, my love of words and writing? Folks here more or less nicely tolerate or sometimes even enjoy my stories; will I become merely boring? How will I pass the time without needlework or the New Yorker? I knew, more or less, when I should give up piping. Will I know when to give up my psaltery and my place in the Odd Tuesdays? My mother, trained as a concert pianist, played tambourine in her local senior citizens’ band. It’s probably wrong of me, but it seemed so demeaning to her, a gifted musician. And now, here I am, too. Tonight, for the first time, I am afraid of growing old.