Updating this week: Still here!

Stay tuned.  I'm two years older, and there's lots more to say.

Life Changes

My life has become a series of things I cannot access. Whether it is a jar of pickles, dirty milk bottles, unopened doors or things up high, I find myself stretching things I didn't know would stretch, but to no avail.

I seem to need help for everything, even just to think things through. I have developed a default ADD status. How much easier to just go watch the news or take a nap than follow through with what I had planned today.

Sometimes I find easy things to do, things I know I can do: like unload the dishwasher, or clean the floor. Occasionally I even clean the bathtub. But it's a new me I haven't quite yet accessed and that's the worst of all.

Denial - a great name for a new body lotion

We all know the standard stages of grief:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
   

I didn't know aging would be like that.

During the lead-up to one of my many naps last week it occurred to me that this is exactly what I've been going through. Each stage has been so obvious. (I must tell you that I am still in Stage 4.)

The denial stage for us baby boomers has kept the cosmetics industry in business. Think of the names of the products: Regenerist, Lifting Creme, New Skin, Wrinkle Resist, Hydrate, Age Defying... and the descriptions are even more enticing. For me, as previously discussed, it was Botox.

The anger about aging is expressed any number of ways, most frequently in the common complaints about "young folks today." All those inefficient employees in the service sector, the hairdos, the nose rings, whatever the current generation is up to. "Well, back in my day..." that sort of thing.

And bargaining. I just had an experience with that one, and it probably helped me to understand this process more than the others.

I decided I could open a business. Economic times being what they are, I thought I could go back to work for another five years or so, and did a great deal of research on the kind of thing that interests me. I looked at franchises, read books, subscribed to trade magazines, contacted all the right people. But thanks to Hurricane Ike, I had to take a time out and my momentum was stymied. And coming out of that experience, I looked around and f0und the country in a major economic downturn that screams at me to save my money. I can see I really don't have the energy to get up day after 16-hour day, as I know a new business demands. I believe now I was hoping to have the business regenerate the old me, if Botox didn't.

The depression stage has to be the worst. This is the one just prior to acceptance, when you just can't quite get there, but you know it's almost over. Gone are the days of believing that anything is possible, and the future stretched long, long years ahead. No, this is it. There is still the unknown of what lies ahead but it's hard to put a positive spin on any of that. I think it's why we're so entranced with our grandchildren.

I wonder what acceptance feels like. I still fight it, because when I think of acceptance I think of the hopeless faces in the nursing home I visited so often before my mother died, and I think of her. I remember how she fought to have her way in little things precisely because she was so powerless in the big things.

This is why we fight aging, we fight being dragged off the stage before we're done. Acceptance must be believing you're done. I can't yet imagine it except in the most dreadful way.

Backaches and Botox

When I picked up my youngest granddaughter last month, I forgot that I'm not supposed to lift anything (or anyone) over 20 pounds. And I think the main reason that slipped my mind was because the week prior I had finally agreed to be Botox'd! That alone makes one feel 35 again!

Well, I wouldn't have just agreed to Botox from just anybody, but my personal physician has gone into this little side business, realizing that she had enough "mature" patients to support the idea. And, she further explained, that people who feel better about how they look don't get sick as often. But somehow that doesn't apply, I guess, to backaches. So now I'm spending three days a week in physical therapy.

The upside to that, is maybe I'll get stronger, take up water aerobics, tighten up all these muscles that didn't get Botox'd, and then maybe I really will be the same as 35.

When my mother died last fall I could easily see all the things she missed in her life, all the plans she made that she never got to fulfill, and each time I buy a new piece of clothing I think of her and how she loved a new outfit. I remember she tried to put on makeup, but her face, so wrinkled, didn't even leave much room for eye shadow or mascara. Her lips (like mine) were thin, and lipstick didn't matter much. And she suffered with debilitating back pain for most of the last 20 years. So I'm working on all this.

Perhaps in another ten or twenty years I will find myself in a wheelchair, or bedridden as my body succumbs to high mileage, but for now I have a little more spring in my step and all my frowns removed.

I'll just remember to get down on the floor to hug my granddaughters.