What if Tomorrow Never Comes- the Geriatric Version

I’m beginning to wonder if I’m experiencing mild depression brought on by my recent fall and hospitalization. It was the first time I actually thought that I could die. In the back of my mind I’ve been living in the happy illusion that I wouldn’t/couldn’t die a minute before I am damn good and ready and I have/had things that needed doing first before I'm a candidate for that club. Yeah, I know I need to dust the glitter off my shoes, rip the rainbow ribbons out of my hair and leave my white unicorn in the barn because The Fall shattered that illusion and left me feeling disjointed. When it comes to thinking about my own demise I've spent my entire life living Scarlett O'Hara's infamous motto: "I'll think about tomorrow. I can stand it then. After all tomorrow is another day." 

But what if tomorrow never comes.... hey, that would make a great title for this post…except for the fact that I just googled the phrase and it came up with 270,000 links. Granted I’ll bet most of them are to Garth Brooks' schmaltzy love song with lyrics like, "If tomorrow never comes will she know how much I loved her?" But some of those links led to an old proverb about procrastination and google defines the phrase this way: “A goal or action which is postponed until a future day is often never accomplished...”

I grew up in a family that didn’t say the “L” word often. I don’t even remember a specific occasion when one of my my parents said it to me or to each other. Writing it in a greeting card came easier and we all did it. Yesterday on a visit I told my brother he needs to say it to his kids, that they need to hear it. I’m not sure if that’s true or if he’ll remember to do it but at the time he agreed that growing up we didn’t hear it as often as kids should. I’ve said it to my nieces and nephew in recent weeks, too. So I can check that off my list of Things I Shouldn’t Postpone. My husband and I didn’t say it often either but I’m quite sentimental over the fact that the very last thing I said to Don was “I love you” and his very last words on earth were,  “Love you.” 

Looking for memes or quotes to go with this post brought me one that made me laugh---the Woody Allen one at the top. Another one agitated me. It shows a young woman from the back in high heel shoes walking down the center of a snow covered, country road---no other signs of life around---and in bold black letters it said, “The life in front of you is far more important that the life behind you.” My first thought was, How many people over 80 feel that way? and my second thought was, That woman is going to die of hypothermia! I live in Michigan. Women don’t walk around in high heels in snow regardless of how often the Hallmark Christmas movies make it look normal.

Do you think God puts things in your path when you need them---something I often hear where I’m living. Or do you believe those things are always there but when you need them they register on you conscience mind? I believe the latter and that happened to me when I connected with a few lines in a book club choice. I shared it in a recent post but I’ll repeat it here. Fannie Flagg wrote the following: “Thanks to Dr. Sharpio she had learned that being a successful person is not necessarily defined by what you have achieved, but by what you have overcome.” When I read the book a couple of years ago that passage went right by me, but not this time. I’ve read and reread it a dozen times trying to decide which side I fall on. Have I achieved anything worthy of the 'success label' or did I overcome stuff that makes me a successful person? 

Quite by serendipity I had conversation a few days ago with another woman here and I shared that quote with her after she said she didn’t write a bio for the Women’s Day Tea. She said she’s not as accomplished as most of the women living here, not in the same class. (Sounds like an echo of what I wrote in a post recently, doesn’t it.) “Too blue collar to fit in is how I often feel!” I exclaimed. “Exactly,” she replied, “I’ve never had money to travel all over the world. I didn’t go to college or have time to join clubs and foundations. I had an unhappy first marriage and had to work to feed and raise my kids by myself.” I never would have guessed we both have what I’m nicknaming the Blue Collar Syndrome. I didn’t have kids to feed or an unhappy marriage but I sure could identify with her feeling inferior because she didn’t go to college. I felt that way for 25 years before I went back to finish up the degree I started after high school. Walking across that stage to get my diploma rates in the top three happiest days of my life.

At the risk of throwing negative thoughts out into the universe. I’d like to know exactly what others in their "twilight years" think is more important in their futures than stuff that's happened in our pasts. I can’t believe my health will improve or I’ll start traveling or that friends and family won’t start dropping like confetti thrown in the air. The fun activities here I do somethings feels like I’m just marking time until I die.

Like I said at the beginning, I think I’m experiencing a mild depression which is not something I've experienced much in my life. I’d better figure it out soon because I have the Medicare, annual wellness test in mid April and we all know there are questions on it about our mental health. Will I tell the truth about my ambiguous feelings or will I lie? Without missing a beat I'll answer my own question using my best Mary Sunshine voice and say, I'll think about it tomorrow. I can stand it then. After all tomorrow is another day. ©

 

Pandemic Routines, Depression and Disappointment

This post is brought to you by people watching myself. It's all I've got, no laughs included.

I’m disappointed in myself and I don’t know how to turn things around. I am wallowing in pandemic inspired depression and I’m reminded of that the minute I wake up in the morning and my feet hit the floor. Another day of sameness to look forward to is the first thought that pops into my head, another day of being ashamed of how much time I’m wasting when I could be using it more productively. Instead, I spend too much of my awake time burying my nose in the refrigerator or trash books or wishing I could have my pre-pandemic schedule back. I’m such a creature of habit that I miss routines like going to recycling or seeing my gal pals twice a month or reading labels in the grocery store. Recycling opened up again last week so there’s that to look forward to, but my gal pals getting together again and leisurely trips to the grocery store are collateral damage of Covid-19. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Around 8:00 AM I shuffle into the kitchen, put my Starbucks Sweet Morning Blend coffee grounds in my maker and while I wait for it to perk I jump on the computer. (Not literally jumping up and down on my keyboard, but you knew that didn't you.) Once my coffee is ready I’m again reminded that we’re in pandemic mode because I haven’t been able to buy my specialty spray foam to top off my coffee since the shortages started in the grocery stores. The dog doesn’t care, Levi sleeps in until around 10 AM and speaking of grocery store shortages, I live in fear that I won’t be able to buy his Milk-Bones Trail Mix or Milk-Bone Brushing Chews. I might be able to understand disruptions in our food distribution chain but Levi will make my life utterly miserable at 10:15, 3:00 and at bedtime if he doesn’t get what he demands. He doesn’t suffer in silence. He’ll bark his demands until I get my head out of the clouds and make my way to the antique canister set where I keep his loot. Yesterday I reminded him that he’d better watch out. If meat prices keep going up, he’ll be in danger of ending up on someone’s crock pot. 

By 10:30 I’ve had my breakfast and I’m reminded again that we’re in a pandemic by the orange juice I’ve add to my mornings. It’s silly to think it can help build my immune system up to fight getting the virus but don’t tell me that. I want to believe I’m in control of something besides picking the lint out of my belly button. Also by 10:30 I’ve checked on my e-Bay sales, checked my blog for new comments or new posts from my blogger friends plus I've read my email and Facebook page. Facebook is one giant billboard flashing reminders that we’re in a pandemic. And just so you’ll know, I’ve quit watching the morning news shows or TV in the mornings for that matter, which in itself is a huge reminder that the pandemic has changed my routine. 

Between 11:00 and 12:00 I force myself to get dressed and I do mean 'force' as I'd happily stay in my bathrobe all day. But if you're taking my mental health temperature I should add that I've actually only done it 3-4 times since the pandemic lock down started in mid-March. My afternoons are spent researching the collectibles I’m selling, photographing them and writing up listings plus getting them ready to ship so they can be weighed before uploading the listings to e-Bay. I could do this all faster if I wasn't sneak-reading chapters in trash books in between my downsizing work. If I had any sense at all I’d get myself outside after getting dressed to walk the dog around the neighborhood. I have my excuses and even I don’t want to hear them---hear about all the new dogs in the neighborhood that makes it harder to walk Levi and I don’t want to hear about how strange it is to pass by so many other walkers as we try to avoid getting close to one another. With the exception of the inspirational sidewalk chalk art it’s not friendly “out there” anymore and I half expect to see drawings of a hands giving walkers the middle finger showing up because foot traffic has gotten fierce and frequent.

In the pre-pandemic days I used to eat lunch out around 2:00 and several times I week I’d do that out of the house and run a couple of errands while I’m out and about. I miss listening to my Sirius XM radio in the car far more than I would have guessed. Now, the pandemic has me considering if I should cancel it because I’ve only driven my car a whole 12 miles in the past 10 weeks and I don't see that changing any time soon. I also miss people watching at the Guy-Land Cafeteria where I used to sit writing blog posts out long-hand. I miss the monthly get-togethers they had at the continuum care campus where I’ve been planning to move. I miss that dream---the dream of me and Levi wandering the trail around the lake on their campus with a camera in hand, then going back to my unit where my time would be spent in guilt-free painting, writing and reading. Now, 'guilt' seems to be my middle name.

Since the pandemic hit the U.S.A. I’ve been eating a combined lunch/dinner around 6:00/7:00, while mindlessly sitting in front of the computer again or playing my two daily required ‘brain-games’ on my Kindle. Early evening is also when I go to Amazon Unlimited to return a book and find another book to read between 11 PM and 2:30 AM. Even reading straight-forward genre books that don’t require any thinking doesn’t cause me to fall asleep without the use of a sleeping pill and even then they sometimes don’t work. The minute my light goes out, I’m back in pandemic worry mode. And I’ll end this post where I started by saying, I’m so disappointed in myself and I don’t know how to turn things around. ©

Time to Pay the PIper

I’ve always known that I’ve lived a charmed life. That’s not to say I haven’t had my share of heartaches, obstacles and challenges to overcome in my almost eight years on this planet. By charmed I mean grew up in a post-war era that mostly spoiled and nurtured their baby boomer kids and with parents who gave my brother and me plenty of love to balance off the discipline, who taught us the value of working hard and keeping a high standard of ethics, who gave us a safe place to live and all the bells and whistles their own childhood’s lacked. 

By charmed I mean that I've been lucky enough to see positive changes in society over my lifetime for example when the Civil Rights Movement came along. Not overnight and not without a lot of growing pains that our world is still dealing with all these years later, but measurable changes in the level of racism none the less. Sure, some people are still finding it hard to leave blind hate behind, to treat others based on their character and not the color of their skin but what was once the norm is no longer true in younger generations. My dad spent the first 10-12 years of his life in Southern Illinois and had seen firsthand the hanging of a black man in the woods behind his house. He saw a neighbor laid out in his coffin, his family proudly having him dressed in his Klan robe and hood. One of my dad’s earliest childhood memories was of a black man being chastised for not moving off the sidewalk fast enough to let my dad pass by. Ya, my life was charmed by the fact that I never experienced blind hate and white privilege being so openly practiced and taught. One generation at at time, we are building a better world even though it will probably take yet another generation or two before we reach true equality.

By charmed I mean that by the time I became a young adult the new wave of the Feminist Movement opened doors that were closed to past generations of woman, a movement that told me I didn’t have to settle for the first man who came along and told other women they didn't have to suffer spousal abuse as something written in between the lines of their wedding vows, a movement that let me indulge myself into believing I could be anything I wanted to be. Just the idea of Equal Rights and opportunities for women let me spend my life trying on ideas for what I want to be ‘when I grow up’ like some women try on and buy new shoes. The shoes they wear for a season or a special reason then discard in the back of the closet. In my head I could have made a living as a marble sculptor, a furniture maker, a writer, a tailor, an architect, a Disney artist, a portrait artist, a photographer, a teddy bear maker, a poet and a print maker. In reality, I spent my work life being a floral designer in the bridal industry, a snowplower and a parking lot maintenance person who could put down yellow line stripes with the best of them. As the song says, life happens when you’re making other plans. But it's been a good life living with my illusions and zest for embracing whatever caught my fancy.

By charmed I mean my life until this year was in my hands to control and I haven't had any life experience to suffer through that millions of others haven’t also done and overcome---the loss of both parents, the loss of a spouse---and even now the lost opportunities and interrupted dreams are shared by people world-wide as we wait out the pandemic. Somehow, though, the rose-colored glasses I’ve used all of my life are out of focus, those glasses that allowed me to separate the learning experience from the pain and leave the latter behind as I moved on to the next shiny object, the next challenge. Try as I might I don’t think I’ll move past the world pandemic without paying the piper for my charmed life. I’ve had nearly eight decades of living under rainbows and counting unicorns, of naively believing I controlled my own destiny. Now I have sense of dread hanging over me. Instead of fight or flight I'm frozen in place and I feel like I’m stuck in the Beatles song, Help! ©

 “When I was younger, so much younger than today

I never needed anybody's help in any way

But now these days are gone, I'm not so self-assured

Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

“Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

And I do appreciate you being 'round

Help me get my feet back on the ground

Won't you please, please help me, help me, help me?

"And now my life has changed in oh so many ways

My independence seems to vanish in the haze

But every now and then I feel so insecure

I know that I just need you like I've never done before”

Help, I need somebody! Help!