When I was approaching 50 years of age, I had a bad chest cold. At that point, I had not been to a doctor in several years. I was 50 pounds overweight and in terrible physical condition. I felt so bad that I went to a doctor, scary as the thought of that was for me at the time. I had developed a fear of doctors (and medical staff, procedures, facilities) during my stay in Vietnam. When asking about my family history, my new doctor learned that both my father and his father died in their middle 50s of heart attacks. The doctor looked at me quite seriously and told me that history might well repeat itself, given my current condition.
Well, I tried to do better. I improved my diet, started exercising, and started walking every day. I lost those 50 pounds. Unfortunately, since then I have gained weight and lost weight several times. But I rarely strayed completely off the healthy diet I had established for myself, even when I was intermittently gorging on fast food and unhealthy sweets. Today I’m about 25 pounds overweight, mostly due to the stress of the Covid-19 shut down. I’m finding the struggle to stay on my diet next to impossible, but I am trying. (please don’t offer diet advice.)
I say all that … to say this:
Today is my birthday. I am 72 years old.
Given the abuse my body has taken, some of it caused by me and quite a bit of it caused by the traumatic life I’ve lived, I feel as though I must be grateful to still be alive. Had I continued on the path I was on before my 50s, my life would have been over years ago. I would have missed some pretty terrible stuff.
But I would have also missed out on some really nice parts of life that I did not know was coming.
The nicest thing, of course, is my family. My sister and brother-in-law literally saved my life around 10 years ago. Their love and support made me believe my life was still worth living. And then there was the bonus. The niece and nephew I had loved so dearly when they were little, are all grown up with families of their own. I now have two grandnieces and two grandnephews that did not exist 10 years ago, when I bungled a suicide attempt. They are a blessing, almost indescribable, and a joy that makes me feel young again, at least for a little while, and then I have to take a nap.
Thinking back on my life, I began working on a short poem about supper time for the son of a sharecropper. The poem, titled Cornbread, is also here at my blog. If you choose to read it by clicking the link, you will learn a little something about me that, before I wrote this poem, I did not know. That’s one of the great things about being creative; stuff deep in your mind sometimes finds its way to the surface and schools you in a very personal and insightful way.
As I sit here at my computer today writing this, it’s difficult to imagine a pleasant future for me. I have already had and survived two of the diseases caused by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Those diseases are on a long and deadly list of things that tend to manifest themselves late in life with veterans like me. I’m okay right now, as far as I know, anyway. But I don’t have the courage to make any great plans for my future. There are things I want to do, book length writing, being one of them. But every time I pledge some sort of daily process, some terrible thing comes along and strikes me down. And so, without pledging any amount of progress, I will continue to improve my writing, and write when I can. If the result of that turns out to be the three books which I have wanted to complete, then hurray for me. That probably won’t happen, but I have not given up hope. Anyway, it’s something to think about.
There are other things that interest me of course. I have a music creation program called Band in a Box. It’s quite sophisticated and can help a songwriter flesh out arrangements for new songs. Every week I spend a while working with that program. My tinnitus keeps me from using it more than an hour at a time. In the past few years I have developed chord sequences for new songs and numbered them. My most recent chord sequence was called Chord Sequence Number 1108. All these sequences need lyrics and I have written a few. But since I have no way of dealing with long recording sessions, I have no expectation of ever recording another song, unless some miracle happens, and my tinnitus goes away. Not likely, but it’s something to think about.
As you know, if you follow me, I have a strong interest in landscape and wildlife photography. When the weather cools, I hope to get back into that. I’m also interested in upgrading my photography equipment when some new cameras come out. I don’t currently have the financial means to deal with that, but it’s something to think about.
When I was in high school, I took an art class and made an A. One the things that interested me was painting. Several times during my life I have attempted to develop a hobby of painting. But something always interrupted the process and I put it aside. Now, it’s possible to use a computer to paint, a lot less messy, a lot less trouble. I actually own a paint program but have never used it once. The idea I had was to use my photographs as inspiration. I cannot say whether I will ever actually do that, but it’s something to think about.
That last sentence is very telling. “Something to think about” is such an important part of my life. There are so many things that interest me, but for one reason or another, are not actual part of my physical life. That may sound a little pitiful, I guess. But if you have a brain that likes to think, a psyche with some heavy baggage, and a body that is past its prime, then “something to think about” can be quite important to you.
And so I say this: whatever the future holds for me, I will accept and deal with it. Of course, I hope for good health and happiness, sprinkled with moments of joy. When I have the health and the energy, I will do those things which I enjoy. When that creative urge hits me, I will take advantage of it, as best I can. Throughout whatever years I have left to me, and as my health declines in those dwindling days, I pray that the least I will have … will be something to think about.