The 6 P’S

An old friend used to say “Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.” And so, as we are all going to get older, and then, finally, old, we should really start preparing for our best older age now. If you’d like a preview into what that elder world could look like, just have an injury. It doesn’t have to be a big one-as was the case with me-but it can reveal a surprising upside to aging and provide a unique formula for living a fuller existence, both now and later on.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I somehow threw my back out. Like into the next room out. I was afraid to even sneeze after it happened, I was in so much pain. I tried to retrace my steps and remember the exact moment when my body betrayed me. It didn’t happen during a golf game, or a 5 mile walk, or even when I “Marie Kondoed” my entire cottage one rainy weekend and heaved bag after bag of unnecessary belongings out the door and into the trash.  All I know is that Saturday night I was dancing the Marengi and Sunday morning I could barely get out of bed. 

“Most people never know how they hurt themselves,” a former nurse friend of mine told me. 

Great. If I don’t know how it happened, how can I prevent it from happening again? I decided that the best temporary course of action to accommodate my new found physical incapacitation was to do less of everything and when forced to do something, to do it more carefully. Which is exactly what happens, I think, when you’re getting on in years. As I needed assistance in order to put one foot in front of the other, I located my late Father’s walking cane which garnered interesting, but similar remarks.

“You look a hundred years old,” 

one of my siblings exclaimed when he saw me. 

An unkind but accurate observation, I suppose. One echoed by my 92 year old mother when I ambled past her one day. 

 “I don’t like to see you like this,” she grimaced. 

That makes two of us, Mom.

After commandeering the cane, I took stock of what I could no longer do, including  bending, driving and exercising.  I found it necessary to cull from my life many of the things that I thought made it interesting – or so I thought.  I canceled golf, book club, and restaurant dinners. The spasms were worse when I sat down so only once did I stand at a high top table to eat but felt uncomfortably like the tallest girl in the room.  I even had to forgo travel, specifically, a family trip to Martha’s Vineyard, as the thought of bumping along on a ferry through the open ocean seemed insurmountable in my condition. But as I cleared the decks of all my plans and obligations there was a certain peace that overcame me. Saying NO to raging activity was actually quite freeing. 

And I felt none of the guilt normally associated with disappointing others by canceling their events because, honestly, I was genuinely incapable of attending them. Nor was there any FOMO (fear of missing out) for me. An injury had abruptly changed my life and suddenly, like when a catastrophic snow storm cancels every flight in the country, and you simply cannot attend that cousin’s wedding, office meeting or court hearing, you find luxurious justification in a pared down existence. All responsibility was relieved. It was sort of like divine intervention. Saying NO-due to injury or not- is something we sometimes forget is within our power. Just because we can doesn’t necessarily mean we should. My Mom says NO all the time and she seems quite content. It’s the gift of older age. Doing what you can, but only if you want to. What a concept. 

There were other simple but nonetheless delightful discoveries that followed my injury.  I had to move to the other side of the bed to find a free power outlet to accommodate my newly purchased heating pad. The view from there was brand new and, surprisingly, quite marvelous.  I tried yoga and enormously enjoyed it. Not the fancy kind with unpronounceable postures and suffocatingly hot rooms, but the beginner’s level format where you stretch your body beyond its current limitations to help you relax and accident-proof yourself. In the morning I shuffled outside to the deck with my freshly brewed cup of coffee right after sunrise (those pain meds only let you sleep for so long) and reveled in what the English call the “dawn chorus.” Birds, breezes and nature waking up. I had a friend who happened to be visiting and she refused to let me clean up after breakfast. Thrilling, as I hate loading and unloading a dishwasher-mostly unloading it, to be fair, but she was keen to help me. It was almost like having staff. 

Another friend promised swift delivery of medicinal offerings ( Chardonnay ) for pain relief, in exchange for a pot pie dinner which was conveniently already in the freezer. Defrost and done. She then asked if I needed anything else. Well…..as you asked. I had a huge hole in my garden walkway left by hungry bunnies who had decimated so many of my other plantings and had made me the horticultural laughing stock of my neighborhood, so I told her that,

“I would love a plant.”

“What color?” she immediately asked.

Wow. This is the kind of girl you need in a crisis. Or, when you’re old. Or both.

Old folks ask for stuff all the time. Groceries. Medications. A little visit. I immersed myself with gusto in what started to look like my mother’s relaxed world. As lying prone on either ice or heat was the least painful position for me to be in, I took to the couch and hungrily read two books – simultaneously. Luxury. I also became hugely intimate with the vast offerings of AMAZON. Not ordering merely what I wanted, but rather buying those boring but hugely necessary items often ignored until, that is, you run out of them. Like coffee pods. Toilet paper. And to follow a theme here, Drano (the toilet unclogging fluid).

It took about six weeks and physical therapy to be my old self again. But I had also changed a bit. As one who likes to be busy and active I shuddered at the thought that getting older meant slowing down. But, surprisingly, this hiatus from frenetic activity showed me that slowing down and living more thoughtfully, need not ever be dull.