At the Washout

I was talking to a college student yesterday, you know, one of those people for whom the world looms ahead on a grand staircase of endless possibilities. Ever onward and upward. Ah, youth! Where you never feel bad, and you can eat anything you want without suffering any consequences. In fact, you can do just about anything you want without faltering or becoming faint of heart. Youth, for whom the little bodily afflictions of time’s passing are virtually unknown. How we forget.

Well, there was the usual beginning of a conversation: “How are you?”

“Fair,” I reply.

“Not feeling that well. I don’t know. Can’t figure out what it is. Maybe it’s just a symptom of my age. Who knows. At this stage in life, one never knows for sure how one is going to feel from day to day.”

“Yeah,” comes the clueless and indifferent reply.

How would he know?

How would anyone so young know what it is like to realize with a jolt one day that the better part of your life is past? How shocking!

I think it is true that we who are on the final leg of the journey, whether we think we are or not, realize, in one of those increasingly numerous little ephiphanies that come to us, that the dawns and sunsets are not guaranteed to glow and fade on stunningly gorgeous rose, orange, red and pink horizons forever. There will be a finite number of springs and falls, summers and winters left to us to enjoy. Gardens will bloom in spring, but the slight ache of a distant and final farewell to the glories of that season will register with heavy finality in our hearts. We look in the mirror each morning and nothing has changed, but everything has.

These types of musings are nothing new to me. I have been too introspecitve for too long, and hardly knew my own youth before it was gone. And I have always been one who was only too aware of the fragility of his own mortality. Every once in a while I will record my thoughts on this subject, as I did in a journal entry written three years ago in the fall of 1998 when I was 47. I find that to look at the totality of our lives, we have to recall from time to time what it was like to have been young once, to have lived as if there was no end to the procession of days and nights that were filled to the brim with life and living.

I sometimes notice the passage of time in everyone I see and talk to . And occasionally, it is all there in front of me, unavoidable, inescapable.

Here is what I wrote in that not so long ago fall of 1998:

While looking out my window to see if the mail truck had arrived yesterday, I watched in momentary fascination, and with a bit of morbid introspection, an elderly resident of the apartment complex make his way to the mailbox with the aid of an aluminum walker. Step by step he neared his destination. I studied the slow, and perhaps even painful, movements he made for a few minutes, unable to quickly take away my gaze. Agonizingly slow. “I hope I don’t get like that,” I said to myself. I don’t want to get old.” No one does unless he’s just plain tired of living and wants to exit this earthly existence. But the old man with the walker made me only too aware of time’s passage, of long-lost youth, and also of all the infirmities that can come with age. I admire people who doggedly carry on, up to a point. I just don’t want to be an old, frail, bent-over man. I can’t imagine myself as one.

A few hours later I was at Folly Beach, walking down a stretch of low-tide beach, with a cool wind in my face. Cold enough to be bracing and fresh, as early autumn beach days often are here. Large swells rolled toward shore, due probably to the winds of tropical system Mitch, out over the Atlantic past Florida after its devastating sweep through Central America as a hurricane and tropical storm earlier in the week. I stopped for a few minutes at the Washout where the waves are generally biggest and where surfers have gathered for decades. There the waves rose up 6-10 feet and crashed ashore in mighty bursts of energy. The youthful surfers in their wetsuits were charging down quickly-forming chutes and having a great surfing day. The waves are seldom this high. Quick, agile and miniature microcosms of the potent energy in the waves, they played those surfboards like fine instruments, as their well-tuned movements prolonged the ride on the surf.

The slow steps of the old man, aging personified, contrasted with the lightning-quick moves of young surfers, full of life and pent-up energy. I think if people could be young again, this is what they’d want most — the healthy, limber graceful movements of energized youth, living forever in the sun and surf.

Freewind

I turned to my husband the other day and said “It feels so odd when you know you have come so much farther than you have left to go.” He frowned at me and said “Don’t be so pessimistic, A. Life is what you make of it.” I thought to myself “Yeah, you can say that as you are only 41 and I will soon be 54!” But he is right, my friend, the glory is in the journey! You have journied well!

Shi

February 6, 2002

I’ve come to the point in my life where I’m looking back as much as looking forward, and have to keep reminding myself to remain in the present.

Edelweis

I am a rather positive thinking person and feel much better now than years ago! But when pondering on progress of life and aging we cannot expect to prevent negative feelings now and then. I have always been very aware of the limits of life. And these feelings and thoughts overwhelm me sometimes. I admit that thinking of old age and of watching a last sunset darken the firmament is a little scary

Fear to die? Yes maybe. But if we didn’t “love” so much we wouldn’t suffer so much. We could be thankfull instead maybe because it proves the deep meaning of our life with each other and the bond we have with creation. In any man who dies there dies with him, his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die but worlds die in them. Take care…and thanks for these profound words dear friend!

College0204

I think about aging sometimes, even though for me ten years is infinity. I get worried, but then I realize that old people aren’t necessarily depressed about their age… the good thing about time is that it’s a constant. You’re always in the present. That old man, he’s experiencing each moment just like you are or I are, because his life is one continuous flow, from my age to yours to his.

Does your name have anything to do with the small town on Lake Ontario in NY of the same name? I went to school there, beautiful beautiful views. Cheers. XO

“energized youth, living forever in the sun and surf.” I love that, and wish it was the way I’d actually spent my youth! I did spend time at the beach, but was always one of the lobster-red sunburned girls in big bathing suits with skirts on them. Jeez.

*tears* I will never forget the day when my youngest son, having been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, looked at me and said, “Does this mean I can’t play basketball anymore?” And I looked up to heaven and knew without any doubt that God does exist, and He created denial as one of the most precious gifts to mankind. Beautiful entry! Love,

It’s strange that you posted this. A couple of days ago I was in the grocery store line, and ahead of me was this very old woman I had never seen before. She completely captivated me with her old hat perched on her head and her scruffy appearance and actions. For some reason, the thought came into my mind that I want to be EXACTLY like her in 30 years, and that I would have fun being like her.

It erased any sadness I sometimes feel about getting older. It was a very profound moment for me and just came out of the blue.

Eriu

February 7, 2002

I was actually older when I was younger. Now I am truly enjoying my life rather than in my teens and 20s when I was worrying and planning my future. Of course, I had known death frequently by then, with relatives far and near and friends….just today I thought of one who died when we were 16. Mortality has always been present. But so has life, which I’ve just begun to know.

And you’re not old yet. Stop trying to be old. We never have to grow old…..even as we age. There is a difference. Some of the youngest people I knew were in their 70s, and they taught me not to fear “old age”.

It’s the natural progression of life isn’t it? I have watched my mother take care of my grandmothers, now I am taking care of my mother and I will be next for poor Jhawk. Suddenly life seems to be speeding ahead out of control.

GeekPoet

February 10, 2002

you know, i could have sworn i left you a note on this a week ago. i swear i sat at work, i remember the words. i hope you weren’t offended and deleted it. i won’t repeat it just in case, but i meant nothing offensive, and in fact meant the opposite: to point out how i view you differently than you portray yourself at times. lemme know how you are. and take care.

It’s true, youth often confers a sense of invincibility (and a certain bemusement, or annoyance, at that particular class of elder who has nothing that interests him or her more than their series of physical ailments. That’s what I hope not to become). But I’ve been sick enough lately to avoid it utterly. And, at 50, I’d hardly say you are necessarily on death’s door. …

… I hope and expect that you may find as many sunsets ahead as you have behind. Thank you for your kind words; I’m surprised my earlier entries induced them, I’m not too proud of what I wrote so long ago. I’ve been here writing for over two years – it’s an impressive time span.