This is what it’s like to be me. Friends you miss finally call but you don’t turn on your phone. You can’t take any more news. Colon cancer, new lung, internal organs you never heard of, stroke, more internal organs you never heard of. He got through his first surgery fine; we’ll know more after his next surgery. Say what?! The old man was exhausted from all the worry, which he didn’t even know he had, cause of all the praying, which he didn’t even know he was doing. Because he was too busy doing nothing particularly special, just trying to enjoy every damn minute of it.
He had asked this question before. If everybody you care about is in trouble, are you okay? The old man was great. Right now, he was just fine. The young redhead sent the old man a musical clip for no particular reason except maybe he had once mentioned he had once gotten six forty-five rpm records of the same song one teen birthday.
The old man was often just momentarily startled to see artists from his youth still performing. Kenny Rogers didn’t know what condition his condition was in by the end. Paul Anka was wheeled out on a dolly. God bless’em. But some geezers still got it goin’ on. And if you still got it, you still got it.
Just not as much of it. As often. Just a matter of attitude. If you can just stay away from the big white building where they cut you open. That was his secret. That and he kept going. And attitude. And luck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwy5uqemp6c
Then he remembered more news, something the old man wanted to forget but couldn’t stop thinking about. A new friend’s old dog had died. He hadn’t even met the dog. Just the news alone. That sentence. “Last week, my dog died.” That’s a killer right there.
The old man reached out.
Hope this finds you more sprightly, he wrote. Sad news truly. But let’s talk about me.
Myself, I actually am feeling almost ebullient. Think of the pain as my pale passenger. A hitchhiker who won’t get out of the car. If you can handle picking up the dog poop and putting out the recycling and making the bed and vacuuming the rug as zen meditation… If you can enjoy grocery shopping like it’s a grand adventure…If you can appreciate the pale passenger who eventually becomes soothing white noise….
He remembered a phrase he was forced to memorize by Mrs. Westerholm. Remember this from Kipling,
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If I don’t schedule my day around my alcohol consumption, well, I can pretty much do shit whenever I want. Like yesterday.
Knew he was there, ass planted in the shade. Fat guy with the back brace who gets exhausted watching the old man exercise, he asked him, a aha-you’re-no-better-than-the-rest-of-us smirk on his face, haven’t seen you out as much. A question mark at the end.
Is not wanting to talk to people a result of knowing they will say something stupid right away. You can put a question mark after that, too.
The old man managed to open his mailbox, spin gracefully – thinking he might look a little like Jack Reacher – toward back to his house, and say, “Too damn hot. Rode spinbike for ninety minutes while watching Tour de France.” One move, correct accent. Let the bastard mull that.
Never looked up. If you let your neighbors see your eyes, they gotcha. And it was too damn hot.
Plenty of breaks. Don’t move too fast. Look before you turn. Let somebody else pick up the heavy stuff.
Trying to decide whether to go out in the ninety-four degree heat feels more like hundred and four but a wet heat and trim my neighbor’s bush which hangs over my fence or catch up with Elmore Leonard.
Not watching too much of convention. My bullshit meter is just so hairtrigger. Little blind girl singing God Bless AmeriKKKa. Spare me. Red team trots out a black police chief, blue team trots out a white police chief.
But – if single – I would so love to be Sarah Silverman’s FWB, you know, friend with benefits. Probably hurt my back.
Decided to read. “Fire In The Hole.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRzAyx40Bzg