It appears that the most difficult thing, and perhaps of the most necessary, is to let be. One day you find yourself as old as your parents were when you became an adult and you do not recognize yourself. The books that once thrilled you into the long mazes of new thoughts are like looking at a pencil sketch after once living something fully. Joy comes, but there isn’t enough oxygen to spur the spark to flame. You observe days moving slowly but years passing unobserved. I wake late in December of my fifty-fifth year; forty four seems so short a time ago, still part of the self that I now am, very much still working in my veins and steps, and I realize that sixty six will be on me like a wild hurricane and then…
I wake late in December, my muscles feel elastic and my sleep was sound. My thoughts extend as root tendrils, long and knowing in so many directions. I am taken aback by how much I’ve accomplished and how little. I am uncaring for how most others see me, but wonder nonetheless. I wonder if I am becoming old; I wonder if anything else is to come another than the obvious – the passing of friends and family, a slow recess into obscurity, a quieting of the impact one has. Are there more adventures? Can I still learn something new or create something novel or become another person, again? Will I make or be the difference?
I walk in the dark like Dickens, letting Melancholy grow unchecked; he is a beautiful, wicked demon, the oldest within me, born too far back for me to remember. A constant companion who has never done me any good and yet whom I adore and nurture. I walk in the dark like Dickens and Melancholy grows – it feels good, like sticking your finger against a bruise or just letting the tears roll and your throat unslack and cry out loud. It’s hardly the healthiest thing I do, but it does feel the best.
My mother passed away just under two months ago and the mourning has been slow and laborious. She doesn’t seem to be anywhere near me – I don’t dream of her, don’t have moments of loss or pangs of sadness. I miss her, but it seems she’s been gone for so long; dementia having taken her away, nefariously, piece by piece over time. I’m left with memories of her mental and emotional struggles in hospital – wondering where she was, swimming to the surface momentarily to tell us she felt fine and then slipping into feverish nightmare hallucinations. She became angry and then distant, as if looking at us down a long tunnel. We sat around her bed for hours and then days; two weeks on and she slowly left us, harshly breathing and barely alive. For weeks afterwards I woke at 2:30am, a shadow of that night momentarily relived and then gone. I was never afraid; I almost wish I had been, at least then I would have assumed that her chill breeze had passed through. My friend Mike, who lost his wife suddenly, and who can always seem to conjure the words, said of his beloved: I long for your ghost to haunt me.
I wake late in December and realize again — for revelations take far longer for most of us than for Scrooge, that covetous old sinner, to sink in — that there are things lost to me. Seven years ago – or was it eight now? — I told myself that I would need to take a break from running until Thanksgiving to recover from an injury. Then it was March. Perhaps six months would do it. And then a year. And now? Now I negotiate distances of walking with rounds of rest, compression, ice, and (blind?) hope that things will heal.
I ride the bicycle to restore joy; through snow and rain, in the basement, in heat and cold, on this rig and now this one and then that one. I set goals, look to mini adventures, do rides that seem peculiar to others, wax and fill the years with poetics. It is my jazz and metal both. It is my spirituality; it is my vitality.
And yet.
I wake in late December of my fifty-fifth year and it is raining like we are on a boat in the North Atlantic, the waves of the world crashing against our windows like the gods are tossing buckets on us, trying to drown us under. It’s way too warm and I leash up the dog before sunrise and go for another walk. The fog is thick. The kids call this a main character moment; I turn up the soundtrack on my headphones. I know that the obstacle is the way. Later I’ll ride my bike in the basement under the lights of the Christmas tree and think about Charles Dickens, listen to the Beastie Boys and dream up plans for the summer that may or may not transpire, but that’s how we do this human dance. As if.