On Aging and Mortality
by Charles LaFond, ISR Development
Sometimes I wish I were a deer for the sheer wonder of its speed or a beetle, small, hard to see, and with a shell that protects my soft guts from harm. But most days, I wish I were any animal, blissfully unaware that they will weaken and die one day, living as they do in each present moment.
Like most of us, I suppose, I simply pretend that aging is not happening to me, just to others. I accomplish this self-delusion by keeping the lights off in my bathroom when I shower or shave. Also, it helps to spend all my time with people 30 years older than me so that I am relatively youthful in my 59th year. And, of course, I only choose fat, ill doctors.
When it does occur to me that I am aging, I quite like to pretend that “everything is just fine.”
Not “FINE” like the tempting worldview of a character like “Ruth” in a Louise Penny novel, but rather blissed-out with rose-colored glasses, a Pink Gin, or both.
In this pretend land in which I am blind to changes in my body and mind, I imagine everyone ages gently, gracefully, in a rocking chair. I see, with perfect vision, the masses of adoring family checking on me hourly as they bring me tea and meals on trays. I pretend my muscles are still strong-like-bull, and my walking stability is “baryshnikovian.” Then one day, with a still sharp mind and powerful, taught body, sung to sleep by island owls, I simply die in my sleep during a dream about white light in my soft, clean bed surrounded by everyone I love who, of course, never moved away and who all live in our private family compound.
But that is not how life is, where Island Senior Resources comes in to help. With a broad spectrum of programs and services, we are here for a wide range of aging.
Without the survival tools of many amazing animals, the human being is soft and poison-less but has evolved two superpowers: a brain and connection.
Animals wander, but humans cluster – we support each other. We are, at our best, interwoven like threads on a weaver’s loom. Island Senior Resources is here to help those lucky enough to age gracefully, answering questions and delivering meals. But we are also here for those whose aging takes daily, sometimes hourly, and occasionally heroic courage in this very real and sometimes frightening life.