Slip Sliding Away?

God only knows, God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable to the mortal man
We’re workin’ our jobs, Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away
Paul Simon – From the Song “Slip Sliding Away”

“Of course I have heart problems, it’s an old heart.”
Pearl E. Soderholm (Jan’s Mom) 2021 at age 96

“Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever.”
Lee Marvin in the movie “Monte Walsh”

“Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”
Max Ehrmann – From his Poem “Desideratta”

Many of you know that Janice and I have moved to a new house and sold our old house. This whole process, which started in late May mostly destroyed our summer. Packing and moving from a home we have lived in for thirty years was much more work and angst than we ever anticipated. For some reason, we thought it would be easier to order a “pod” for the boxes and storage tubs and hire a mover for the furniture and whatever else was left. We could pack and load boxes at our own pace and then they would come and pick up the pod, store it and deliver it to our new home where we could reverse the process. When I write this it DOES sound like a good approach. Of course, things rarely work out the way we plan. We filled our sixteen-foot pod and it became clear we would need a second. We found a home and bought it. Once you make that decision it quickly becomes evident that you are going to own two houses until you can get your existing house sold. So, the “at our own pace” thing kind of went out the window. And selling your house involves preparation – cleaning, decluttering, making minor (or in our case, pretty major) repairs etc.etc. All of those tasks immediately became urgent.

We made the decision to take out a small mortgage on the new home. I won’t bore you with the reasoning on that but let me tell you, we regretted it so often. If you haven’t applied for a home loan lately, you are in for an unpleasant surprise. That process took seven weeks, and it involved a level of detail submittals required that was SOOOO extensive. Thanks to our kids and grandkids, the move was completed. Thanks to a patient and helpful contact at the bank, the mortgage is complete. We ultimately found a buyer and executed a purchase agreement six weeks out. Preparing for and reaching the final closing was yet another excruciating process. We were still supplying documentation to the buyer’s lender twenty-four hours before the closing. Amazingly it all came to a successful conclusion. In case you couldn’t tell, we are exhausted, physically and emotionally. And the process even interfered with my blogging, thus the long time lapse since my last post. As I whine about all of this to people our age who have been through it, they all nod their heads knowingly. I ask myself – “Why did you think it would be any different for you?”

I have bored you before with a partial list of my medical adventures. I’m not going to repeat that, but would only note that I had my annual pacemaker check up a couple of weeks ago. My pacemaker is doing fine, in fact it’s doing so well that it decided to pace my heart a lot more than it used to!! I don’t think that news is overly alarming. After all, I’m seventy-three and as I often say, I have a lot of miles on me. I’m kind of like a 2003 Chevy Impala that has received regular maintenance, but still, it has 267,000 miles on it!! On some level aging makes perfect sense. You can’t hold back time. Time marches on. Blah, blah, blah. But on some other level this is so surprising to me and again I ask myself, – “Why did you think YOUR heart and its pacemaker would be different?” After all, as Grandma said, it’s an old heart!!

When jolted by some news that makes me REALLY confront growing old and my own mortality, a part of me says “Well that makes sense, that is what should be expected.” And then there is this other part of me that says “What the heck?!? I know that these things happen to other people, but I didn’t really think they would happen to ME!” As time passes it strikes me more and more that I am just like everyone else for most things in my life. We work our jobs, fret about buying a house, fret about the mortgage we take out when we buy it, raise our kids, fret about how they are doing, watch our kids get ready to move into the world, fret about how we will ever pay for their college, watch them stand on their own two feet and then begin to fret about our retirement and so on and so on. I realize that everybody is different and that no two life experiences are the same. But there are many similarities. In the heat of the battle every milestone seems so huge and when we get past them, we begin work on the next one. You know, we are gliding down the highway of life. Well maybe more like hurtling sometimes and crawling other times but so often we really don’t perceive that all of these road markers actually ARE our life. My Pop used to say to me when I told him about all of the great things I was planning to do in my life, “Take your time, don’t wish your life away”.

Are you depressed yet? Amazingly I am NOT. Mostly I am kind of okay with how things are going. I am trying to remember that I can’t do the things I did when I was a kid. Well okay, I can’t do the things I did when I was middle aged. Actually, I can’t do the things I did last month!!!! I know that we need to stay physically active, but I have found that my back aches a lot less if I don’t lift a lot of heavy boxes. So, I have consciously cut back on that. We don’t plan to move for a while. And when there is heavy physical work to be done, I get some help from the kids or hire someone to do it. And I know we need to be financially prudent, but I have grown to be okay with a balance sheet that isn’t growing every year. I love to run, but I have found that my back doesn’t hurt nearly as much if I don’t run every day, maybe three or two times a week is plenty. I know I need to keep busy, but I have learned to not feel guilty if I just sit down in my easy chair and read, or maybe waddle into the office and write something for Craig Common Sense. Oh, there is this other part of me that says, “You’re slip sliding away and you need to fight it!”. But I just reply, “No, I am gracefully surrendering the things of youth”.