on being old

On my email list of moms with 9 year-olds, we recently had an exercise where we listed five random facts about ourselves. I was stuck on coming up with a fifth one for myself and finally put in "I am afraid of being old." Not of *getting* old, mind you, which is pretty much the definition of life, but of *being* old. And here, my definition of old is not strictly chronological, but physical.

My dog Callias is old. Her body is failing her. Last June I went through the trauma of being convinced that after a series of cluster seizures caused by a brain tumor, it was time to tell her goodbye. The vet tried steroids at the last minute and I learned why they are called miracle drugs. She's been more or less her normal annoying and loving self for the last four months. She's very stiff in her back end, but still puts on a burst of speed every once in a while when she feels frisky.

This morning, however, she woke us up around 5 am because she was fumbling and falling in the hallway, her toenails frantically clawing at the hardwood floors. She'd lost much of her ability to control her back legs, and had that horrid glazed look in her eyes. I sat with her, without bothering to clean up the poop and pee on the living room rug, while she tried desperately to get her legs to work, panting heavily the whole time. I'm certain the phenobarbital dose she's on kept her from having a full blown seizure. The glazed look went away, and she recognized me, but for an hour, she stumbled around the house, running into walls, getting stuck in corners, and walking over our cat, Sammy, who had no idea what was going on and got himself thrown out of the house because he was hissing and striking at her. She tried to drink water, but kept falling into the dish and spilling it all over herself and the kitchen. Now she's fallen into a deep and exhausted sleep. And this is what I mean when I say I am afraid of being old. This really sucks.

Here's another random fact about myself: I think I may have broken my foot yesterday by tripping on the driveway. I know this won't surprise Marion, who has always marveled at my ability to be clumsy in the best of conditions. I've been through the physics of it over and over in my head, but I can't figure out how I could (possibly) break the side of my foot by falling on a flat surface, albeit covered with small driveway rocks. It was dark when I fell, and from the pain, I assumed I was gushing blood. I hobbled into the house, prepared to totally gross out my kids, but saw not a thing, nary a scratch. I sat there staring at it, more than a little perplexed, until I noticed the tiniest prick of a purple bruise on the side of my foot. It's grown overnight to cover about a quarter of the top of my foot, and is slightly swollen and very tender. I don't know if I've really broken it after all, but it certainly makes a better story if it is.

So I plan to spend the day at home, nursing my elderly dog and my ailing foot. I will probably get all philosophical about this, thinking of life and the universe and how we are integrated into nature - how we *are* nature. ...and how in death while our conscious self is quieted, our physical self, our molecules, stay integrated into the universe. It will give me some peace, but I'll let a little bit of sadness remain. Because that's a natural part of our lives, too.