At Least They're Committed

I’m in the passenger seat and Demon Spawn is driving me to pick up my “new” 2004 Sebring convertible, complete with top-of-the-line tires and functional windshield fluid lines. The weather is lovely compared to the past several days — in the 40s compared to 4. Yet we drive past a bus stop and there’s an elderly woman standing there, heavyset, dyed red hair, pasty complexion, chin buried in her burgundy coat and I wonder why she needs to be there and I am frightened that no matter what her circumstance is, I could become that. As we pass I watch her, turning my head until we’re over the hill on Midway and I can see her no more.

I sit back in my seat and realize that I study old people, especially old women. I look at some, spry and smiling, and think, “I could be like that!” But then there are the rest. The majority. Martyrs, angry, broken inside and out, dragging themselves through their final days with an overblown sense of entitlement just because they’ve succeeding in breathing longer than some.

Flannery O’Connor also studied old women. She knew she would never be one and perhaps that gave her license to portray them so brutally. The old and the privileged, she gave mercy to neither. She died at 39 of the same disease that killed her father, but not before writing two novels and 32 short stories, one of which — Revelation — resonated so deeply with me that I hearken to it as my life philosophy. I also often refer to myself as a displaced person, more so now than ever.

As I mentioned, the orthopaedic specialist warned me that I’d have to fight for my right for surgery. (I didn’t. It got that bad that quickly.) He said it’s because the hip will only last 20 years and I’m only 52. I quickly responded that I don’t intend to live another 20 years. He startled, jerking back, his eyes big. He said he’d never heard that before. I responded that I saw the people in the waiting room. I see others like them shuffling through their final days and years and I wonder if they’re in pain and I wonder if they are in pain why they’re still fighting for their lives. He softened and admitted that, yes, he sees what I see and sometimes feels the same way.

I’ve teased my dad and Ken about getting old and they both said, “It’s better than the alternative.” The last time Ken said that I finally said what’s been on my mind for years, “We don’t know that!”

The thing is, I do. I got to go home, three, four, five times. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t in my darkest days or any such thing. And, as others have testified, I frantically tried to put words to what I saw as I came back. I shook my husband awake and spoke . . . gibberish. It’s fine. I’m not supposed to remember. But I know that it’s there and it’s beautiful and I always returned here feeling like I’d seen my future and my future is hope. It gave me courage.

“So it’s not just cartilage? It’s bone?” Demon Spawn cuts into my thoughts.

“Oh, yes,” I snap back to this world. I fumble for my phone and find the photo of the new hip they’ll implant inside me. “They’re going to cut that much bone out of me.”

We’re at a stop sign and DS takes a long look. “Wow!” he finally says. “That’s cool! I’m jealous.” I laugh and envision the sweet old ladies who smile all the time and adore young people and understand that they’ve had their time and are perfectly happy to get out of the way for the generations to come.

As I collect my new-used Chrysler I remember riding in Aunt Patti’s 1967 blue Ford Mustang convertible when I was 2 or 3 or 4 and I picture taking Dez for a spin a few years from now in the Sebring and I think, yeah, maybe growing old could be OK. Maybe.