Made It

I was just completing the always challenging process of transferring from her car seat to my wheelchair when I said “I made it.” She heard me. Teasingly, she said that would be a good epitaph on my tombstone. That seemed right to me, so right, that it stuck in my head, and now is begging me to use this Slow Lane piece to reflect upon it. I can imagine those simple words being the last I speak. “I made it!”

 

Each life is a creation. It is the sum of all the responses had to its many challenges. When it is all over, I will relish the end point I have reached. In the last seconds, I imagine I will have a chance to look at the whole of it, and see what I have wrought. I hope I can say to myself that I have completed this course with a certain amount of aplomb. Just as transferring never held certainty, this process of living has been an uncertain, and sometimes treacherous, undertaking.

 

‘Made it’ has two meanings for me. Both of them telling. I went through everything that was allotted to me. I found my way to the presumed finish line. I am spent. And, I’ve created a wake, the vapor trail of a life, a momentary house of cards. It is the sum of having been.  It is whatever artistry I was able to muster. I made it. My death-moment assessment, of my time here, will in some way be tied to this fading presence.

 

I’m not particularly worried about how that moment will play out. I think mainly, like when my unbalanced and disabled movements come to a resting place, I’ll be relieved. The finish line gives meaning, by bringing an end to the effort involved.

‘Made it,’ is also a celebration of accomplishment, the acknowledgement of a period of initiation, the final step.  For me, my recent life of imbalance is over. And, what it has drawn out of me, is briefly evident.

 

‘Made it’ reassures me. I’m not sure why. I guess I long for the barn. There is something about a prolonged effort that is both productive and confining. I want the freedom of an ending, the mortality of being mortal. I guess I would rather be a brief thread of color on the loom of creation, than be the loom itself. I could never keep my weft and my warp clear anyhow.

 

I don’t know if anything comes next. It seems to me, that this life has prepared me for something, but I’m ready to be surprised by what it is. What I know is, that I want a sense of accomplishment out of this one. ‘Made it’ carries with it a sense of achievement that I like. It isn’t a merit badge I seek, but it is the sense that I’ve made it through the birth canal of this experience.

 

With that comment, I’ve made it through this reflection. By now, I think you can see, that the Slow Lane is a deeply human endeavor with all of its flaws, ego aggrandizement, and wonder — evident like errant underwear. I hope it isn’t too shamelessly revealing for you.

 

 

 

 

The Waiting Room

Recently, I woke up from a dream. At least, I think I did. It was a strange age-related shimmery kind of experience. Very powerful. But, weird. To this moment, I’m not sure whether I had the dream, or it has me. All I know is that this residue remains.

I am in a waiting room with a bunch of pregnant old people. We are all pregnant with ourselves. There are a lot of people in various stages of shock — of being in swollen discomfort. A few are smiling and happy, but the majority are confused and anxious. There don’t seem to be any doctors or nurses around. There is only this pervasive atmosphere of expectancy. Over it all, hangs a feeling of great distance, as if something vast is in attendance. Then there is a pop, and someone disappears.

I call this dream ‘the waiting room.’ I am assailed by the sense that I am living something like it out. There is a deja-vu quality haunting me. No matter how productive my life seems, no matter how engaged I am, since grayness has come over me, I am somehow on hold. Something inside is waiting. I am swelling up, while all this nothing is happening, and I am becoming more and more a mystery that is about to pop. Any moment now I am going to break, disappear, and give birth to the real me. It could be a happy moment, or one poignant with grief.  I sense the immanence of my coming and going.

I want to stress that what I am describing now is not the dream, but some aspect of my current-time reality. Aging has brought with it some faint sense of expectancy. It isn’t death-dread, nor is it cultural doom, rather it is some graying mirage — a kind of prospect, of an unexpected and unanticipated tomorrow. I don’t know if I am living evolution out, or if evolution is living me out. I just have the sense that the story is getting longer, more nuanced, and totally necessary.

There is a part of me that chafes at the idea that before I am done being me, a new me might come onto the scene. I am getting tired, fatigue is setting in, the old is already too heavy. The new seems, whatever weight it will be, overwhelming. I wait with more than anticipation. Life is full of dreamlike twilight-zone suspense. I bulge in all the places I used to play.

For some reason the dream seems to correspond to some mysterious part of my life. I think it actually is an aspect of getting old in this uncertain time.  I’m not sure I want to body-forth new human trait, in a time when humanity hasn’t made up its mind about surviving.  I am not in favor of still-born potential.  There is a cloud of uncertainty hanging over me.

I am generally optimistic. I tend to think Life knows what it is doing. But, for some reason, an aura of caution has come over me. I’m guessing it’s my human part in the equation that troubles me. The verdict is yet to come in. Meanwhile, I, like everybody else, gets to wait.