Aging in Space

My friend X, who lives in a retirement community an hour outside of Toronto, has become very worried about her mental competence. Her slide into dementia. X and I talk every Tuesday morning at 9, a standing appointment that is important to both of us. On a recent Tuesday when I dialed her number I got the answering machine (always a disconcerting event since the recording was made by her husband, who died two years ago). I left her a message but didn't hear back.

 

Mid-afternoon I said, "I'll call X again to be sure she's okay." By late afternoon I hadn't called her because I kept forgetting. After dinner I said, "I'll email X before I go to bed, just to be in touch." But I kept forgetting and went to bed without emailing her.

 

At 8 the next morning I did email her, and at 9 she called me. She's fine (one never knows these days, do one?). We set up a phone call for a later time so we could have a long chat. Whether we'll both remember this appointment is open to question.

 

Because the bigger question is this: which of us is fading faster? X forgot our call originally, but I spent the rest of that day forgetting to call her. How far apart are we along that slippery slope? If she were to stop suddenly I'd slide right into her because not much space separates us.

 

My older brother is 87, and contemplating that reminds me of the mystery author whose operative is a female detective in California. Sharon McClure? And is that the author or the op? Or a different author? One uses book titles that have gone through the alphabet: A Is for Axe-Murderer; B is for Burglary; and so forth (those titles are just examples; neither is real).

 

Anyway, what has stayed in my mind is that the op—I'll call her Sharon—rents a small apartment from an 85-year-old man who is one of four brothers. In the books the brothers are all alive, ranging from, say, 94 to 84. Three of them live in Chicago (I may be making this up) and occasionally come to visit the California brother. I was always struck, as I read these novels, by the imaginative insertion of these fine old guys. They were peripheral to the narrative, of course, but brought a sense of the fullness of late life.

 

So that brought me back to thoughts of family. Now, as we begin 2022, my siblings and I are 87, 85, 83, 80, and 72 (Sari, had she not died too soon, would be 81). We'd make a lively set to include in a mystery series if anyone's interested. But catch us soon, while we're all still lucid. We're aging.

 

 

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