Life is strange for me just lately, a study in contrasts.
In many ways I’ve never been happier. I have a loving wife who’s been a source of joy, my personal fountain of warmth and comfort. I’ve never loved someone as much and had it returned by orders of magnitude, freely and gracefully. I feel blessed and humbled by knowledge that our little girls earliest memories will be wreathed by the peals of laughter that flow naturally from her mother, like the springs that dot the Florida landscape. An expression of Joie de vivre, of happiness to be a mother and wife. We have a small, but happy home. Think “Love Song” by The Cure.
This is stark contrast to this grinding, soul wearing and near constant pain, that entered my life just about the same time as my Jeng. I won’t bore you with the dreary medical details of medication, spinal injections, MRIs and visits to various doctors to consider the surgical options. Suffice it to say that it’s never far away, sometimes just dull ache lurking on the margins of my consciousness. Other times it blots out all else in a dull red brown cloud obscuring, smothering and dominating my life. It’s not like that all day, but it is like that for at least part of everyday.
It brings with it an inescapable awareness of the beginning of my own long slide into decrepitude. We all suffer in life, it’s a fate we share in one way or another in our descent to entropy. I’ve lived long enough to realize that all things pass. The one Marxian idea I find unqualified agreement with is that the only constant in life is change. This phase of my life, our little family will inevitably move on. Little girls grow up, leave home and find their own lives, families and if they’re very lucky a love that lasts. Parents get older and eventually get sick and die. This is as it should be. It is the rhythm of life and death.
I’ve lost loved ones in the last few years that I can’t help but miss in ways both large and small. At some point it will be my turn as well, to move on to seek what Francois Rabelais termed “The Great Perhaps”. I watch my parent’s decline in health and vitality and see a forewarning. I don’t want to dwell too long on the morbid.
If I could, I’d like to stop things as they are now. I would like to savor the moment and reveille in it, just for a little while longer even if it came with the pain. It’s a price I’d gladly pay.
{nodding knowingly}
Sorry to hear about your struggles with pain. That’s a difficult and wearing road.
My father warned me that 40 was when he no longer felt like superman and became aware of his own slide into decreptitude. I’m definitely feeling it now. Parts get hurt from normal usage. Parts ache for no apparent reason.
I was just at the VA hospital last week getting my shoulder inspected. At this juncture it looks like rotator cuff damage but won’t know for sure until the orthopedic consult gets approved and the MRI gets done. I’ve mostly stopped using that side in the interim.
BTW, if your scenario is related to injury that occurred during service, it might be productive to let the local VA know. The MDs there have been after me to apply for benefits related to the vertebrae-crushing hijinx that occurred at CAS. I haven’t done anything about it yet, but I haven’t ruled it out. They offered me a medical discharge at the time but I was still Gung Ho and all that. Ahhh, youth.
BTW, leave it to you to make allusions to both Rabelais and The Cure in the same post. Well done, sir.
It’s doubtful that it’s service connected. I did take a spill from a guard tower at Mutlangen. Bounced all the way down the tread plate stairs. Kevin Scism referred to me as “bouncing Bert” after that. Just ended up with a sprained foot. The kevlar kept me from any serious harm
I have chronic back pain from degenerative disc disease and arthritis in the spine. Also a bit protrusion into the spinal cord by a bulging disc.
I used to enjoy long backpacking trips in southern Appalachians, mostly along the venerable Appalachian Trail. I was something of a trail rat in my 30s, taking 100+ mile walks with a 40 lb. pack over rough mountainous terrain in 7 or 8 days. I very much enjoyed the physical challenge, the scenery and the long periods of isolation. Me, my pack and a good trial dog alone in best natural beauty east of the Mississippi, that was my idea of a good time.
The first taste of the back problem happened on a weekend trip in 1999. I had a sharp pain the right hip shooting down the leg on the last day. It was 8 miles of agony with each footfall. It went away with some rest. No worries for for 5 or 6 years. It did make the clear point that backpacking wasn’t a good idea. In any case I moved back to Florida and backpacking just wasn’t as fun, too hot and too flat. In about 2005 the pain came back to stay.
I’m looking at surgery, disc replacement. I put it off for as long as possible because the outcomes from the older laminectomy procedures sucked. Hopefully this will work better.
I hope you get your fastball back my friend.
Sixteenth century monks and eighties alt rock go together, don’t they?