A Tap On the Shoulder

I thought I've been facing it well enough. Parts are wearing out. In particular, my heart.

Sunday morning came soon enough. I was signed up for duties with my church, but of course I had to get there.

One walk across the parking lot to my snowed-in car suggested trouble. There had been something like 6 or 7 inches of snow, for all purposes the first snowfall of the season, through Saturday night--the wet and heavy kind. It had ended, and there wasn't a lot of wind at the moment (but it would soon turn much windier).

Just removing the snow that had caked onto my car told me the obvious: Going behind the car to get a decent amount of snow removed so I could back into the alleyway would take a tremendous effort. Tremendous, as in lots and lots and lots of work, lifting a sizable shovel for unfluffy snow. Ten feet, about what I knew I'd have to clear, looked like half a mile.

There was a day, and it seemed not long ago now, where I'd probably take a moment to complain and get on with it. I would build up a huge sweat. And I would be breathing hard, very hard, as my mind went somewhere else but my body subconsciously picked up the pace to get that snow the hell out of there.

That's what I was facing. But I made the non-macho, logical, sensible thought: This may easily kill you. I'm 74, not 54. And overweight. And hampered by a hip that never completely came around after two surgeries on it.

I have had a triple by-pass, followed just a year and a half ago by the insertion of a pacemaker. It's not like I'm ready for Olympic training any longer. Strain on my heart must be made slowly and gradually. Sudden bursts of strong activity might bring about my sudden demise.

And there I'd be, in a parking lot, lying in snow with no one else around me and the next person coming out of the building in who-knows-when. Not good odds. My Sunday scenario did not include collapsing and freezing to death. But for the first time in my life, I gauged a strong possibility.

My independence and self-sufficiency were suddenly compromised. I became, right in front of my eyes, old. But I know about too many men who, determined to turn back time, had seen it suddenly disappear and hadn't survived the experience.

My old father, older then than I am now, had nearly had that moment himself. Back much earlier in this century, and despite four by-passes six years before, he had a whole driveway to shovel. He nearly didn't make it back into the house. That rather large tap on his shoulder told him to sell the house and move into apartment living. He is still with us now, at 99 (Mom is 101, amazingly). I don't figure to last that long, but excursions like the one I was considering would sure cut me short as well.

I felt lousy about letting my church brethren down, especially at the last minute. But we have a meeting on Tuesday, and the chances of my being there at all just increased significantly.

Cleaning off my car was my tap on the shoulder: an attack of karma, perhaps. If that should mean that I'm marooned for two or three days, then so be it. Whatever I have to do, I can always re-schedule. In effect, I would be re-scheduling the end of my days--a much larger agenda.

It is a sobering matter. But the horizon is there, awaiting. Instead of attending church, I watched interesting interviews on both Fareed Zaharia GPS on CNN and those of a pair of Russian analysts on C-SPAN3. Got a lot out of both of them. But then, I was around to listen.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark