Foreshadowing

Taking my new hip out for a walk yesterday, I passed a group of familiar runners, all men, all older than I.

"Why the cane?" they asked.

I explained about my hip.

"You look GREAT!" said one of the men, who has seen me hiking the trails with my dog for years. "You'll be back in no time."

I smiled and walked on, hot tears filling my eyes.

It wasn't the first time since returning from the hospital that I'd wept. Queries from two dear friends about my well-being also made me cry. Each time, I was surprised.

When I had my first hip replaced eight years ago, I was 47 years old and on a mission to do everything phyiscially possible to reclaim my life in all its dimensions as fast as possible. I have the same mission this time, but with an emotional fragility that I hadn't felt before.

At 47, getting a new hip is unusual and walking with a cane, anomalous. At 55, it feels like a precursor to a future of frailty and dependence, a bump-up against mortality.

I wept not from physical pain, but from a sense of foreshadowing: when needing help to put on my socks and shoes, or to get in and out of the car, will be typical; when I will grab F's arm not out of romantic impulse, but to steady myself. Inevitable as it is, pondering these aspects of the future is frightening.

I remember being with my mother shortly after she'd received a diagnosis of end-stage lung cancer. We were in the oncology waiting room of Jackson-Memorial Hospital in Miami, where several other cancer patients, mostly women, were chatting with their families. They were all hairless, wearing brightly-colored head scarves. My mother, who was 72 at the time (and died soon after her diagnosis) and always vain about her looks, had not begun treatment. After scanning the room of bald women, she looked at me, and wept.

Seeing the future, whatever decline it portends, brings us to our knees.

This is not to suggest that we peak at 50 and slide steadily downhill thereafter. It is to say that after 50, it is impossible to be unaware of mortality; and because of that, life feels more fragile, more precious.

Being where I am humbles me, and I ponder the future with a prayer for continued good health and strength, and for the wisdom and humor to help me negotiate the peaks and valleys ahead.