“Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.”
― Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
An expensive and unrevealing trip to Medical Delphi draws to a close. After a day spent casting my medical history before the anointed, trudging on a treadmill with a mask until I stopped because I was sucking in the suffocating square of fabric with each humid gasp, providing an in-depth medical history to a very bright young DO who seemed most interested in researching the different versions of the F-15 on google after hearing I flew them a quarter century ago, spending an hour with a nutritionist who seemed like she could use a sandwich, and sitting in a sound booth while an overly perky audiologist told me it was okay to guess and raise my hand if I thought I could hear the beep over the roar of tinnitus, here's what we surmised:
I'm too fat, but not way, way too fat;
I'm deaf, but not as deaf as I thought;
I drink too much, or perhaps to be more accurate too regularly for my age, which is probably causing the fatness and deafness (did you know that tinnitus is caused by nerve damage from, inter alia, alcohol? I always blamed too much time next to jet engines, or maybe the Southern Rock channel blaring over my earbuds when I'm in the weight room); and
Peg feeds me remarkably well, based on my labs, but there's not much to be done about the myriad physical indignities of old age.
As for the things that brought me through the door, recurring chest pains, a skipping heartbeat, and an esophagus that feels like it's on fire most of the time, I learned the skip is no big deal, the chest pains probably aren't related to the aforementioned ticker, and as for that constant irritation whenever I eat or drink something or even lean forward to tie my shoes, I got this:
"Maybe we should get you a cat scan. Ever had a cat scan?"
No, I haven't. But then this being America in 2022, a discussion ensued regarding who would pay for the exercise, given that my "health insurance" (I use the phrase loosely, given that it covers almost nothing) is in Florida and the machine and nice person who operates it would have been located in Massachusetts. I'll just wait to start coughing up blood, then make a pitch for medical necessity, with any luck before the need for embalming renders the discussion moot.
At the end of all that, I drove home in snowy darkness feeling no more enlightened that when I arrived with hope at the temple of medical knowledge.
And part of me wonders why anyone bothers really, worries about anything related to prolonging this ride. One of the best people I know, spiritual and thoughtful and careful with everything she ingested over a life lived in service of those around her, lies gravely ill a few hours from here with a lightning strike cancer that mocks all that good living with a bad demise. I hope she didn't pass up a corn dog or a root beer float thinking it would've made a difference.
[author's note: No, I am not longing for a corn dog or root beer float these days. I seem to have lost my taste for them over the last few years. I do remember enjoying them during another time in my life, however, and am glad I had the experience].
We're all conscripts in a species-wide exercise with a 100% attrition rate. The only challenge is to avoid falling into nihilism or hedonism upon the revelation. I guess that's what religion sells to the masses. I've drifted more into the Myth of Sisyphus by Camus (if you haven't given it an hour of your time, which is all it takes to read, you really should), or maybe Marcus Aurelius, no longer finding magic talking donkeys or miracle goggles or virgin births required to find meaning in this steady downhill ride. We're all carrying around the answers inside us, illuminated by nature and those with whom we share this space. Full stop.
Nice revelation, Donk, but we really are all falling apart. Maybe that's part of the message. It's pretty damned humbling.
And the micro, this sagging old bald frame, mirrors the macro. Our work relationships, professional seasons so good we could hardly believe them, islands in the sea of vocational despair that is America in 2022, erode and fall apart, our prosperity a fleeting chimera. Our country falls apart from the bottom up, as pews and Rotary luncheons and civic boards go empty and we all embrace the interconnectedness of our cell phones, then eventually this atomization reflects itself in every level of government failing in its most basic functions (perhaps because one party keeps clawing itself into positions of leadership with the stated purpose of dismantling the structures they've taken on a fiduciary obligation to uphold). Keep drawing the lens wider and it seems all humanity has fallen into the same predicament, as if we've all given up on the notion of human progress. Might as well eat that corn dog. The end is nigh.
Whew, that was a doozy! What in the hell do I have to complain about? I'm dry, fed, warm, and have a day planned that involves making money to pay for an abundance of dryness, fedness, and warmth. And I have P, we have each other, that late life gift of grace that makes me feel a beneficent universe. And it is beneficent. We're here, aren't we?
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