@John C Lincoln at North Mountain, Phoenix AZ
I am in a emergency room with my mother waiting for her to be taken up to a room where she will be for the next couple of days. Under any circumstances being in an emergency room is not pleasant. With a crotchety 85 year old mother it is nearly unbearable. The morphine they have given here has done wonders for her blood pressure but nothing for her disposition.
I am crotchety also and suspect that I either inherited or learned the tendency from her. I am not complaining about inheriting things from her. I have inherited some good things along with the crotchetiness. For example, I have a statistical likelihood of less than 10% for getting Alzheimer’s disease. I know that because my DNA was checked to identify which variants of the APOE gene I have. I have one each APOE-e2 and APOE-e3. According the neurologist, that ordered the test, this translates to a low probability of me having Alzheimer’s disease. Had either been an APOE –e4 the odds would have increased dramatically. If I had two (one from each parent) APOE-e4 genes, the odds would be terrifically high.
I am still sighing in relief. Maybe I should mention my father had Alzheimer’s disease and died with it. The odds are pretty good that he had one APOE-e4 gene (but not certain). He could not have had two because if he had he would have given me one; I don’t have one therefore...
Still watching my mother struggle with her medical problems for a day in the ER room is tough because she is: my mother, hard to get along with and only 16 years (actually 15 and 11 months) older than I am. Let’s hope my memory is good enough 16 years from now to remember how irritating her whining and demands to know how much longer she had to stay in ER were, so that I won’t emulate her behavior.
The good news about all of this is that that even people with two APOE e4 genes are not doomed to fall victim to Alzheimer’s disease. Just so, I am not sure to wind up cranky in some ER room or suffer my mother’s medical problems. She has, among other problems, Wernicke - Korsakoff Syndrome which meant that she had problems walking long before she broke her hip last year. There are things I can do to lessen the odds of my having the same diagnosis even if I were genetically prone to be.
The funny thing is that the mitigating factors for winding up with Alzheimer’s disease are the same as for most age related ailments. Eat right, don’t be a couch potato, don’t be a hermit and exercise your mind as well as your body. Not to mention not smoking and drinking alcohol only in moderation.
The difficult thing for me right now is to not be angry that my mother didn’t do all of those “right” things. Most of the time her mind is still all there and she is aware of what is going on around her. That explains some of the grouchiness. She can’t see or hear well and it must be difficult to inhabit a body that no longer follows directions of the mind.
I think my mother’s body, if not her mind, is preparing for death.
Someday mine too will do that. I hope that when I arrive there I will embrace both death and life. Bishop Spong said it so well in his last essay.
I have never been one to speculate on the content of life after death, but I do trust it, feel it, and seek to live into it. The only way I know how to prepare for life after death is to live deeply, richly and fully now, scaling life’s heights, plumbing life’s depths, risking love, affirming others and accepting differences. It is by living fully that I prepare for death.
St. Paul was wrong, death is not the last enemy to be defeated. Death is a friend to be embraced. Death adds zest and passion to life by forcing us to live and investing each moment with ultimacy. I thus never want to miss an opportunity to tell my wife how much I love her. I live for the moments when my children or grandchildren call or when we visit. I love to hear about their victories and defeats, their struggles and joys. I want to live every moment of the life that I have, but I also want to relinquish that life with grace and dignity when it is time to do so.
From Meditation on Turning 80 in London (subscription required)
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