Opinion

Living for the unremarkable moments

I would like to put in an order, while they’re still available, for the latter.

But we have no choice in the matter. These days, all I can bank on is love. Much of the rest departs. Even our bodies shrink smaller and then smaller. Carl Sagan said about all of us, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” This is doubly true for the elderly.

Love emerges flagrantly as the real coin of the realm. The people I’ve spent significant time with at the end of their lives do not talk about their degrees, promotions or having successfully kept their weight down. They talk about the times and places of love. Loving memories are the fields in which we walk with them near the end.

When my friend Pammy was dying at the age of 37, her doctor told me, “Watch her now, because she’s teaching us how to live.” She felt crushed sometimes but other times placid, curious and focused on her life, on us, her baby daughter and husband, chocolate, the garden, flutes and their spokespeople — birds. She released herself stitch by stitch from this life without loving us less. Love and release, a miracle.

How to live? On any unremarkable day, I wake up more curious than I used to be about what’s in store. Today is going to unfold as it is going to unfold. I am not going to be able to corral it like a horse. I hate this, but less and less. Now I wake up a little confused: Where am I? Oh, yeah. Right here, today, always. I pray simple prayers.

When I got sober many years ago, an old guy told me that while most people in recovery pray a formal, beautiful, spiritual prayer upon waking, the old-timers just say, “Whatever.” And rather than another set prayer at bedtime, they all just say, “Oh, well.”

How to live? Simplicity is so rich. My unremarkable days might seem infinitely uninteresting to a youthful person. But older age has given me permission to do what I always dreamed of doing: sit around reading, walk, putter. Busyness and fear constrict us in youth; fresh air and nature free us in old age.

My pastor said you can trap bees at the bottom of a Mason jar without a lid because they don’t look up and fly away. So I look up. Today, darker fog covers the lower part of the mountain but becomes a soft, heathery gray where it meets the deep green of the hills.

How to live? When I look up and around, I finally see that almost everything I need is here. It is not everything I’ve ever wanted, which I’m sure would make me feel happy and fulfilled every moment. But all the facets of love are here: voices, faces, the sounds of the garden, music, rich and elaborate silences. Without so many extraneous pushes, shoves or pulls as there once were, it feels like there is a net to catch and hold us.

I used to seek remarkable sites, events and people. Now I notice more supposedly unremarkable moments, which as it turns out are why we are here. My husband, son and grandson; a few best friends; the animals: A lot of the time, I’m as happy as a child to see them, to see it all. Dew, stars, Neal’s apricot tea roses — variations on a theme of sparkle. Age has smoothed away so many edges and the need to figure out the angles: Love is less negotiated as you grow old.

Mostly.

On any unremarkable day, there will be a number of what Neal and I call Alzheimer-y moments, more and more — some funny, some scary.

I know many elderly people live lonely, frightened lives, so I show up. Mother Teresa said no one can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love, and that is all we can do.

I didn’t know this when I was younger. Love is medicine that can counteract that other horrid stuff; the lack of it is the reason there’s such meanness and sadness in the world. So we bring it like candy stripers with their magazines, only with our time and maybe a garden blossom.

By the same token — don’t tell anyone — I take naps most afternoons, an hour on the bed with a light blanket, the New Yorker and a sleepy cat, which is what heaven will be like (plus the God part, of course).

Release, release, release: Half a lifetime ago I had my son, and that was the plot; then my son had a baby at 19, and that became the plot. Now they don’t need me much, and I’m not so sure of the plot anymore.

They still like me and find me marginally amusing, but they are over in their own house more. A year ago, they actually put a lock on their door (although my grandchild cracked under the strain and gave me the combination). Still, I can take a hint: release, release. Ugh.

The end of the day is as lovely as the early morning. The fear of missing out has lessened greatly. In its place, we have the fear of being pressured into gatherings we don’t want to go to. Luckily, at 65, along with your Social Security check, you earn the courage to beg off: “It sounds lovely, but I have other plans,” those plans being to stay in, eat popcorn and settle into the current TV binge.

Saying no to things that deplete or bore us becomes an essential skill. To me, nothing is more wonderful than to crawl between the sheets again, with a book and the cat, and to say our prayer: “Oh, well.” In the dark, if we are lucky, we begin to drift off to that other place.

A thin channel is open that is easier to notice in stillness, where we are connected to life by filaments, like the mycelium of mushrooms. Who would think that such skinny threads could supply us? They’re not cords that bind but rather a kind of filigree. They’re not made of the stuff we can know much about on this side of things. Oh, well. And amen.

Thank you for spending this year with me, and thank you to my brilliant illustrator, Andrea Levy. I wish us all traveling mercies.