Robert Burns once wrote that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.
Well, that fact was made very clear to me last week.
For most of the past five years, my life has mostly centered on remodeling the money pit we live in. Although I originally thought I could have it done in two years - or at least that was what I told Kathy when we bought the place, but two years lead to three, and three lead to four and then five. Now my plans are to have it all done just about the time I’ll be too old to enjoy living here.
But never once did I ever think that I could not finish the house. That is, until now.
I had been working hard all day sanding the trim wood upstairs to get it ready to stain and varnish. I had promised Kathy I would hang wallpaper in all the bedrooms and then refinish the old oak floors this summer. I figured that if all went well, I could have the upstairs done - after five long years of sleeping with all the dust and mess that comes with constant remodeling - by the end of June at the latest.
I recall it was a good day. I got a lot done and I was looking forward to showing all my progress to Kathy when she came home that night.
I took a shower, like I always do after working on the house. And then I sat down at the computer to check my mail, like I always do at the end of the day. But this time none of the messages on my screen made sense. I couldn’t recognize any of the people who had written to me, but from reading the letters, they all seemed to know me.
I remember Kathy coming home, but I couldn’t remember why she was driving our truck, or even where our car was.
“I’m in sort of a fog right now,” I told her. “Can you help me figure out what’s happening here.”
And that’s the best way to describe it - a fog. Nothing seemed clear, like I was only half awake, somehow caught between some sort of night time dream and day time reality, not sure which direction to go. So mostly I just sat there trying to force myself to focus, thinking that if I just concentrated harder, I would somehow wake up - but I didn’t.
A trip to the emergency room and a battery tests proved that it was more than just a fog.
To call it a ‘mini-stroke’ would be too strong a term, the doctor said. But there were several blocked capillaries in the brain that could have caused my memory loss. “More like a glitch,” he said.
Although the doctor said it was nothing to worry about for now, that this sort of incident can happen as we get older, all I heard him say was “stroke.”
Stroke is what happens to old people, not me. I’m just... And then I realized, probably for the first time, that I’m 57 - three years older than my father when he died. All the things I had planned to do with my life, learn Spanish, play the flute, write a book, finish our house, most of them probably won’t get done. Like Kathy always says when I start talking about some new project - like buying another house to remodel, “You have to learn your limitations. You’re not a kid any more.”
But in my mind I’ve always been 27. I’ve still got a lifetime to do all the things I dream of doing. But after last week I can see just how fragile - and how limited - life can be. One minute we are planning for tomorrow, next week and next year as if we have an infinite supply of time at our disposal, and then the next minute we are struggling to remember what day it is.
I am just now beginning to see that we’re only given so much time here and what we do today is all that matters.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mark Twain
John Graham is an Advocate Columnist. His column appears each Sunday in the Advocate. He can be reached at jgraham19@woh.rr.com.
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