Strategies

As you get older it becomes more difficult to live spontaneously. Things that once were done without thought, now have to be engineered, planned, facilitated.

Few of us spring out of bed in the morning as we once may have done, vigorously get showered and throw on our clothes. Leaving bed may have to be a series of slow well practiced movements, taking care that potential aches and pains are treated with respect. The shower is entered into cautiously, the feet well balanced on the base as with one hand on the wall another feels carefully for the lever which turns on the water. Dressing becomes a ritual of holding on to convenient props and putting on tights or socks may only be accomplished by sitting down, rather than hopping about on an unreliable foot.

Conversation can be a problem. Several of you in a room and voices all speaking at once. You try to keep up with the various strains of thought but concentration is no longer as easy as it once was and you find yourself having rests and losing the plot. Foolishly, you try to add a comment but find that it is an inappropriate one. People had left that subject some time ago and are now onto an entirely different one. They look at you with kindly bewilderment. ‘Is (s)he deaf, daft or distant’ they think. The strategy here is to look intelligent, appear to be listening with eager interest, laugh or smile as others do, but only speak when you are quite sure it’s safe to do so. Then, perhaps, people will think you are thoughtful and wise rather than in need of care.

Walking, as we have seen often in these blogs, is what all older people must keep doing, but here again it becomes harder to do that than the days when you were as fleet as a mountain goat. Make sure of the distance you are planning and that it is within your range. Five miles is my absolute limit. Be clear too that there are obvious resting places on the way. Most of all ascertain that there is a welcome hostelry with good drink and food at the walk’s end.

The strategy I find I need most of all and which I haven’t quite worked out yet, is what to do about matching thoughts with words. Happily I haven’t got to the stage of not knowing what to say – the image is clear in my mind – but too often these days I can’t find the word or words to fit the image. So I start a sentence and can’t finish it and the world and my dear wife wait for as long as they can bear it, before at last I can say what I want to say and say it, or they chime in and say it for me. I suppose the strategy is to wait and work it out before you speak. So far I’m not very good at that. And you?

Bryan