Remember the Alternative!

A few years ago, I sat down with a glass of wine, put my feet up on the ottoman, and picked up my book. I flipped open to the dog-eared page and started to read. After a few minutes, I laid down my book and said,“You know, I just cannot get into this book. It seems a lot like the last one I read. They are so similar I keep getting the characters all mixed up.” My husband raised his eyebrows and replied, “Corrie, that IS the last book you read, YOUR book is over there – I am reading that one now.”

If you are aging, you can probably relate. It gets worse…

Another time my husband and I were sitting by the pool playing Anagrams, and he put down the word lacey.  “Hey, that was my last name from my first marriage, I said. "Or maybe that was the street I lived on… I cannot remember." 

But if Lacey was the street I lived on, then what the heck was my last name? Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I try to forget about that marriage anyway.

On yet another occassion while my husband and I were travelling, one night I went to the resort office to sign out some DVDs. I picked out a couple of romantic comedies and when I got home, my hubby looked through them and said, “Corrie, we watched this one three days ago!” I looked at the cover, read the back panel, and said, “Seriously? I have no recollection whatsoever of having viewed this movie.”

Forgetting things is normal as we age, but I wanted to be certain that my memory issues were not the sign of something more sinister, so I signed up for an Alzheimer’s clinical trial. Before being accepted into the drug trial, they do DNA testing on you to see if you have the genetic predisposition, so this was a free way to get the very expensive genetic testing done. I did not have the gene, so I withdrew from the trial, satisfied in the knowledge that I was no more likely to get Altzheimer's than the next guy. 

 I also recently saw a neurologist to follow up on a small brain tumour that was discovered last fall. He said, “Corrie, for a 62-year-old woman, you have a pristine brain.” (The tumour was apparently a non issue - something he said I have likely has since birth.) 

Woohoo! A pristine brain...so what explains my propensity to putting clothes on backwards? One time I put my one-piece bathing suit on backwards and stood there in front of the mirror wondering why my boobs kept falling out!

The truth is aging sucks – but as I am constantly telling myself and those around me – the alternative to getting old is getting dead. We can look at the goofy and annoying things that start happening to us as we age, and giggle, or we can be humiliated and complain. I choose to embrace my aging, and all it's humiliating nuances because aging is a privelege many do not get to experience. 

By the way, I eventually remembered my old last name…it was not Lacey – Lacey was the street I lived on. My last name was Lindsay. Or was it Lindsey? 

I can’t remember.