There are many joys of aging, such as discounts at stores and services, using it as a convenient excuse for being forgetful, and smiling that few thieves would know how to drive my stick-shift VW Beetle.
I can also stop obsessing about everything I wanted to do before I was 70, because, well, it’s too late now. It’s a procrastinator’s dream in a disguise of gray hair.
But there are downsides, too. Like dealing with Medicare, memorizing the pharmacy hours and suffering heartburn after eating three pistachio donuts with lime frosting.
Or figuring out why the keyboard on my laptop (yes, it’s old, too) doesn’t work so well. Four keys have stopped working: The 1, Q, A and Z. Yes, the left-hand row of keys. So I carry around a big detached keyboard to plug into my small laptop. Sure, I could solve the problem with a new laptop, but remember I drive a stick shift, wear saddle shoes from the ’50s, and call it spaghetti, not pasta. Change comes hard for me.
What also comes hard is sleeping.
Not falling asleep. I do that easily. It seems I am always tired. It’s staying asleep that is the challenge.
In all senior-citizen honesty, the biggest handicap to a full night’s sleep is going to the bathroom — multiple times. I try to defeat the Law of Bladders by cutting off all water at about 7 p.m. It hasn’t worked. I think sometimes my system stores up water for later, just to remind me I have no control over my own body.
Since middle-of-the-night trips to the bathroom are inevitable, I have developed my own system of memorizing the path to the room, so that I can walk the walk without really waking up. In theory, in my own home, that mostly works. The problem is when I travel, such as when I was in a hotel and refused to fully open my eyes, not wanting to wake up, and walked into the bathroom door, cutting my head. I looked pretty stupid at the event the next morning with a big Band-Aid, and wondered what housekeeping would think of the blood on the towel and pillowcase.
When I do wake up hours before I want to start the day, I try to force myself not to think, not to start my brain working. Rather than stressing about undone work or unanswered questions of life, I try to replay old movies in my head. Sort of like watching TV — anything to fall back asleep. Besides, it’s cheaper than cable.
I avoid tossing and turning — that just prompts another attack of vertigo. Yes, one more affliction of aging.
I stay away from more pillows to prop up my head — it aggravates the arthritis in my neck.
And I make it a point never to look at the clock. It would only stress me out more to know I had been asleep just two hours and still had an entire night of wakefulness in my future.
Maybe I should counter sleeplessness by thinking of all the great deals I can get on senior meals. Nah, that would just make me hungry. Who can sleep on a grouchy stomach.
• Larry Persily is a longtime Alaska journalist, with breaks for federal, state and municipal service in oil and gas, taxes and fiscal policy work. He is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel weekly newspaper.
