My sweet neighbor, Sue, called me a couple of days ago to tell me that she had just made some beet borscht from local, organically grown beets. Sue does stuff like that and is always sure to call me with an invitation to partake in her latest culinary masterpiece. Borscht is just the half of it. Her other delights include warm, fatty chicken soup, designed to nourish the soul as well as the body.
“Come on by anytime for the borscht” she said. I finished driving the Help of Ojai bus around noon that Friday and, remembering her offer, decided to stop by Sue’s on my way home. I sent her a text message that announced by imminent arrival.
It was warm and sunny when I got to Sue’s. I knocked on the door twice but got no response. It was unlocked. I looked through the glass in the door and noticed a beckoning pint bottle of borscht sitting on the kitchen counter. I opened the door a crack. “Hi Sue, it’s Fred, come by for the borscht.” All quiet. Thinking that Sue had left it for me, I stepped in, snatched up the deep red bottle of cold elixir and drove home. Visions of a dollop of sour cream floating on top of the borscht flew through my mind.
I carried the bottle into my house. The phone rang before I could set it down. “Hello Fred. Did you take the borscht?” I told Sue that I still had it in my hand. Then she said that she had been home, but had been tending to Ralph, her husband. He had fainted and fallen. Now in bed, Ralph couldn’t remember how he got there. Fearful of what might have caused the episode, it prompted a trip to the emergency room. The usual tests, accompanied by the emotional tension of waiting for the results, revealed nothing that rest and chicken soup couldn’t make right.
Ralph is two months older than me. That fact is not lost on me as I consider that there, but for the grace of god, go I. And I’m already well beyond my biblical four score and ten. My friends are aging and experiencing problems similar to the one suffered by Ralph. Although I can logically understand the arrival of these maladies, it’s a shock when it happens.
Minor events, an ache, a pain, a spot on my skin that appears overnight, a stomach that behaves oddly, all give rise to concerns that are overblown and, yet, disturbing. The plethora of TV ads including pills, elixirs, catheters and other medical equipment including walkers, scooters and escalators that ferry one up the staircase were, at one time, of no interest to me. Now I pay a bit more attention, glad that I have no steps in my home.
This flies in the face of how I feel. My endurance has increased as evidenced by schlepping up and down Ojai’s Shelf Road trail. My strength has increased as demonstrated by my newly acquired Charles Atlas biceps. I can, if I wasn’t such a scaredy cat, qualify for the light welterweight boxing division. I have no debilitating chronic illness. And, not to brag, my sexual prowess is legendary…sort of.
A number of years ago while driving the Help of Ojai bus, I delivered a wheelchair passenger to the hospital. As I was putting up the chair lift, a local physician stopped to chat. He commended me for volunteering for this work. And then he reminded me that we all walk down the same path. His admonition has remained with me as a reminder that time is fickle and limited.
I know that today’s good health can become tomorrow’s burden. That my ability to tie my shoes can be delegated to another. That my trips up the Shelf Road trail can be traded in for a scooter trip to Rainbow Bridge. That the Help of Ojai bus may come for me.
And that’s why I have little sympathy for those who wonder why I’m in a rush. Why tomorrow isn’t good enough. Why procrastination is my enemy. Why what I shoulda done is not in my vocabulary. But sometimes I forget and look back on a week that flashed by much too quickly. A week that had no defining moment. And then I’m reminded of Ed Scanlon.
Years ago, when Ed was a passenger on my bus, I had decided to take photos of my clients. One Friday I pulled up at St. Joes where Ed was living. When I asked Ed’s permission to take his picture, he readily agreed and asked me for a copy. I asked about the purpose of the copy and he said it was for his obituary. Strange request, I thought. I took his photo. It sat in my camera for several weeks. I’ll print it for Ed tomorrow, I thought.
One Saturday morning I turned to page two of the Ojai Valley News. The page where they display the obituaries. And there was Ed. His photo was unceremoniously clipped from a group shot and was so awful that, at first, I couldn’t believe it was Ed. But it was. If only I had promptly done what he had asked, Ed would have looked dashing instead of like yesterday’s toast.
I have no more time to procrastinate or worry about when my health will begin to falter. I know it will and I will deal with it then. But now I’ll eat my borscht with a dollop of sour cream. I won’t let it spoil, like some dream.
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