Seven-foot Alligator Ahead

When recently kayaking along an intercoastal waterway early one morning, an older woman came out to the bank to yell, "A seven-foot alligator passed by a minute ago. Watch out."

I had been tracking a pair of mating egrets perched on the bank. The male was walking through the marsh, catching small crabs underfoot while the female perched unmoving on a cedar branch. Suddenly, everywhere I looked along the water I imagined seeing the beady eyes of an alligator or the disappearing ridge of its back.

It is an apt metaphor for aging: there are so many scary things that may appear on the horizon. There is no way to prepare for them. You simply respond as best you can to whatever arises.

Falls are the most common.

"I'm very careful," my dad firmly replies when I ask if he is still cleaning the gutters himself. I have worked with too many families in the aftermath of a bad fall.

Do we have the ability to know when we should no longer be doing something ourselves? Maybe the better question is do we know when to ask for help?

In my experience, often not.

Especially when mild cognitive impairment is beginning to reveal itself.

What is the solution?

Those who seem to do best when the unforeseen happens, whether a fall, a stroke, the loss of driving privileges or even the slow loss of one's mind, often have built deep, substantial, mutual relationships over a life time--whether among family, neighbors, church or friends.

These kinds of health events, while never easy, can be born more easily when not born alone.

In terms of the so-called alligator that may be just around the next bend, while I trained all my senses on the banks of the canal and surface of the water for a good twenty minutes after the woman's warning, over time my eyes drifted back up to the sky and the birds. Blue heron, egrets, a red-winged black bird, a lone loon. I returned to paddling with a smoothness and ease.

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan monk in his eighties with a large online following, often writes about the contradictions in life, that nothing is black or white, but often both this and that. Aging comes with losses and gifts. Albert Einstein once famously said, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”