Being 95

By Evelyn Apte

Many years ago, a dear friend told me that he believed that our bodies were meant to last until age 95 maximum. He himself passed away at the age of 98.

As I’m here, sitting in my skin at age 95,  I contemplate what is going on both inside and outside my body. 

My inside seems to be largely at the mercy of the medical profession. There are vaccinations, injections, MRI’s, cat scans, x-rays, lab works, heart scans and on and on. Sometimes I wonder at all the prescriptions that I take, thinking, can they all be going to the right places to help what is going on? I don’t know but I keep taking them and keep going on myself.

The outside is a different story. The lumps and bumps, fats, and skin eruptions seemed to multiply. Here is one area where my visual disability is of help since I can only barely distinguish what is going on. Also helpful is the fact that clothes act like a kind of camouflage for the sags and bags.

Two of my most significant disabilities do not appear on the surface. My severe hearing loss is irritating and pronounced though maybe more difficult for those around me than it is for me, myself. My visual disability is something much more inwardly disturbing. 

Photo by Bob Apte

A rainy afternoon several days ago, Tess, my aide, and I were in my study where she was reading me my emails and other relevant computer communication. We had finished going over it all and there seem to be nothing else to do leaving us with time on our hands. Tess opened an icon which contained photographs of my trip, with my husband to Antarctica.  I could not make out the details of the photographs Bob had taken and suddenly felt myself withdrawing and upset. 

Talking to myself I realized that I needed to look more deeply into what was happening inside of me. On reflection, I had experienced a moment of intense grief and loss. It hit a chord in which I realized what I had lost. I could no longer see those events that Bob and I had shared together during  our adventurous life. I realized I would be unable to go to the boxes of photographs that I had stored in my closet. 

I do have memories of course and that is a big help.

So here I sit,  grateful for what still is while making the most of what remains. 

Photo by Nancy Rubin

Evelyn Apte
Born in 1929