TheBanyanTree: Survival of the fittest

[JMoney]

My sister has had a rough time lately.  First she broke her ankle while out
bushwalking one weekend.  It must have been an impacted fracture because she
kept walking on it and didn't know it was actually broken until the X-rays
were taken.

The next time she went on a weekend bushwalking trip she came down with a
terrible sore throat and after she got home the illness worsened.  It got so
bad, my mother told me, that my sister said she felt as though this must be
how it feels to be near death.  But now she's over it and has been on yet
another bushwalking weekend with my brother.

My brother, said my mother, is deeply impressed with my sister's toughness
and fitness.  You should do something to get fit, she told me.

The thought gives me chills.  I'm getting older and I don't want to be a
physically fit aged person.  What if I dement?  That could happen.  One of
my grandmothers went ga-ga and had to be carried off by pneumonia secondary
to immobility due to treatment for a fractured hip that happened during a
fall.  I'm already forgetful.  Do I want to have a fit body and an unfit
mind?  No, no, no.  I'd rather have it the other way around.  I'd rather my
body failed first.

Years ago, when I was still a teenager, I worked in the geriatric ward of a
psychiatric hospital looking after demented old ladies.  People who haven't
had close experience of caring for such people tend to imagine that they are
probably happy in their own way.  After all, if you've forgotten everyone
and everything what could upset you?  But that's not how it is.  The
forgetting is bit by bit and the bits can be scattered all over the place.
The connections that help you make sense of what you're experiencing and how
that fits with the rest of your life are broken.  What you're left with is
distress.

I have recognised the moments of confused clarity and seen the misery those
moments provoke.  Here I am, but where is it?  I am surrounded by people,
but where are the ones I know and love?

There was a woman who had been a farmer's wife, the mother of several
children and a hard worker.  She was sitting in the day room, as usual,
staring blankly ahead through the windows when a light came into her eyes.
She looked around in bewilderment.  That turned to horror and she started
weeping piteously.  It took a while for her to forget again.  And then it
was just a matter of time before she suffered her next moment of dreadful
awareness.

Being bonkers is not necessarily benign.  With a fit body you can be bonkers
for a very long time.  The alternative sounds much better to me.

Janice