|
Sometimes it is the trip we don’t take that becomes the one that we most
remember.
You can’t help stumbling over promises you might have made to either yourself
or to others. An old Mose Allison song begins: “Talk is cheap, don’t be making
promises you can not keep.” At the outset of this training diary two months
back, I professed my goal and desire to compete in the Alcatraz triathlon. Though
I have done this event twice before in the mid-nineties, the past year witnessed
a startling decline in my fitness, motivation, and goal-setting nature. This
extended tapering was triggered by two personal setbacks.
Too Determined and Stubborn to Beat a Hasty Retreat
Growing older—I am 42—is learning to make adjustments, to recalibrate your
expectations, to accept rather than deny certain aspects of your life. For me,
it meant that my training wasn’t going as planned; every time I attempted to
climb back on that old “get in shape” horse, it kept throwing me off. In all
candor, I am not in shape to enter the Alcatraz Triathlon on September 18. I
am disappointed with myself. It doesn’t mean that I have stopped training, or
that in the coming months I won’t continue my long uphill battle to once again
be fit. (A year ago, I was training for a three-day, 300-mile mountain bike race
across Costa Rica—see http://www.adventurerace.com)
My triathlon jailbreak from Alcatraz will have to wait for another time. Am I
upset? Yes. Will I discontinue my training? Absolutely not. I am too determined
and stubborn to beat a hasty retreat, to wave the white terry cloth of surrender.
I like to sweat. I like working out. I like exercise. I like to physically punish
myself by way of long bike rides and runs.
“Don’t Take the Trip”
Last week, I had a conversation with my father in Cleveland. Actually the word
“conversation” is incorrect. Let me explain. He has Alzheimer’s. He’s 72 years
old. He ran a successful food and candy brokerage business in Ohio for 40 years
with 50 employees. He was the first PowerBar food broker in Ohio several years
ago, and was inducted into the Candy Hall of Fame in Hershey, Pennsylvania two
years ago. I am very close to him. We shared many of the same traits and work
habits. He was the most generous person I have ever known.
These days, my mother helps take care of him, dresses him, cooks for him, watches
over him, never leaves him alone. “It’s like having a three-year-old around,”
she says of her husband of 48 years. He is still mobile and active. It’s just
that his mind has atrophied, withered, vanished; his memory spools have erased.
A former financial wizard with numbers, he does not remember his own phone number.
He can still hit a golf ball, walk around the block with my brother, endlessly
water the houseplants, but has lost his ability to drive a car, boil water on
the stove, or handle money. This is a man who always picked up the tab at
dinner.
His mental decline, first detected two and a half years ago, is the saddest and
most horrible thing I have ever experienced in my life. His mother, my grandmother,
also suffered from Alzheimer’s. It, too, was brutal to witness firsthand. With
my father, the personal pain I feel is off-the-charts wounding, troubling,
baffling, inexplicably bleak.
My father, who trotted out cliches all his life to explain complex things, used
to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” I always felt like I was
the apple to his tree. Now, I have watched this tree being hacked away, limb by
limb, branch by branch, until there is almost nothing left on this once sturdy
and formidable tree.
Currently, he is a ghost of the father who raised me. A spectral and haunting
hologram of his former self. I often cry numbing tears of helplessness and loss.
Yet, my father accepts his condition with the stoicism and resignation that
accompanies this cruel disease. I have been less adept at accepting the
inevitable; his accelerating dementia had the effect of taking the wind out of
my own sails. In other words, my own motivation in many spheres of my life
grounded to a halt.
When we had our “conversation” last week on the phone, he kept telling me
“not to take the trip.” I didn’t know what he meant until my mother interrupted
to let me know that he was talking about my swimming from Alcatraz. He just
wasn’t able to express himself properly. The part of his brain still holding
onto disjointed shards of memories had not relinquished its grip on his proud
recollection of my previous Alcatraz swims. He had always followed all of my
athletic accomplishments with great, hearty relish and fatherly boasting to
his business peers. I endowed him with bragging rights.
He just didn’t want me to “take the
trip.” He feels protective of me, even though he can no longer take care of
himself. My mother tells me that he follows her around the house also trying
to “protect her.” The desire is there on his part, a continuation of old
habits, except that he is powerless and unable to offer any kind of protection.
He is the one who must be protected and looked after. She mentioned to me the
other day how proud he was that he vacuumed the house.
Except one thing: He forgot to turn on the vacuum cleaner.
In his best-selling book, How We Die, Dr. Sherwin Nuland writes that of all
the diseases he has treated and observed over a lifetime of medical practice,
Alzheimer’s is the cruelest, most insidious, most damning, the one that
indifferently strips away the dignity of the sufferer, that turns a full life
into a hollow existence, that basically rewinds a person’s history until he
or she regresses to the point of complete non-functioning. There is no cure
for Alzheimer’s. Its end game is death.
Continuing Quest for the Holy Grail of Fitness
Father, I didn’t take the Alcatraz trip this time, though it’s for other reasons
which almost make this column seem like an installment on Marcus Welby, MD.
I have been suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) the past few months.
I have had this ailment before, in 1986 and 1997, with each bout lasting a few
months before mysteriously disappearing. Chronic fatigue, also know as
Epstein-Barr, is a puzzling illness that affects the immune system, with
symptoms ranging from insomnia to stomach aches to lethargy. In 1986, I slept
16 hours a day. These days, it’s the reverse. I am lucky to sleep three hours
a night. Some days, I feel stronger than others. Other times, I get winded and
tired after only running a half mile. The Center for Disease Control still
doesn’t know what causes chronic fatigue. I don’t like talking about it,
however, since to outsiders it seems like a psychosomatic ailment, an
“all-in-the-head” malady.
The insomnia has got so bad that one morning I accidentally starting brushing
my teeth with Preparation H instead of a new tube of Colgate toothpaste. The
minty taste and tartar control was absent. New ingredients, I thought for a
moment until I realized with great horror what I had done. Later I told friends
that the swelling has gone down in my gums. But still.
I believe that this recent chronic fatigue syndrome installment will eventually
run its course. I continue to go through the training motions by running and
biking three or four hours per week. (Last year, I averaged ten hours).
The interesting and salient point about motivation is that though it can be
temporarily derailed, it’s only a matter of time before it gets back on
track. In my case, I am determined to make it so. I might not have “taken
the trip” from Alcatraz, but there will be other trips I will be taking soon.
As I calmly look back upon the past few months, I feel that my training has
only begun. The journey back is not always easy, linear, obstacle-free.
|
