Thinking About Old OLD Age

If this week has taught me anything it's that getting old really sucks in some significant ways. I'm working at the new job with a gaggle of sixteen to eighteen year old kids and they smoke my fanny in job performance every single day. I flub up, left and right, while they cruise on through and remember all the zillion nit picky little details like it's nothing. I pray I get better at what I do but I fear I will never catch on like that.

I guess I've been thinking about old age because of what's going on with my mother in law and, I know this sounds silly, with my cat.

Jim's called and told me he arrived in Louisiana to find his mother back in the hospital again, this time because she completely stopped making any sense and could not breath well. I can hear in his voice how shocked he is by how rapidly she's deteriorated in only two short weeks. The woman that baked loads of her infamous sugar cookies a mere three weeks ago cannot walk, control her bodily functions or talk to where she makes any sense.

Jim is taking my advice and getting her to a geriatric specialist, getting her evaluated for possible rapid onset dementia and trying to have her seen by a critical care pulmo. He's seen the Mid City hospital in action and is demanding she not be taken there any longer because it's obvious they don't know what the heck they are doing. All good steps.

But in all reality probably not enough. The ritzy retirement community she lives at is pushing to have her relocated elsewhere as you cannot stay there if you cannot feed yourself and get around. So Jim has the additional burden of trying to place her in a different facility.

It doesn't sound at all like she's long for this world to me, which breaks my heart.

While Jim's been gone my little old man cat, Lil Bit, has been all over me. He drowses on my shoulder while I crochet and watch tv. He lays on me and naps when I'm laying down reading. He sleeps next to me all night long. He follows me.

I've had him since 2004 when our neighbors abandoned him after moving out. The vet said he was older than ten years then, which would put his age at perhaps at the youngest 18 or 19 years old. He's having balance problems and will fall over sometimes. He's going blind, already blind in one eye with cataracts forming on both. He's pin thin even if the vet has run tons of tests on him and says his only real problem is he's getting very old and things are wearing out. He has no teeth so I must mix up special geriatric super mushy kitty food for him. He's starting to show signs of senility setting in.

He has the best personality and sweetest nature I've ever seen in a cat. I love him so dearly and I'm his favorite person in the family. The vet says in human years he'd probably be around 85 to 95 years old, same age grouping as my mother in law.

All this with my mother in law is making me dread not only her eventual death but the coming passing of Lil Bit. Feels like I'm in a season of coming mourning and I've already started.