Reflection This Week
THE RAVAGES OF TIME

   A quarter of a century ago – that seems ominous, doesn’t it? – when I turned forty, and was wallowing in a pit of self-pity about the fact that I was now considered middle-aged, or certainly too close to it, an astute, been-there parishioner named Shirley shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s not forty you have to worry about, Bill. It’s fifty.” When I asked why, she replied, “That’s when your body starts to fall apart.” She even said it with a smile on her face.

   In my case, she was partially correct. I had minor knee surgery at 45 and again at 59 (the other knee). All in all I have been very healthy even if always overweight. Actually, I have never been overweight. I have simply been too short for the weight I do carry around. I have also always been good at rationalization as a way of justifying a problem I simply do not want to face.

\   At any rate, the ravages of time have finally caught up with me. The bone spur on the hip that was first discovered ten years ago post kidney stone surgery has grown to a point where my ability to tie a shoestring or put on a sock is both limited and painful. Hip replacement surgery is now scheduled for later this month. I would prefer to postpone the surgery until after the Christmas season, but I had to wait over four months after seeing my surgeon to get this date on the calendar. Apparently there are a lot of us who are middle-aged and more whose bodies are now finally falling apart. 

   This is not to complain as my aches and pains are truly minor compared to so, so many millions of others. Nor is it to ask for sympathy, which I doubt I would get anyway. Shirley would simply smile, ask me what I expected and remind me that I should be grateful for having lived this long with such good health. This I know and for which I very truly am.

   Nevertheless, surgery always gives one an occasion to reflect on life: its uncertainty and its inevitability, its ups and its downs, its surprises and its mundaneness. It is also an opportunity to give thanks for what has been and look forward to what more there will be and what it will be like. It is certainly not a time for taking life for granted as we – or at least I – so often do.

   Our life is God’s gift to us. What we do with our life is our gift to God, both when we are quite healthy and when we are not so. The ravages of time eventually takes its toll on our bodies. There is no escape and there are no exceptions. One of the presenters at a conference I attended several weeks ago never made it to fifty without some severe bodily malfunction. She had both hips replaced at 45. Lucky me.

   Actually, blessed me. It’s easy for me to moan and groan because my body is doing what it supposed to be doing and as it is doing it. It would be better for me to pause and give thanks for the great health I have had and to look forward to what lies ahead after surgery and rehabilitation, no walk in the park that. While I/we cannot avoid the inevitable, I/we must always see the silver lining in every cloud, no matter how dark or foreboding.             WJP