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| Back To Basics |
Shauna has been blindsided by a new affliction to add
to her constellation of health problems. Possibly a complication from her Crohn’s
Disease, she has come down with a painful condition of the eye known as acute iritis.
An inflammation of the iris, acute iritis can lead to stabbing pain in the eyes, and it
causes extreme sensitivity to light. After seeing the optometrist last week,
she is now on a strict regimen of eye medications, including one
anti-inflammatory drop which is to be administered once every waking hour. She
seems to be on the mend, but of course we’re concerned. Shauna’s sight has been
severely compromised by this latest assault. After almost a week of
administering three different eye medications, her eyesight has not improved all that much. I never before understood that Crohn’s Disease is an autoimmune
illness and, while it often presents as a gastrointestinal problem, it can
afflict other parts of the body with similar tissue makeup. This includes the eyes.
Just another little sucker punch.
I’ve made some good friends over the years. I’ve lost
touch with some of them, and I sometimes wonder where they are. With the
emergence of Facebook, I have re-connected with some people I never thought I’d
hear from again. I wrote a song
recently about an old friend who had lost his way, and ended up in jail for a
while. We’ve remained friends and thankfully he has straightened out his life.
In the chorus of the song there’s a line that reads: “Old friends are the
hardest to deny/ They know the buried secrets we try to hide.” Not all of my
friends were well adjusted. Nobody’s perfect, least of all me, but I feel a particularly strong
bond with my old neighborhood friends from Buffalo. They knew me back when, and friends who have known me for that long are like family. They know my history, they’ve
watched me go through my many changes; they've shared my joys and my sorrows. Shauna
knows me that well, but not all that many of my friends do.
Last weekend, sleep deprived and a little down about
Shauna’s latest medical problems, I was watching TV when I heard the message
alert go off on my cell phone. It was my best friend Bob, texting me. Earlier
in the day I’d been on the phone with him, joking about buying a pontoon boat
and surrendering to the next stage of my geriatric decline. While it was a tongue
in cheek conversation, the subtext is that time is passing too quickly, and I
for one am anxious about the future. The text was a photo of an old
outboard motor, which very much resembled one I owned when I was a kid. Ironically, in the larger outboard in the background of the photo was very similar to my reliable old Yamaha, about which I spoke in last week's report.There
were three or four texts back and forth, wherein we discussed the differences
and similarities of the photographed motor to the one I’d owned. Bob has been my
friend since the days when I was that kid putting around in an aluminium dinghy
powered by that motor. It’s hard to explain why, but his connection to that
past was comforting to me.
I’ve lived my mostly charmed life with little regard
for the passage of time, and yet, pass it has. While it’s not over yet, hopefully
far from it, my life is decidedly in the second semester, and much more
complicated than it used to be. As the hour hand spins wildly out of control,
and I feel powerless to slow it all down, it is sometimes comforting to get a
message from an old friend. Sometimes a little perspective can go a long way to
relieving the anxiousness. It doesn’t take all that much, just a simple
communication with someone who shares a mutual history; the comforting delusion
that there is some order in the chaotic journey from there to here. While
indulging in a moment of shameful self-pity last weekend, I got a text message
from my friend Bob; a photograph of an early 60’s Johnson 5 ½ HP outboard motor.
The message read: “Back to basics”, and it made me smile.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2017 ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
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