I’ve been hanging around a lot of elderly folks recently, very elderly, and I don’t know what to say to them. I am so much younger. The techs put me on a completely different treadmill way off in the corner (at one point I am actually running), and on totally different resistance settings on the cardio-bike.

“I don’t feel like I belong here,” I told my wife after the first day, as she picked me up outside the medical center. (I am not allowed to drive for a month.) I sat in the passenger seat and cried and hugged tight a gigantic red heart-shaped pillow—a pillow you must lug around everywhere and clutch against your sternum in case of coughing, laughing, or sneezing (God forbid you sneeze: the pain is majestic in its agony) and even hug at night as you attempt to sleep on your back. My wife, who is a professional therapist, patted my left knee and said, “You do belong here. It’s okay. Remember they said you might cry a lot more after. Go ahead and cry…”

With the elderly I sit in a line of gray plastic chairs and I wait for the kinesiology interns from the local college to take my blood pressure and I watch the row of televisions—game shows on silent, local news on silent, a video about the circulation of the blood and another about eating a diet rich in nuts, fruit, and fish, both on silent but with closed captions—and nod along and listen. Mostly the elderly talk about their daughters. Or about death, but in a casual manner. For example, a typical statement might be, “Well, I’ll see you on Monday, if I even wake up tomorrow at all.” Or, “A young man like you should go to Alaska. My daughter Jenny went to Alaska on a cruise. She loved it.” And of course, the weather.

The weather should be a universal language, direct and elusive, forthright and yet metaphorical, but I never know how to reply. We need rain, we don’t need rain. I agree it’s cold. Colder than the ice storm of 1973? I’m not certain.

I went on a cruise once and it made me feel like I was trapped inside a snow globe inside a disco ball inside an overripe rotting watermelon sculpture of my own bloated face. And, yes, I understand the inevitability of death—as Larkin noted, “Some things may happen, this one WILL.”—but I don’t necessarily want to dwell.

And daughters. Mine is 17, and we both believe in The Smiths. We believe in Morrissey. What else do we share? Possibly she is slipping away from me…

Surely anyone can talk about the weather, can speak of sunshine, or of sleet sweeping the roof of the rehab gym. I used to work outside, on a motley landscaping crew: an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, a schizophrenic named Maxine who lived on the psych ward of the local V.A. hospital, the young frat-bro owner of the business who was never around except for payday (under the table, cash), and me. So many stories, so many tiny stories, of a truly odd summer in Tuscaloosa, Alabama: shattered windows, malt liquor, a man abandoned in a deep forest, a runaway truck (faulty brakes), a stolen purse, the V. A. nurse… gasoline, fire, fire ants, a rattlesnake, a llama, an ostrich, and a Great Dane. Days of hammering rain, which meant no work and no money. Days of scorching sun, humidity leeching out salt and sweat as we mowed, ran the weed-eaters and the blowers, planted flowers and ground shrubs and trees, dug holes in the red clay and ate dust and felt a shift in the wind and watched the skies, yellow, soapy, strange…  ”A twister coming this way,” Maxine said. And it was.

Should I share these stories with my elderly friends? No, not today. Scale, blood pressure, Spectra 360, EKG, treadmill, bike, blood pressure… I fumble for my coat and hat. An icy parking lot under a veil of wispy cirrostratus clouds. Or perhaps they are cirrus.
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Sean Lovelace lives in Indiana, where he chairs the English Department at Ball State University. He wrote Fog Gorgeous Stag (Publishing Genius Press), How Some People Like Their Eggs, and other flash fiction collections. He has won numerous national literary awards, including the Rose Metal Press Short Short Prize and the Crazyhorse Prize for Fiction. He runs. And eats nachos.

 

Artwork by Dinty W. Moore