The Ninth Decade by Carl H. Klaus

Author:Carl H. Klaus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eighty-Four

Decrepitude, Wisdom, Shingles, Downsizing

AUGUST 2016 TO FEBRUARY 2017

Many moons ago in an undergraduate English course, I first encountered “After Long Silence,” Yeats’s dramatic poem about love, art, age, and wisdom. But I was too young to get it. A single sentence in eight rhymed lines, it seemed a strange way to speak with a loved one after years apart—also strange to propose that they talk at length about “the supreme theme of Art and Song,” by which he meant love, as reflected in drafts of the poem. But why such a high-flown way of referring to love, as if the word itself were not resonant enough? Then as if to compound the riddle, he followed that phrase with “Bodily decrepitude is wisdom.” A memorable aphorism but irritating in its suggestion that the debilities of old age are the sine qua non for wisdom about the nature of love, as if youthful well-being were at odds with such understanding.

Now, sixty-five years later, I can see how “bodily decrepitude” might be a source of wisdom. But I don’t mean to claim it for myself, nor to suggest that my body is decrepit. Indeed, my physical appearance continues to belie my age and numerous health issues, tempting me to consider myself an enigma of sorts, especially when doing a mile and a half on the treadmill in thirty minutes. But I’m sometimes given to such foolish behavior that there’s no risk of self-delusion, as when I ignored Yeats’s epigram last September at the end of a pleasurable week with Jackie in Grand Marais, and defied a doctor’s imperative: “Don’t push or strain on the toilet.” Thirty years ago, when my cardiologist made that command after my heart bypass surgery, I obeyed it religiously. But the passing of time led me to ignore that wisdom. And the more I got away with it, the more I ignored it, until that Sunday morning.

The consequences were not immediate. But a few hours later, on the way to lunch, a small protuberance began to form an inch or two above my navel, and it soon became enlarged and painful, so I asked Jackie to drive me to the local hospital. The emergency room doctor told me to lie down on an examining table, where he felt the bulge and the surrounding area, asked about the severity of the pain and how far it extended beyond the protuberance, and then announced, “You have an abdominal hernia. Probably a bit of fat or muscle protruding through your abdominal wall. Not surprising for a person your age.” The opening, he surmised, resulted from the weakening of a suture after the heart bypass surgery thirty years ago. Having made his diagnosis, he asked the question that triggered my dismay: “Did you strain yourself this morning, lifting something heavy, or pushing on the toilet?” A question that reminded me of that cardiac surgeon’s command—and of Yeats’s epigram. The minute I started to answer, the doctor swiftly brought both of his hands down on the bulge, pushing the protrusion back into place and the pain into memory.

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