Playing Guts Ball

A recent Harvard study predicts that soon 58 % of people over 65, mostly women, will be living alone, many into their 80’s and 90’s. Being a statistic can be comforting, but these studies just stop dead and sink into utter silence once they get past, “You need an advance medical directive, adequate nutrition and for crying out loud learn to use your cell phone!” But let me tell you, there’s more to it.

Two weeks from now I’ll take off at 81 to move into an “independent senior living facility” someplace a thousand miles away where I know pretty much nobody. Why? There are trees there, seasons, no endlessly heartbreaking associations and I can afford it. This is called “playing guts ball,” as my ex-husband eloquently defines all dangerous, ill-advised behavior. Harvard et al don’t get it, but that’s what we have to do. Nutrition is overrated.

GUTS BALL OFFICIAL RULES

1. FACE IT. The time in which we participated in making the world is over. Younger people are in charge of that now, which is perfectly normal as, one by one, people we know and public figures whose names mean something to us, vanish. I just learned today that Dick Biondi, a Chicago DJ whose radio show kept thousands of heartland teens up on the latest hits, died three days ago at 90. I thought, “Oh, no, not Dick Biondi too!” I mean, we just heard about Tina Turner, and before that I had to play The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald over and over when Gordon Lightfoot died. The announcements of these absences bring little, interior waves of icky, panicky sorrow we discuss and then dismiss until the next one comes, and our world, the one we made and remember, shrinks even further. But facing it, even though doing so feels like teetering at the edge of an abyss, is, I think, crucial. Because that abyss is ours.

2. MAKE ROOM FOR IT. The abyss, that is. It’s just empty space, uninfluenced by anything, available to become anything. If possible, move, so you’re forced to discard the ton of stuff you’ve accumulated over a lifetime. Take photos of photos as well as everything else, store them in the Cloud and strip your reality down to nothing but your favorite jeans, your meds and a few rolls of t.p. Moving makes this happen, but people who decide to age-in-place can’t get by with just shoving another 400 old copies of The New Yorker and mom’s collection of vintage hairdryers into a closet. It all has to GO. Anywhere. I’m lucky because people in my apartment building leave all sorts of stuff in the hall downstairs, and within minutes somebody else picks it up. Right now there’s a 48-inch, “damaged” flat-screen TV down there. I leave stuff daily, happy that a total stranger will think of something to do with 42 Russian postcards, 96 pounds of vinyl records and enough cloth napkins to outfit a state dinner. My past transformed in ways I’ll never see, yeah!

3. DECORATE IT. At last, some fun. The abyss is the future, what remains of it, anyway, and in the guts ball game we’re absolutely free to do whatever we want with it. Nobody’s watching, nobody cares! We can paint it wine-red or cover the walls in broken Italian pottery. Unless we do something for which others will have to hire pricey defense attorneys, or we just sneak away without sending address changes, the adventure is entirely ours to create. It’s scary but exciting. Choose whatever atmospheric image your heart really, deeply craves and surround yourself with it in the best way you can afford!  For me it’s trees, music, books, fabric art, seasons and rainy days in which to write. I’m heading into a trillion trees and many rainy days, books and music and art coming with me. If I don’t like it, I’m free to go somewhere else. If I do like it, I guess I’ll have won a single game, but others will follow. Guts ball, once you decide to play, is forever.