By Edward H. Garcia
I have before me the report describing an upper GI endoscopy I recently underwent. It’s quite informative and even entertaining. It is narrated in surprisingly human terms. It turns out I was coughing throughout the procedure which made it “more difficult,” the doctor reported. In the little drama I was unconscious for, the first “bipolar” didn’t function, but a second one successfully cauterized the bleeding ulcer which had started all the trouble. The report has a nice schematic of the upper GI tract with color coded notes tied to the photographs on the next page of the inside of my esophagus. That’s the entertaining part. The report tells the story — in vivid color — of a successful medical procedure, but for me the most startling part of it was not the photographs of the inside of my body, but the “Patient Profile” that read “This is a 71 year old male.”
My first impulse was to say, “No, you have me mixed up with some old guy. This can’t be my report.” Of course I knew that at my last birthday I did indeed turn 71. But turning 71 and feeling 71 are two different things, even flat on your back in the hospital.
I think I found my identification in the Patient Profile so hard to assimilate because so much of my youth is still alive for me in memory. Youth must be like those phantom limbs that amputees report. The leg is no longer there, but it hurts or itches anyway. It’s as if the mind can’t get used to the new reality of life with a missing leg or arm. Well, my mind has trouble with the new reality of my missing youth. In spite of the evidence the mirror presents, I can’t really be that old. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that I was lining up and registering at Gregory Gym for classes at UT? Fifty-three years, actually. I’m pretty sure nobody lines up and registers at Gregory Gym anymore. In fact, I’m not absolutely certain that Gregory Gym is still there.
Life is full of places which are so present in my mind but might not exist anymore. The building that housed my high school was still there the last time I looked, but it’s been a junior high and more recently a school administration office building. And the kid who jumped out of a second story classroom window and let himself down to the ground with a rope is older than I am and may be a phantom himself.
Some of the phantom manifestations of my amputated youth I would just as well be rid of. I can still feel the anguish of moments I can’t bring myself to tell about as if they had just happened. I wouldn’t regret leaving those memories behind, but they still itch or burn.
It’s not fair, of course. If I can’t still enjoy the energy and the resiliency of youth, why can’t I forget what W.B. Yeats called, “The ignominy of boyhood; the distress/Of boyhood changing into man;/The unfinished man and his pain/Brought face to face with his own clumsiness.”
Maybe that’s the task of old age — to find a way to come to peace about those memories that make us squirm. I remember the plain girl I sat next to on a band bus, hoping and hinting for a kiss from her — those were innocent days — knowing all the while I would never want to acknowledge her as a girlfriend after the bus ride was over. It’s one of those what-a-jerk-I-was moments I wish I could apologize for, but I’m not sure apologizing would do it. I just thought of another one of those moments, and I’m cringing again.
So what can we do to come to some peace about the past? I don’t want to forget any of it, but I’d like to forgive myself for those painful moments. It can’t be easy (for me at least) or I would have already done it. But maybe it’s as simple and as complicated as Yeats’ own advice to “cast out remorse.”
I’ll let that be my new Patient Profile: This is a 71 year old male who has cast out remorse.
