When we’re in the middle of anything, we of course don’t know the ending. But even more, we never know what it might teach us. We just don’t know.

My Dad died when he was 96. For the last 4 years or so of his life, it was often painful or frustrating to be with him. Luckily, beautifully, he remained mentally sharp right until the end, but physically, it was a different story. It was painful to see his pain, and frustrating because he took so much time to do anything, from the smallest details to the largest.

And he wasn’t always good tempered about it, either, or good tempered with other people. He usually started very polite and upbeat. But if anything didn’t go as he thought it should, like in a restaurant with a server, he’d get annoyed or angry. Maybe he was as frustrated with his own physical slowness as I sometimes was with him, and he let it out instead of restraining it. Maybe he just didn’t have energy left for restraint.

He had difficulty accepting his new limitations, as many of us do as we get older. We retain so clearly this image or feeling of when we were younger. When we’re a teenager or in our 20’s, we might be more focused on the future then the past, or on images of what we dream of becoming. When we’re 50 it might be of being 20 or 30. When we’re 70, it’s of being 35 or 50, maybe. But what is it when we’re 96?

We carry this conflicting sense of ourselves in our mind and body, a conflict between image and reality, memories or thoughts of other times, and NOW. We think and often feel like we’re much younger than we are, until a medical issue makes itself felt; maybe we have a pain we never had when younger, or we can’t hear or see as well. Or when, like my dad, one minute we can do something seemingly like we’ve done it for twenty or more years. The next moment, it takes us so long to do even the most basic things.

And there were days my dad called us to say he went to the ER that morning; and I wondered if he had to do that, or was he just frightened by his aging body.

One time when my wife and I we were visiting him, we were awakened by a noise in the middle of the night. We got up and saw my dad getting dressed to go out. He said he was about to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room. We asked him what was wrong and if he was in pain. I think he was feeling short of breath, but I don’t recall his exact symptoms. He said don’t worry; he’d just go to the ER on his own, and we should go back to bed.

I thought the ambulance unnecessary and said we would drive him; we wanted to be with him. We argued about it for a few minutes. And then he started to sound more normal. The more he talked with us, the more his symptoms seemed to subside. He paused for a moment, apparently thinking it all over. And said he felt better. We should all go back to bed.

And now, for me, in my later 70s, these images of my father come back to me, almost like a message. When I have back pains that make walking difficult, I see my father walking slowly with a cane or walker. I understand better how he might have felt back then. Or I have a sharp pain in my chest and have trouble breathing and can’t tell if I should go to the ER, and I remember my dad. I wonder if what I felt was being exaggerated by fear and the unknown⎼ or was I having a heart attack?

And I remember how our talking with him, our show of love, seemed to soothe his pain….

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.