On your 60th birthday, an unusual present arrives in Northern Ireland. It is a poo kit. A bulky envelope with little windows and flaps with intricate instructions which involves providing three samples of one’s poo. You are even given little cardboard spatulas to paste your shit into three little windows on stiff cardboard. It’s odd posting one’s shit to someone. It’s almost a “happy birthday now you are 60, shit will happen” and “we want you to send us your shit so we can tell you exactly what sort of shit you are in!” I hesitate to do the deed. Given how messed up my blood has been these last two years I am not particularly optimistic about my poo. If my lifeblood is looking dodgy who knows what my poo will flag up.
Generally, I don’t mean to complain. After all, I have so much to be grateful for. Especially the wonderful people in my life. But the big discovery, so far of being 60, is that shit happens. To good people and bad. It comes in all shapes and is usually not what you expect. I used to complain about the elderly being uniformly sad and angry while the young seemed happier, more hopeful like friendly puppies full of life. Now, I begin to understand why.
As you get older people approach you with rubber gloves and blood vials. Your hearing gets worse, your eyesight falters and normal tasks become like intelligence tests designed to trip you up. A friend of mine recently had to give a stool sample and was instructed by his doctor that he only needed to bring a sample the size of his tiny fingernail. Obviously, people had been bringing in plastic bags and Tupperware containers full of poo for him to test. Hence his insistence on nothing bigger than the nail of his smallest finger. The doctor mentioned his fingernail three times for emphasis. The sad truth is that with age you can morph into the type of person who is quite capable of lugging a stool sample the weight of half a bag of potatoes into a surgery.
The young often have no idea of how tricky it is for the older person in a hospital. Even parking, locating the right floor, consulting room, hearing instructions, remembering details are all fraught with confusion. I reckon that’s why we tend to adopt an unshakeable demeanour. So that if the doctor announces that we have an alien inhabiting our abdomen we tend to respond with “Well, I’ve had a good run so far. I mean I’ve been blessed with a good constitution all these years. So, I can’t really complain, now can I?” We tend to be infinitely grateful for the unexpected kindness of the medical staff and rather stoic if they seem indifferent or even hostile. After all, there are so many of us older ones filling surgeries in waiting rooms in hospitals up-and-down the country. We know the system is weary of us with our blood and poo all over the shop. Samples being sent here and there via postal systems and even being couriered to expensive labs. We want to apologise for all the shit. But there you go, such is life.
Pretty soon we may well morph still further into entities that cannot deal even with our own shit. Others will have to wipe and clean us. Then, we will long for these heady days when our shit was our own and in our own hands not others! (that just did not sound right!) But, there is a wonderful symmetry to it all. After all, we come into this world unable to deal with our own shit as babies. Others do it for us. Then, we grow in our ability to deal with shit. Afterwards, we can have babies of our own who we, in turn, teach this fundamental skill of life. Ultimately, this ability can gradually be lost so that we become again dependent on the services of others as we were in the beginning.
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The good news is that all this shit will eventually stop. The even better news is that this amazing journey, shit and all, is a wonderful love filled escapade that you get to share with so many loved ones. Despite all the shit, I wouldn’t have it any other way. May you have joy along with all the shit that comes. May you grow wonderful roses from life’s richest fertiliser!
