Aging is unstoppable
By Yi Woo-won
I used to write for “Thoughts of the Times” a long, long time ago, almost over a decade ago. Although my contributions were quite irregular and intermittent, I guess I had written for about 20 years while I was teaching at colleges.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing articles in those days and I was proud to share my thoughts with others. But I don't remember why I suddenly stopped writing. Perhaps I was losing vitality and energy as I was aging rapidly then.
In fact, over the past decade, lots of things have occurred to me and my family, including some unhappy things. I also have changed much physically, besides turning into a stooped, stumbling, ugly, old man. I have some physical disabilities as effects of aging.
The most annoying defect is becoming hard of hearing. I first sensed the hearing loss as early as when I was in my early 50s. I always thought my eardrums were damaged in the firing exercises during the beginning of the Korean War, when we did not have proper earplugs. My hearing deteriorated as I was getting older. So, finally two years ago, I bought a government-subsidized hearing aid, but unfortunately its function is simply useless to me.
My eyesight has been poor all my life. I was nearsighted and started wearing glasses when I was in the fourth grade in primary school. I had two eye surgeries, retina and cataract, many years ago. The laser surgery for retinal tears was urgent and critical, because I was blind when I was wheeled into the operating room. Without the laser instrument that had been delivered to the hospital from the U.S. only a month before, I could still have been blind now.
I'm really grateful for my eyes for I can see what I want to see despite their horrible scars. Above all, I can enjoy the Yahoo Latest World News on the internet in both English and Japanese. It's my favorite pastime in the morning, with the help of half a dozen pairs of glasses on my desk.
Another disturbing and also embarrassing handicap is my shaking right hand, called hand tremors in medical terms. I recognized the symptom for the first time in my late 50s and it became worse over the years. The most noticeable time is when I eat with a spoon or chopsticks at dinner and when I write. There were countless times when I had to ask a bank teller to fill out the accounting forms for me as my handwriting turned out to be plainly illegible.
Except those few disabilities I mentioned, I think I am still a normal and ordinary human being. Of course, I can walk, a little sluggishly, though. I don't want to use a cane for as long as I can. I think the cane makes me look more senile and helpless. However, I really hate to climb those many stairs in town, because they hurt my knees, especially when I descend.
The most unhappy and sad incident in recent years was the death of my wife, my partner of 58 years of marriage which brought to us five wonderful children and many grandchildren. She suffered a stroke one morning in winter three years ago. She was taken to the hospital emergency room that day and had thereafter been bedridden for almost two years, struggling with her illnesses.
What was worse, when she had almost recovered from the stroke, and was undergoing a series of final examinations, all of a sudden we were informed that she was just diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. We were thrown into the depths of despair. It was a bolt out of the blue.
There seemed to be no cure in the world for her cancer, so we resigned ourselves to her fate. She was moved to another hospital with hospice care. All my five children, three from Seoul, and two from Daegu, took turns to tend to their mother and kept a vigil beside her bed for months. I visited her every other day, though she didn't want me to bother to come from Waegwan.
She was getting worse each day. When she seemed to be in the final phase of her illness and looked so pale and terribly painful, I murmured silently and prayed to God to help her suffer no more and let her pass away peacefully. She died a few days later. But my grief after her death was heartbreaking. It seemed I could not live without her. I was so lonely and missed her every minute of the day, wherever I was, day and night.
Looking back into the past, thousands of things flashed across my mind, making me feel so sorry and even guilty about many things. I was a poor provider and egocentric, and therefore I didn't do better for her to enjoy an easier and happier life. On the first anniversary of her death last Sunday, with my children, I visited her grave with some flowers. It is a charming little cemetery not too far from Daegu, surrounded by beautiful, serene high mountains, where I will be buried by her side someday.
Yi Woo-won (
yiwoowon1988@gmail.com
), living in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, used to teach English at Gyeongju University.