Barbara knows

“Shit, fuck, piss!” Barbara shook her head as she listened to Don’s cursing downstairs. She knew this was going to be a bad day because Don refused to acknowledge reality. Don was downstairs trying to replace the failing hard drive in his laptop computer. It was an old-style spinner and Don wanted to replace it with a modern SSD. Barbara had encouraged him to just go out a buy a new machine. They could afford it, but Don had never believed in buying new things and he had a history of building his own computers for decades.

There had been all kinds of warning signs, like last night when he tried to open up the pickle jar and couldn’t do it. It eventually slipped out of his trembling hands and crashed to the floor. Barbara walked downstairs to Don’s room and saw him trying to release the tiny screws from the cramped laptop interior and he was not able to get the small driver into the tiny screw head because his hands were shaking. Essential tremor they called it and it happened more and more frequently when Don was stressed. He was stressed because he could no longer see small objects well and when he did get the screwdriver head in the screw, he could not budge it. His hand slipped out on the socket and the top of his hand got cut on the exposed internal workings of the laptop. His hand got cut of course because his skin was now much thinner than it once was. So Don is down cursing and bleeding. He sits down without seeing Barbara and begins to cry softly.

He had missed all of the signs, it seems, but no, that’s not right. It is more correct to say that he had willfully ignored the signs. Despite his best intentions, Don had gotten old just like everyone else.

“Don, our son Blake can do that for you if you don’t want to buy a new machine,” Barbara said. “I don’t want Blake thinking his old man can no longer do a simple task like changing out a hard drive, Barbara. I’ll go and buy a new laptop tomorrow.” Why is this happening to me, dear?” Don asked. “It’s happening to all of us, Dear, and it’s a good thing,” said Barbara. “It’s a good thing, that I am now a lame old man who can’t even open up a goddamn pickle jar for his wife?” Don sneered.

“You’re my lame old man, Don. I love you and I want to spend time enjoying the things we can still do together. I’m not wasting my time cursing the darkness. I want to enjoy holding your hand. I want to listen to you read stories to me again. Buy the best laptop they have, dear. Learn how to do every new thing it can do. Make love to me. Travel with me and bring your new shiny laptop along if you want to. All the wonderful things you can still do outshine the few things you can’t do anymore. Curse the darkness or love the light, sweetheart, You’ve got some choices to make.”

— DanielSouthGate