SKELETONS

As I age, I have started thinking about skeletons. Not my personal skeletons, which are hidden in Russian doll fashioned lock boxes at the very back and below the floor boards of my mental closet, they will never see the light of day again. I have taken them out, and shaken them, sometimes fleshing them out even, which is a hell of a dumb thing to do, many times over the years. I look at them, beat myself with the bad decisions, shame myself for the same, I cry sometimes, I even laugh sometimes. Every single time though I wear myself down with them. A few years ago I started questioning why I did this. Why did I need to revisit those errors in judgment, those innocent mistakes, those abuses, both from myself and from others?  I can never change them. I can never alter my reactions to them at the time they joined the closet collection.  They are just done, history, carved in stone. I have studied them enough. I have played them out a million different ways to no avail. I have learned what I can learn from them. So I bury them and save my self the mental flagellation that inevitably accompanies digging them out.

 

I instead mean actual skeletons, my own mostly but sometimes other’s. I have become aware in a way that I didn’t know possible.  Sure, I studied them in school (a human has 206 bones, femur is the biggest, blood cell production), I have seen real human skeletons in class and animals’ skeletons on the sides of the road. I have seen them in movies  and documentaries and on TV shows, and countless representations of same on coffee mugs, ash trays, poison labels, children’s costumes, posters, t-shirts, jewelry, album covers, murals, and on and on and on. I was aware, but not AWARE if you know what I mean.

 

26 years ago I was in a near fatal wreck. As I hobbled into the orthopedist’s office 8 weeks after, praying fervently for new bone to show on my X-rays so I could FINALLY get the dang splint off of my humerus (That’s the big ass bone that goes from your shoulder to your elbow, it’s a funny name, it’s not so funny when it snaps in half), I was full of hope. The X-rays were put on the light box; I limped over and studied them intently only to feel my hopes withered by the lack of wispy filaments that would have represented new growth and a start to healing. And suddenly, I felt that bone, felt it from top to bottom, felt the jagged edges held in place by a huge splint and a mile of bandaging. I felt it’s weakness, it’s fragility.  I felt the soft meat at it’s center and the striations and past growth like rings in a tree.  It was a horrible sensation but once it happened I couldn’t quit feeling it. It took months to lose that OHMYGODTHATISPARTOFME sensation. You would think that would have been the end of it. My humerus could have gone back to being a silent partner, integral and necessary and anonymous, but no.

 

In the same wreck I also broke 3 ribs, one of them punctured a lung. Once my humerus decided it needed to be known, the ribs ALSO stepped up. I felt the broken ends rubbing together, I felt them expand and contract with my breath. If I twisted I felt the effect of the torque on all 3 of them. This wasn’t pain per se, though they hurt plenty, this was a sense of all of these bones moving inside my flesh, giving me shape and structure. Once those 4 joined forces I thought I was done for but the rest of my bones stayed unknown to me.

It took years for those four bones to once again reside quietly within their flesh and blood bubble. Quietly, but not unknown that is. They were no longer smooth, no longer perfectly aligned. Like trees near the ocean they had permanent twists, bends and knobs that could be felt, that could be seen.  We settled into a relationship similar to neighbors that once had a huge blowout and now know for certain that the other is a total dick, but remain barely polite in order to keep the peace until they can one day sell out and move.

If that had been the end of it, how happy I would have been! But no, that wreck was the gift that keeps on giving.  At that second to last visit to the orthopedics office, in a misguided effort to cheer me up I guess, or just because he was a cold blooded muthafuggah, the doctor told me don’t despair! Firstly I was 38, which in bone years is pretty freaking old. The other things he said was “Everywhere you hurt now, you will get arthritis”. I laughed and laughed! I had dislocated my jaw, wracked both shoulders, twisted both knees, bent every joint in my hands and feet the wrong way, and cracked my head open resulting a terrifying Xray that looked like half my skull was filled with a black fog and my twisty jaw was grinning about it. In short I hurt EVERYWHERE, all of the time, for close to a decade. It turns out that was just a warm up.

Enter good old osteoarthritis. If you use your body as it is meant to be used, you will develop it. If you don’t use your body as it was meant to be used, you will develop it. If you injure yourself you will develop it. In short, consider my passing on my muthafugging orthopods warning and get yourself ready.

It started with my shoulders, as they were the most affected by having my body crammed into a 28” cube in the foot well of our teeny ass but thankfully well designed Ford Festiva by a Nissan and a 260 pound passenger. I don’t recommend it.

Next came my neck. I sounded like a ratchet when I turned my head, which I did constantly to relieve the aches in my shoulders.  Elbows, hello! Wrists, fingers, all accounted for. Hips? The right one wasn’t going to be left out but the left is still eerily silent. Knees next, they came on with a vengeance, snapping, popping, swelling, wobbling, all the “ings”. Ankles and feet started at the same time. I guess my laughing skeleton was tired of remaining silent.

Now when I get up in the morning I sound like a percussion section of a major orchestra.  The shoulders and knees are the bass drums, the fingers and toes the clashing cymbals, the ankles and wrists are the standup bass, keeping rhythm for the rhythm section. My neck is an occasional cow bell thrown in for comic relief but it is usually too busy holding up my noggin to get really loud on me.

I still see the muthafugging orthopod. But now I always feel there are 3 of us in the room, I feel my physical self, and because I feel every achy bone and knobby joint, I feel my my skeleton, the image of the black fog filled twisty grinned skull sitting on top of the loosely knitted pile of musical bones that give me shape and definition.