Last week I brought my bicycle down from storage, traded out my saddle with a friend who had had her eye on it for several years and called an avid biking friend. I offered to give her the bike. She came over several days later and loved it. She left with it on her bike rack and I watched as she left and drove away.
While it was sitting in my apartment I had a strong urge to go riding. The truth of the matter is I have had a complete knee replacement and two complete hip replacements. One of my shoulders and one foot are filled with metal. I can not take the chance of falling or flying off a bicycle. As long as my bike was within sight I felt okay.
It was a Georgina Terry bike that was created for women's bodies and strengths. Mine was a Susan B. Anthony model and on the mid-bar it said "I rejoice when I see a woman on wheels". It was a gorgeous cherry red. I had just had it tuned up and had bought new hybrid tires when my knee went and the bike has been in storage for a year ever since.
After my friend drove away I was overcome with feelings. I quickly realized I had just experienced a great loss and I was grieving. Other passions I had stopped doing began to float through my mind. Cross country skiing, my career, writing a book, playing in an orchestra. People who I've let go of through the years were front and center. My mind was filled with layers and layers of loss. I cried.
I cried because of the loss of youth and health. It felt like I was at the beginning of a slippery slope that was only going to go down faster and faster. Then I found myself in the midst of internal arguments about growing older. With my current joint health I painfully feel my limitations. I thought I had gotten quite good about letting go, but this had hit a nerve.
Health is such a fragile thing and I had no idea in my youth what it meant to grow older and live with my health compromised and mobility challenged. Once a friend told me, when he was 94, that the body not functioning was an awful way to live. He died several months later. I was now facing a reality that was not making me happy. I was encountering one of the biggest challenges in my life. .
