It's All About Getting Up

It's all about getting out of bed. I went to bed at 9:00 PM last night; I was tired. Still, I couldn't sleep right away so I read until 9:55 PM, whereupon I put aside my book about T. E. Lawrence and his WW1 years in the Arabian desert. I closed my eyes. Sleep came to me quickly.

Notwithstanding the awakenings for my usual night time micturitions, I awoke the next morning, reasonably refreshed, at 9:00 AM. Yes, that is 11 hours of sleep, not something unusual for me, especially when I am tired. Yet even this allocation seemed insufficient. I decided to rest for a bit more. When I next awoke it was noon, or slightly thereafter. I was now at 14 hours of sleep, still feeling the same level of refreshment as I do every morning. No gain, no pain.

At this point, I faced two equally impalatable choices; remain in bed for no further gain, or suffer the pain of getting out of bed and making it into my day. One requires simply that I do nothing while gaining nothing from either more sleep or less painful activity. The other requires that I suffer the vicissitudes of arisal, the work of sitting up, the struggle to dress, the pain of the transfer, all so that I can do... nothing. Well, perhaps not nothing. I can write, I can have a coffee, I can eat something. Yet even these benefits have limited appeal when faced with the immediate effort of getting up.

There are no plans for my day, at least nothing with any certitude. I have some paperwork I should deliver downtown sometime over the next week. Today would work, as would tomorrow, or even next week. There's Name That Tune tonight, an optional event where I spend money I don't have on beer I probably don't need. Katherine might come over; she said she would come and help me rack some wine, but that can wait for another day. There really is no urgency or immediacy for me to be up and about.

Yet I get up. You see, I know one thing for certain. This disease is a long, slow, slide. Yet unlike the turkey who is fed each day and knows naught about tomorrow, I know that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I know that there is an end to the daily constancy of this slow transit. I know that getting out of bed is what I have to do because one day I will no longer be able to do it.

It's like the story of the fellow who jumps from a 30 story building. When asked, halfway down, how it was going, he replied "So far, so good." I know there will be a sudden stop at the bottom, even if the ride down seems to be going slowly, if not all that well. I wonder if others realize this, that what seems to be taking forever will suddenly stop, seemingly without warning, seemingly for no good cause. Yet there will be cause, the first sign of which will be that day when I decide I just cannot get out of bed, when I no longer have what it takes to get up.