My 92-year-old great uncle just lost his license. Nothing had happened; there was no incident, thank god—it was just Time. Actually, it was Time a long time ago. Long about 2003, I rode shotgun on his grocery store run, and all I remember is feeling my heart beating in my neck and hanging onto the oh-shit handle so hard I gave myself calluses. Since then his cognitive abilities have deteriorated. Two days after he buried his dead cat in the back yard, he said, “Now where has that cat Oliver gotten to?” Moreover, he can’t hear or see a whole lot.
So my mom, who takes care of my uncle, consulted with his doctor and his lawyer, and they said, yep, get him evaluated. (By the way, did you know it costs over $300 to get an elderly person screened for driving? You’d think that society might want to bear that burden, seeing as not doing it could get somebody killed, but nope. Out of pocket.)
Of course the evaluation said to get him off the road.
Now he’s miserable and blaming my mom, which is totally unfair because she’s done nothing but cook him dinner, help him keep up the house and gardens, and play two games of cribbage with him every night for the last decade. Plus, she’s devastated for him too. She told me that, after she got the news, she cried straight through her voice lesson. And that’s normally the happiest hour of her week.
I get it, though—he’s pissed and scared. Pissed because even though his daily rounds included only the post office, the dump, and Stop & Shop, it was his routine. His life. And scared because when the DMV revokes your license, well, that’s sort of the beginning of the end, innit? What’s the timeframe between losing the right to drive and having to have somebody wipe your ass for you? Probably not that long.
Ugh. Old age, man. I have to remember that even though I’m feeling old, I’m not. I can drive to Kroger, and I remember putting Boonie in the ground, and I can wipe my own ass. Thank god for that.