Gray's Academy

Adventurously aging

I decided today would be the day to start writing my travel blog. I wrote and edited until I was satisfied with what I had written, knowing this is not some literary masterpiece. There will be typos and grammar errors. I pushed publish and poof! It disappeared. Now, several frustrating hours later, I am starting from scratch.

Technology that became available to us in the third or fourth quarter of our lives presents a challenge most of us didn’t ask for and often wish wasn’t so pervasive in our lives – this requires us to become adventurous! So I am embracing this adventure in Sicily and also documenting this adventure for myself and anyone else who wants to join me. I have no idea what I am doing! I have never taken Italian language lessons before or rented an apartment in a country where I don’t speak the language.

Six years ago my husband and life partner for over half my life died. Larry had a glioblastoma. In these last six years I have witnessed more friends and family members struggle with some kind of cancer. My sister Cathy’s husband Steve has had stage for prostate cancer for six years. So far he has beaten the odds and predictions of his doctors, but that cancer is coming after him aggressively right now. Cancer seems to have an inner knowing to go after that which a person values most. Larry had a brilliant mind. He never lost himself after his diagnosis. He was still funny and kind and loving. But he couldn’t run his financial advising firm any longer. As timing would have it, he was in the final few years of a ten year buyout of his financial advising firm and close to complete retirement. He never had the chance to enjoy what he had worked so hard to build – financial security and freedom for adventure in his later life – his life was taken from him, and from everyone else who loved him a few weeks before his 71st birthday.

Steve was confident in his masculinity, but not a macho man. His cancer was testosterone dependent so he had to shut down his testosterone.Early in his treatment he went thru menopause, including mood swings and hot flashes while his body hair gradually disappeared. I will leave it to your imagination about what other bodily changes he was challenged with. Damned cancer – how does it know?

Our health can become a challenge as we age. I am bionic now. Five years ago, at age 61 a sports medicine doctor told me I needed two new knees. My reply, “I want to do them both at the same time. I can’t rehab one knee when the other one is also a mess.” I found a wonderful doctor in Dale Whittaker at Baptist Beaches hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. He was a gray top, like me. I did not know, and most people don’t, is that there is rarely a surgical contraindication to replacing both knees at the same time. Most surgeons won’t do it because insurance only pays 50% for the second knee. Huh? The insurance company would rather pay for two pre-ops, operating rooms, rehab? Seriously? That’s insane. But Dr. Dale Whittaker willingly took the financial hit for me and he helped get me moving again. My goal was to hike the mountains of North Carolina. I did that less than six months later.

Two and a half years later I needed a new right hip. I still wasn’t moving as much as I should and I do not mean just physical movement. I was stuck in every conceivable way.

Last summer I had rotator cuff repair surgery. The rehab for shoulder surgery is a real bear even when compared to bilateral knees and a hip. It was a physically painful six months, My goal? I needed to make sure I could put my own suitcase in the overhead bin. I was getting ready!

Last summer I said goodbye to Max, my 14 year old Shih Tzu. Max was supposed to be my dog but the moment I brought him home he preferred Larry. This wasn’t anything new. Most living beings preferred Larry to me. I am an acquired taste. Being Larry’s favorite person was always enough for me. His death devastated me and I just stopped moving.

I am ready to start moving again. I am chronicling my first adventure since I said, “I will” to Larry. This is primarily for myself but also for anyone who wishes to join me on my journey from despair to what? I have no idea!

In two weeks I am leaving for Sicily, Taormina specifically. I visited Sicily in April on a small group tour with Guiseppe Micheletta and Mike Di Girolamo’s tour company Cucina Sabina. This was the first time I had traveled in more than seven years and also my first visit to Sicily.

I was in a small group of three. Carol and Robbie from Jacksonville Florida were my travel companions. They are delightful people and we clicked immediately. They live less than a mile for a home I owned for a short period of time in Jacksonville, Florida. It also meant that I was once again a third, fifth, seventh, or ninth wheel. We live in a couples world. It gets tiresome and feels isolating to be the only single fish in a sea of committed-to-one-another couples. Carol and Robbie, with Guiseppe, tucked me under their wings and we all had a marvelous time. As we said our goodbyes in the Lobby of the Belvedere Hotel in Taormina. I cried as I embraced them. I finally knew I could fall in love again, because I had fallen in love with so many of the people I meant in Sicily, and also Sicily itself.

The island captivated me to such an extent that before I left I had rented a small apartment outside the city gate and signed up for three weeks of Italian immersion classes. School starts in two weeks. I will be attending Babilonia, a small school in the beautiful town of Taormina. I finally realized that if I didn’t make my life work for me, it would just continue to not work for me?

I am discovering the power of moving outside of my zone of comfort. So I will spend time writing about what’s in front of me and less time looking at what once was. I started doing that in January 2023 when I asked myself what do I miss most about my old life? Answer: Travel…Next, what is it that I can do now, just for myself, that I could or would not do if Larry was still alive? Answer? Whatever you want? Well, not exactly. I do have to take the barnacles of aging with me.

So, here goes!

More later from Gray’s Academy

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