Before I sleep
Sleep is one thing I always look forward to at the end of the day. It’s just the perfect way to end it. I consider it a great blessing to be able to get sleepy and then effortlessly fall asleep.
Many of my peers say they are unable go to sleep at night, and some of them think it’s because of too many catnaps taken during the day. Catnaps creep up on me, too, often when I least expect it, like when I’m on the sofa watching TV. But never yet in company or at table or in the car or on the plane—like Erica Jong, in “Fear of Flying,” afraid that if she did not remain awake and alert the plane, it would crash. I identified with it myself riding in a car.
In my senior years, even after having catnapped, I still get sleepy at about 10 p.m. However, it takes me just as long to prepare for bed as to go out to a party, because I take time doing my rituals—skin cream and lotion on the face, hands and feet. In my younger days, one quick face-washing with soap and water was enough. Now it’s the senior fear of drying that prolongs the rituals.
Yes, no spot is spared by drying—eyes, mouth, skin. I need to apply eyedrops and lip balm, and, through the nostrils, I spray some saline solution.
Brushing teeth used to be simpler, too; now there’s a lot of flossing to be done. Are my gums drying too? There are gaps between my teeth now that weren’t there before. It’s those same gaps that require me to use a toothpick after meals, something I never needed to do when I was younger.
Before I turn off the light, I take my photosensitive cholesterol pill and my GERD medication. I drink half a glass of water.
If I haven’t prayed the rosary yet, I pray it with both legs up at an obtuse angles against the headboard and hold the position for the 20 minutes that the praying takes.
Always a sleepyhead
Many times Vergel comes to bed and finds me fast asleep in that position. That’s when my guardian angel finishes the rosary for me, but that doesn’t happen too often. If he catches me awake he joins me, at about the last decade, in both the prayer and the prayer position.
Most of my friends say they cannot sleep earlier than midnight. Others sleep too early and wake up at 4 a.m. One or two cannot sleep at all. I guess I’m better off having no sleeping problem. Vergel says my problem sometimes is staying awake.
Indeed, since high school I have always been a sleepyhead. If I had homework it had better be done as soon as I got home, often while still in my school uniform. I folded up early even then. In fact, some callers after dinner, especially boys, complained I tended to fall asleep on the phone—the spell of regular, heavy breathing gave me away. It must be true because I’d wake up the next day with the phone off the hook beside me.
When I was younger I slept all through the night. After turning 80, I would be rudely awakened by my bladder. My first prayer, therefore, was to make it in time, otherwise I’d have to do emergency laundry and mopping. Mercifully, it’s already about 6:35 a.m., about the time I want to wake up anyway, particularly on aqua aerobics days. On other days I go back to sleep until past 8 a.m.
There is this theory that insomnia in older people comes from fear of dying. Slipping into sleep indeed requires some kind of surrender, of letting go. My mom herself went in her sleep. At her wake, perhaps to console me, everyone wished they would be as lucky. She was 85.
But no one really wants to go, not just yet, and anything that reminds us of the inevitable is hardly welcome, no matter what age.
This reminds me of a story told by a meditation master about a very busy and successful businessman, the last person everyone imagines to have no trouble sleeping. When he is asked how someone like him could go to sleep so easily every night, he laughs and says, “That’s because every night before I close my eyes to sleep, I set fire to everything I own!”
I don’t have much to burn myself, so when I close my eyes, I’m out like the light. INQ
