That’s what 70 channels on basic cable does to you

A few weeks ago, my husband came upstairs from the “Garden Level” of our condo where he was watching television and came into the bedroom where I was watching television. The “Garden Level” is what the reaI estate folks call the lower level in a split entry, and I like the idea. Somehow, it makes me feel less guilty than having Don watch television in the “basement.” There’s really no reason for my guilt. Our Garden Level is nicely decorated, warm and cozy, nothing like the basements we knew as kids. Besides, there is a bigger TV down there than there is in the bedroom.

Is this what empty-nester, senior-citizen marriage has come to in the 21st century? While he’s watching “The Best Years of Our Lives” with Frederick March, I’m enjoying Candice on “Divine Design.” That’s what 70 channels on basic cable does to you. I don’t know your excuse but it works for us.

Anyway, Don came upstairs and said, “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Oh,” I whined, “we’re about to come to the reveal. Can’t it wait?” (I’m thinking I’m watching too much HGTV. What do you think?) He went back downstairs.

When my show was over (and it was truly lovely) I went to the top of the stairs (I still can’t do the stairs very easily) and asked if he could put his movie on pause so we could talk.

“Well,” he said “I just started ‘The Winter of Our Discontent.’”

“OK,” I said. “I want to talk to you about something, too. It’s really important. How about getting together at 11?”

By 11, neither of us could remember what we needed to talk about. Luckily, by the next day, we could both remember what we needed to talk about. And we could laugh about it. Once in the car I reminded Don to put on his bathing suit, when I clearly meant his safety belt. The worst part of it is that he put on his safety belt.

There was a time when I would have really worried about this kind of thing, but after talking to dozens of my friends who are also struggling to remember names of people they’ve known for 20 years, where they put their glasses and whether or not they took their pills this morning actually had dementia were forced into a loony bin (that’s my fear anyway), it would have to be the size of Alaska. And it would have to have enough beds to stretch to the moon and back.

So instead of worrying about it, let’s say a prayer to one of the many holy men and women who continued to serve Our Lord and His Church until death. One I love and talk to frequently is St. Philippine Duchesne who was a missionary to the United States in 1818. She was 50 years old and aghast at the hardships she was suddenly forced to bear. Can you imagine what Missouri looked like in 1818? Philippine’s family had been members of the upper middle class in France and enjoyed the comforts of warm fires and helping hands of neighbors and friends. Now she was faced with cutting wood for the little convent and milking the cows. And she did it with great love and wrote back to the convent in France humorous tales of her adventures.

When Philippine arrived in New Orleans she felt she would only live to see her religious order, the Religious of the Sacred Heart, firmly established in the “New World,” and then God would call her Home. God had other ideas: she lived to be 83 years old. For 43 years, she served her community, helped start the first “free school” for the poor west of the Mississippi and firmly planted the RSCJ in North America. A sculpture of Mother Duchesne stands in the Hall of Honor in the Missouri Statehouse in Columbia for her contribution to education in that state. She is also honored with a stained glass window in the Cathedral in St Louis. She was buried in St. Charles, Mo., where she died in 1852.

St. Philippine, help me to stop complaining — and worrying about what the future might bring. And in the meantime, keep wearing your bathing suit.