Old Age Sleeping

From the TV show, Big Bang Theory:
Dr. Jeffries (actor Bob Newhart, playing an aging scientist who has answered his door in his bathrobe in the evening) to Sheldon Cooper (actor Jim Parsons, playing an eccentric weirdo scientist, standing at the door of Dr. Jeffries house).
JEFFRIES:  Sheldon, what do you want?
SHELDON:  I hope I'm not bothering you.
JEFFRIES:  Of course you are bothering me.  I am 83 years old.  It's almost 7:00 PM.  I need to go to bed because, in about three hours, I will have to get up, pee, and wander around the house.

Big laugh!  Big laugh at the expense of old folks!
But oh so sadly true!

I don't know why or how, but ever since I retired in 2009, I have never had to set an alarm clock.   I have no trouble falling asleep, ever, but I can't seem to STAY asleep.  My body somehow wakes up 2-3 hours later.  Like clockwork.  I used to blame my nightly wine libations, but I stopped drinking, long term.  The pattern didn't stop.

I am one of those people who thinks that lying in bed awake is actually harmful to the effort to fall back into slumberland.  I get up, piddle, and...well...wander around the house.  At some point, I usually--eventually--go back to bed, but the result is never the same as if I'd had a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.  If I get five hours of sleep, I consider myself lucky.  It's usually much less.  At the same time, at that time schedule, the nights get very long...

I'm not a superficial-symptom pill-taker.  I will NOT take sleeping pills.  I do, however, take a tablet of Melatonin at night, if I think I need it...but all that does is, supposedly, make me sleepy when falling asleep is not my problem.  Ugh! 

What this whole thing about getting old does for me, however, is help me to understand why there is a common joke about old people going to eat dinner at a restaurant at 4:00 PM.  Maybe they've actually been UP since 4:00 AM, and are hungry before the evening's routine gets started.  If there were still a regular routine about work, stress, family, and sleep, it would all work.

When I was still teaching and keeping a home for my daughter and grandchildren, I was exhausted all the time.  (Actually, I was exhausted all the time even before they moved in with me.  Teaching is very stressful!)  My only free time, in those days, was filled with propping my daughter up in her college classes and doing endless, endless loads of laundry.  I longed for the day that I could retire and not have to meet a rigid schedule of responsibility.  And when it happened, it happened BIG TIME.  I retired. Then I had a heart attack.  The day I got home from that, my grandson suffered a head injury from a bike accident that got him sent to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis from a hospital in Muncie, 90 miles away.  And scarcely a month after that, my daughter gave up custody of the children to their father on an hour's notice, and left for California with a new love three months after that.  I haven't really slept well since.

I can't blame my insomnia on all of those stresses.  I wish I could.  I just think the timing was a perfect storm.  I have back problems and other aches and pains that go with that, some of which keep waking me up at night.  And fear about wondering what will happen to me during the night.  And, apparently, the need for less sleep due to less physical activity every day.  And, also apparently, the fact that old people have problems staying asleep at night.  (Which goes to explain why my grandparents no longer slept together in their later years.  She had problems with pain.  He snored horribly.)  Combine that with the other life-stresses, and you have the recipe for an inability for quality sleep.  So, here I am retired with no work responsibilities, unable to sleep in, which was my dream for when I retired!

Unlike Dr. Jeffries, I am usually not awakened by a need to use the bathroom.  (That is an advantage of being female and not having a prostate.)  But I do get up after three hours and wander around the house.  It is what it is.  So laugh all you want about old people being up at 5:00, eating lunch at 11:00, supper at 4:00, and being in bed by 9:00.  Ha ha ha!  But the joke will be on you, someday.

That's not a curse, by the way.  Just a prediction.  I won't live long enough to know how it works out for you, but I'll meet you in Heaven's Coffee House in the hereafter so we can discuss it!