After graduating from college and entering the adult world of full-time employment, I remember feeling shock at the interruption of one of life’s basic rhythms. I would never again have a summer vacation. But I gradually learned to stop living in 9 month units separated by interludes of relative freedom.

When we get older, we have to make a similar adjustment with respect to health. Life is no longer stretches of carefree prefect health separated by brief interludes of minor annoyances — injuries, dental issues, etc. Life becomes an ongoing effort of dealing with this and that.

Before she died in 2021 my Torah study friend Sue Lubin made an unexpectedly comforting remark about being old and having health issues. “At my age,” she said, “there’s always something going wrong. I just say ‘Add it on.'” How was that comforting?

But the older I get the stranger phenomenon comfort becomes.

Ten years ago, when I had a health scare, my friend Britt said horrible things. He didn’t listen like good listeners do. He didn’t say kind words. He certainly did not make sympathetic noises. The fucker did not say a single prayer for me or emit any positive vibes, or anything related to that well-wishing genre of benevolence. No. Britt made fun of me and of my fear and of the indignities I was enduring for the first time. He said it all paled in comparison to the ordeal of having a lemon-sized cyst in his asscrack lanced. His procedure was observed by a group of young, healthy, beautiful medical students. He said in the twilight of semi-lucidity before his anesthesia knocked him the rest of the way out, he feebly attempted to seduce his nurse with poetic overtures. He helped me understand that human dignity is not nearly as necessary as we assume when our dignity is still mostly-intact. It was comforting. It’s what comedians do, bless their hearts.