Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Third Phase

Third Phase Path on the Sea

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Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

 

Life offers moments when our primary ancientrail seems to run out, fade off into a meadow surrounded by a forest or stopping at a rocky cliff, leading into the dark waters of a great lake.  Entry into the third phase is such a signal  moment.

The paths of education, family and career no longer extend into the distance, rather they can be seen now from trail’s end, a looking back at how knowledge came, how the children grew, the winding journey careered until it no longer mattered.

Ahead is a dark forest, or a sheer wall of Ely greenstone, a watery path like the one in Anthony Machado’s Pathmaker, “…there is no path, only the wake on the sea.”  No wonder then that the third phase can force relationships to alter, to find new footing.  Nor is it a mystery that the kind of doggedness and ambition so characteristic of life’s first and second phases turns into a short sword for hara kiri.  This time insists on, no, demands a new ancientrail and the trail head  lies hidden behind rock or fire or under water or deep in an unknown forest.

How can we proceed?  This is a time for stillness.  For quiet listening.  To the Thou with whom you walk in your inner garden and the Thou with whom you walk in your outer life.  This is a time for adventure.  Risk taking.

This might be a fairy tale where a magic doors opens right into the heart of the rock.  Or a mermaid awaits to guide you under the lake.  Perhaps a Vergil will find you in the dark wood wandering and take your hand.  This is no time to be shy about learning from the other, the Thou; this is no time to be shy about opening your mind beyond what seems obvious, like the imperviousness of rock.

Look for the faint letters written in Elvish, which you find you can speak.  As you say them a door appears.  Don’t waste time on how or why, just walk through the door and close it behind you.  Away you go.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Third Phase

It Takes Courage To Get To The Ancient Altar

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Imbolc                                                                 Valentine Moon

“It takes courage to get to the ancient altar
of the moment where I create individual time…I am making it, my time visibly becoming me.”    “Individual Time,” Alice Notley

If I interpret her poem correctly, in it Alice Notley has commented on this author picture, arguing against those who would have had it prettied up.  And I get it.

When we talked about wrinkles and road map faces last night, I believe we were in her territory.  I wanted then to quote a favorite author Jorge Luis Borges, but the quote was longer than I could recall easily.  Here it is:

“Through the years, a man (sic) peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.” – Jorge Luis Borges

Combining the two we could say that it takes courage to get to the ancient altar of our own aged face.  And to follow Notley, why alter what it took courage to gain?

The Keaton side of my family, my Mom’s family, wrinkles early and the men go bald.  That means I look my age and then some.  I have no problem with that.  This face is what you get when you look at me; it’s the one I’ve earned and I’m glad to have it.  No amount of smoothing, lifting or making up will change what it is, the patient labyrinth of lines that trace my own image, the long journey to this ancient altar.

 

 

Aging, Art and Culture, Family, Third Phase

Wow. You’re Really Old Grandma

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Imbolc                                                               Valentine Moon

Over half done with the move.  I can feel the new shape already fitting round my shoulders as I work.  Volumes ready to hand.  Ideas jumping from one to another with just a scan.  A good feeling.

A bit achy but that seems to come with the 66th birthday.  Talked to grandson Gabe, 4 and  1/2 tonight.  He asked Kate how old she was.  68, she said.  Wow.  That’s really old Grandma.  Oh, yeah.  From the mouth’s of babes.

(Old Man with Beard, Rembrandt)

How old?  So old that we’re going to a meeting tomorrow to talk with a women who is, as her book title says, New at Being Old.  Us, too.  This is a Woolly Mammoth gathering and we’re all of a certain age.  Just which we’re not certain, but a certain age of that we’re sure.

When it comes to life, though, I feel gathered, present, neither old nor young, just here, ready to go, still.  Epictetus had a depressing way to think of it:   “You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.”  Still, the soul or the self continues to grow and mature as the mansion begins to sag at the corners, a window or two popping out, new paint needed on the doors, tuck pointing here and there.

So, I feel as engaged, if not more, with my life and work as I have ever.

Aging, Dreams, Family, Garden, Latin, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

The Life Ahead

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Imbolc                                                                Valentine Moon

So.  66.  Tomorrow.  How that long-haired, green book bag carrying, dope smoking political radical could be turning 66 is, I admit, a puzzle.  Yes, he looks a bit different in the mirror.  Well, ok, quite a bit different.  Instead of long hair, little hair.  Instead of the book bag, a kindle.  Not smoking at all.  Hmmm, still a radical though.  Guess the other stuff is detritus of past fashion.

After passing the last great social milestone before the final one, that is, signing up for Medicare, my life has taken on a new cast.  I’ve written about it here, a change that came gradually but with a strange persistence.  That new cast has home, writing, Latin and friends as its core.  It entails reduced traveling into the city, a much lower profile in terms of volunteer work in either politics or the arts.  A word that sums it for me is, quieter.

Quieter does not mean less energetic or engaged, rather it signals a shift in focus toward quieter pursuits:  more reading, more writing, more scholarship, more time with domestic life.  Unlike the pope I do not intend to give up my beloved theological writing. (Kate believes he’s suffering from dementia.)  I intend rather a full-on pursuit of the writing life, novels and short stories, a text on Reimagining Faith.  This full-on pursuit means active and vigorous attention to marketing.

The primary age related driver in this change is greater awareness of a compressed time horizon, not any infirmity.  How many healthy years will I have?  Unknown, though I do actively care for myself.  Still, the years will not be kind, no matter what I do.  So, I had best get my licks in now, while I can still work at my optimum.

So, the man turning 66 has a different life ahead of him than did the man turning 65.   An exciting and challenging life.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings

The Most Amazing Thing

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Winter                                                                   Cold Moon

What’s the most amazing thing you ever saw with your own eyes?  Question posed by the weekly calendar I mentioned a couple of days ago.

Interesting question.  30 years or so ago I was at the bedside of a dying woman.  Her son was there, too.  She was an irascible, even ornery person, though with a flint core of honesty.

She and her son were not particularly close and I knew her through regular visits to the senior citizen high rise in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood.  Part of my work with the West Bank Ministry.

She had lapsed into the labored breathing so often preceding death.

We, the son and I, stood beside her bed, taken completely by the final drama.  Finally, she raised up a bit, sighed and breathed no more.

That moment was so peaceful, intimate, and spiritual, a moment of profound and universal transition, it transformed both of us.  At least for a while.

We went down to the cafeteria, drank coffee.  Quietly.  Bonded.  I saw him a few more times, conducted a brief service for her.  Then we went our separate ways.

Why choose this moment?  I’m not sure, but its finality juxtaposed with its peacefulness combined to create an electric, vital moment.  Maybe it was the injection of hope that my own end could be so graceful.  Maybe it was the awe-ful and final intimacy of such a time.

I’m not sure it’s the most thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes, but it’s up there, for sure.

Aging, Family, Garden, Health

Heavy Lifting

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Fall                                                                               Fallowturn Moon

Unanticipated consequences.  Kate’s upper body, shoulders and neck, screamed at her yesterday and are still doing it today.  Why?  She’s had to do all the (more or less) heavy lifting since my surgery.  One of my jobs in our marriage is to do the heavy lifting, literally. Now, I have my limits, too, of course, but they’re much higher than Kate’s.     Singapore

We’ve had to buy dogfood in 20 pound bags rather than 35 so I can carry it.  I made sure the water softener got it in, finally, before the surgery.  40 pounds per bag.  When Kate weeds, she takes the plant out roots, soil and all.  Puts them in plastic buckets.  They get heavy quick.  She had to empty her own this past month, using smaller buckets to empty the larger one.  I had the surgery in late September to be sure I could move honey supers if I needed to.  No need this year, unfortunately.

There’s also laundry and groceries.  Various items to take up and down stairs.  We’re done with our Excalibur (geesh) food dryer so it goes back in the basement.  Jars of canned tomatoes, peaches, apple butter go down, too.

Today I’m going to split a bag of composted manure in half so I can carry it down to the bed where I’m to plant the lilies and iris I have left to put in the ground.  I’ll be glad when this is done and I can get back to doing all these things plus my resistance work.  One more week.

Aging, Family

Sleepless in Denver

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Summer                                      Hiroshima Moon

Everybody came over here to the hotel and we jumped in the pool.  First time I’ve been in the water in several years.  I haven’t missed it.

Is there anything better than a six year old granddaughter running down the hall yelling, Grandpop, and jumping into your arms?

Gabe, four year old grandson, coming from the opposite direction, also yelled Granpop, but kept running right past me to his mom.

Later on we ate at a Denver Bucca’s.  Another good day.

Not finding sleep easy tonight. Pillow’s don’t work well and the cooling, while not broken, is not up (or down) to my usual standards.  That is, Kate’s.

Tomorrow the Olson family heads out for an 8 a.m. bris.  The mohel could not make another time.  Since this rite of passage, circumcision, occurs 8 days after birth, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for negotiation.

I plan to eat breakfast, then write.

Aging, Family, Retirement

49 Years of Service

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Summer                                                  Under the Lily Moon

Yesterday Kate worked her last shift, finishing off a career that began as a scrub tech in Des Moines in 1963.  That’s 49 years.

Tomorrow she leaves at noon for her high school reunion in Nevada, Iowa.  Her 50th.  (That’s a long a on the first one in Nevada, for those of you uninitiated.)

And, perhaps the greatest irony, today comes the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Obama Healthcare legislation.  Kate’s a staunch supporter of universal health care.

She’s been right and ahead of her time on many, many issues in medicine.  She’s right on this one, too.

(this picture taken on the first day after Kate left full-time work behind.  About three years ago or so.  She knows where she is.)

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

I’m So Glad

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Beltane                                     Garlic Moon

Be Glad You Exist, the Greek inscription I mentioned a few posts ago, got me thinking.  A persistent prod in American culture is the I’m not doing that well enough, or fast enough, or soon enough or with the right attitude.  Not studying enough, eating too much, not working enough, not working out enough, not relaxing, not being charitable enough or financially successful enough.

It’s an argument from lack that has as its premise that jockey metaphor I came up with a month or so ago.  In case you forgot, I did until just now, I suggested that many of us take on board, sometime in childhood, a jockey who rides us, rides us hard, always pushing us toward the next, the better, the hoped for, the not yet achieved.

This argument from lack is the jockey’s prod, his quirt that comes out when he senses flagging will or decreasing purpose.

But, what if Be Glad You Exist was the baseline?  Just that.

Then we might start not from a place of lack but from a place of adding, of completing, of maturing, of enriching.  Moving ourselves not with the lash, but with a model more like Maslow’s where the underpinning opens new possibilities, like the emergence of the butterfly, say, from the caterpillar.  A caterpillar is not a lesser butterfly, but its necessay precursor.

Orienting ourselves this way (I realize I’m writing about myself here, but maybe a bit about you, too.) does not require the scorched earth of bad diet, bad language skills, inadequacy of any kind; rather, it could have Be Glad You Exist as the ground of our being.  Sounds like a good thing to me.

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Retirement, Third Phase

A Third Phase Entry: Learning How to Die

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Beltane                                              New Garlic Moon

Whew.  Over to Riverfalls (east into Wisconsin, about an hour) for Warren’s father’s funeral.  Then, in rush hour, out to St. Louis Park for the Woolly meeting this month at the Woodfire Grill. (west of the Cities)  So much driving.

Funerals.  The wedding equivalent of our age range.  We meet friends there, catch up, honor the family and the final journey.  Then we go home, secretly glad we were attending another funeral, not being featured.

Though.  We agreed tonight, Mark, Scott, Bill, Frank and myself, that what we learn from Moon’s recent death, Warren’s father and mother, Sheryl’s father and mother, Bill and Regina’s confrontation with cancer, is how to die.  It is the end of this phase of life as surely as a degree ended the first phase, career and family the second.

It is this that changed at our retreat two weeks ago.  We acknowledge and are ready to learn how to die.  And how to live until we do.  It is a joy and a true blessing to have men ready to walk down this ancientrail together.  And to be one of them.