Category Archives: Aging

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.

Aging, Health, Retirement, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Yet More Loss

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Beltane                                                              Beltane Moon

Got back from the retreat about 12:30.  Took a shower, rested a bit, then hopped in the car for Moon’s reviewal at Washburn-McCreavy in Bloomington.

The bulk of the mourners were Chinese, the Fong family, but there were friends of Scott and of Yin who, like me, are round eyes.   A bowl of red envelopes, take one please, sat next to cards of hand-written calligraphy and a second bowl of hard candy.  An order of service for the funeral the next day had a color photograph of Moon on the cover.

Moon lay in a casket at the end of the first hall, hands crossed over her chest, fabric work and calligraphy with her.  Next to the coffin a video played, showing pictures from Moon’s life, including one with a curly headed Yin, young and beautiful.

Mourners wore red bands to indicate celebration of Moon’s life, though a few wore black bands to indicate her centenary; while 97 at her death, Chinese custom adds four years, so her age according to Chinese tradition was 101.

There were the usual clots of well-wishers gathered around person they know, wandering from board to board of photographs and watching, again, the video shown in two places in a hall separate from the reviewal room itself.

I spoke to Yin, then to Scott, said we’d talk later and left.

When I got home, I had an e-mail from Warren that his father, Wayne, whom he had put in hospice care only Wednesday, had completed his journey.  Warren’s phrase.  Warren, referencing the end of Longfellow’s Hiawatha, said he thought his Dad might last longer, but “he was in a faster canoe.”

These are times of transition, of change, of loss, of gathering in the lessons of a lifetime and using them for this third, last phase of our own journeys.  We knew it before the retreat and now we have fresh and poignant evidence.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

What Now?

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Spring                                                                Beltane Moon

Now what?  First draft put to bed.  In Kate’s hands now.

Kate asked how I was doing this morning during our business meeting.  I’m not an immediate answer to that sort of question kind of guy.  So, I paused, reflected.

“I always knew I would mature late,” I said.

Long ago I read a monograph on the development of people in various fields.  The longest was the philosopher/theologian, somewhere in the 50’s.  Since I’ve battered my through more than one field, I figured I’d be later.

“With Greg (Latin tutor) asking me to collaborate on the commentary (Ovid’s Metamporphoses) and the completion of Missing’s first draft, I’m feeling like I may be hitting my maturity at last.”

I’m beginning to feel grown up, as if I’ve retrieved my birthright from the convoluted labyrinth of my life.  This is not, interestingly, about achievement, but about individuation, about becoming who I am and who I will be.

“So,” I told Kate, “I’m feeling pretty good.  Not jump up and down, yippee good, I’m too northern European for that, but pretty good.”

That’s how I am this morning.

Aging, Asia, Friends, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Moon Also Rises

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Spring                                                           Beltane Moon

The second rainy chilly day.  Perfect.  Tomorrow and Tuesday will be outside days again, planting and other things, but now I have my gas stove turned on, the study is warm and I’m going to have another day of writing, reading and watching movies.

A friend’s mother-in-law, 97, lies at home, hospice care.  A Chinese national, born in Canton, she has created a long and active life, filled with calligraphy, gardening, cooking, writing, reading and family.

Another friend went out and stayed the night with her yesterday.

Moon’s decline underscores the transition for our men’s group.  Death and serious illness has become common, no longer stories of other’s lives.  Perhaps Moon, as well as any other,  shows a way to live into the Third Phase.

She did not give up the things that made her who she was.  She stayed rooted in her tradition, yet took parts of it and made them her own and, in so doing, transformed them from things of yesterday into things of today and tomorrow.  Each of the Woolly’s have our names in Chinese courtesy of Moon.  She wrote poetry and a book of hers was published a couple of years ago by her family.

Many were the meals at Scott’s house in which Moon added her touches to Yin’s work.  She had a quiet way, yet exuded a person who knew who she was, a person complete and whole, a real presence in the world.  No one’s cipher.

Now Moon rises in the night sky.  She will not be forgotten.