The first time I asked her “Are you afraid of dying?” was in an elevator going up the eight flights to her apartment in Nassau in the Bahamas. She was, by then, at least in her very late 70’s or early 80’s. It seemed like the right time to initiate those hard conversations.
Funny to think back on it now; how our parents had to pluck up the courage to have those ridiculous awkward ‘sex’ talks with us when we were young. They were always too late and usually too formal to be of any real use. But now it’s our turn. We steel ourselves, strategize when the perfect time might be to discuss legacy, death, finances, final care requirements with our parents. What might they want? Have they written final instructions? Have we?
My mother who was a devoted cultural Jew but having no religious practice or conviction, surprised me with her answer. She said, rather too quickly I thought, but then I too am quick to both respond and sometimes judge, “No, why should I be afraid? I have done nothing wrong.”
Apparently, and surprisingly, her cosmology allowed for the prospect of punishment in the thereafter if you have not behaved well. I did not pursue it with her at the time because we went down another awkward path.
“Well,” I persisted irritatingly, “what about before death? Are you scared about any of the many things that might happen before you die?” Again, with the certainty reserved for those who are in either abject denial or conviction, she said, “When my time comes, I will simply die, it’s natural.”
Ah, would it be so! It usually is not and was not so for her. Dying is a tough business and usually requires some practice runs or previews, often over many years or decades. She suffered progressive cognitive decline over 15 long years before it finally took her life at 90. During that decade and a half, we went through the full range of hardships in deference to the details and care required to keep her safe, warm, dry and at home. She went through the full gamut of confusion, anger, denial, defiance, moments of sweet gratitude until the time came when all of it was washed away by a mind so diminished, she was incapable of fighting any more.
Every three months, I come out with a piece of considered writing. Why? Because the discipline of doing it, the commitment of doing this brings me to my computer in curiosity. It requires that I take a dive into what is really brewing beneath the surface of regular life. What is niggling away wanting the light of exploration. Sometimes I already know, because like a dog, I’m already gnawing on a subject, as happened with the last posting, Take 4. I’m already turning it over, tearing back the skin, sucking on the marrow. But more often it’s like now. A sense just under the ribcage, a tightening or a fluttering, a walk down a darkened passage, faithful to the process of discovery with no clear direction or sensation. Just a willingness to explore the nooks and crannies that call out along the way.
We live in an ever changing highly complex culture that reveres youth and all things energetic, innovative and youthful. We base our economy, and are thereby dependent upon growth and expansion, whether it be of markets, houses, cities or wealth, irrespective of how unsustainable it is over time. How then are we to orient when the magical peak of our powers and capacities have crested and we start that inevitable natural downhill cruise which starts slowly at first, almost imperceptible, but gains in speed in ever increasing increments. How do each of us orient to the ‘less’ of it all? Less energy, less vitality, less taut, less visible, less adventuresome?
Maybe even less curious?
We trade in ‘more’. They are our bargaining and bartering chips. Yet before we die, unless we die suddenly though accident, stroke, heart attack, or at the hand of other, we fade. Sometimes and more usually, we develop a disease which fades us, sometimes when we are young, more usually as we age. In the last post written in September, I was more focused on how it is for a society to bear the brunt of an aging population who can no longer contribute to its own wellbeing or welfare. This time I would like to focus more directly on how we each of us orient to the period of decline in our lives that might be the precursor to death, or may just be the first blush of that gentle fade into the autumn or winter of our lives before the lights are finally and irrevocably turned off.
We are approaching Winter in earnest. If you are living in the Western hemisphere, you are with me in that cultural experience known as Winter Solstice and the Holiday Season. On the day after thanksgiving, our little but charming town holds a ‘Bringing on the Light’ ceremony, when at 6:30pm as darkness is falling, one million lights that have been decoratively strung throughout the picturesque downtown all get switched on at once. It’s quite magical and this year I went into our town square to see it. That moment of transformation, from darkening sky to a magically lit town warrants the collective and appreciative sighs that occur. You do not have to be a kid to be wowed. We were all wowed. Big people and little people equally.
It occurred to me yet again, and with a certain quiet chuckle that celebrating Christmas with its many lights is a direct derivative from the Jewish Channukah which were the lights of my childhood December. A massive cultural appropriation you might say. But then again, the Jews were bold enough to steal their notion of bringing light into the darkest time of year from the folks who came before. It was their attempt to convert the beliefs of the people from paganism to a more theistic belief system. I mention all this as a way of appreciating both the absurdity of the furor of cultural appropriation debate that is raging around so many things, since almost everything is borrowed from those who came before who were either ousted, destroyed or were the platform to jump from. But mainly, the lights of this time of the year are a way to talk about how we bring light into our darkest nooks and crannies. Not only in a vain attempt to deny them, but also as a counter weight and to enable us to see into our darkness, rather than simply shut the door to our fears and turn our backs to their existence.
The fading of the light of our lives does merit the light of our attention, the light of our awareness and the full dose of our compassionate hearts. It does warrant our holy regard, by which I mean, the weight of conversation, of discussion, of sharing, one with another. It is hard to fade, to go against our particular cultural values and cease to be that relevant regenerative creative light. It is hard to be physically limited by disease or simply worn down by life.
Which aged starlet or renowned French writer once said, ‘I wish on my deathbed to be completely worn out by life.’ What is the point of arriving intact at death’s door? Good point, but not so easy to practice.
We fight. We argue, oppose, avoid feeling the truth of where we find ourselves as we get sick, as we age and as we settle in for the long haul while we lose marbles or shed courage along the way. We try to look younger; we try to feel younger. We try to squeeze ourselves into the Lycra that fit us years ago. We get our teeth done, our eyes, our ears, our skin. We stretch, we dye, we diet, we shop.
I get it!
I don’t want to give up any of what was once considered some measure of attractiveness that I had and traded on. I am loath to give up the central place of utility I occupied when I worked and was a useful, helpful person. There are many goodies to be had from that jar. Yet I am also somewhat lazy and don’t see the point of working too hard against gravity or against time. I am lucky in so much as I live with a man who really is surrendered. By which I mean, he does not argue too vigorously with ‘what is’. Nor does he encourage me to do so, but he is tolerant, as he watches somewhat amused, somewhat alarmed as I still rile and thrash against the next disease, skin cancer or other small or large indignity that pops up along my way. He is immensely content with his lot and requires little for his great measure of delight. He definitely isn’t Jewish. That helps for sure. He doesn’t carry the angsty gene. So, I watch and maybe learn a little bit over the three decades of our joint life together. He, however, is also the only person of his age group that has no, I mean NO physical hardships to deal with. Everyone in my age group (ten years younger) that I know has some minor or major list of ailments worthy of a complex ‘organ recital’.
When you are sick, if you are like most people I know, you just want to feel better again, because feeling sick is miserable. I myself have just recently recovered from a one-week gastroenteritis which had me writhing and kicking up a massive complaint. Of course I did not wish to stay in that state. I got better, I suspected I would, although in the moment, it wasn’t at all sure. But what if feeling better also included the notion that these occurrences are now going to be part of how we walk towards the end days of life, so that we could walk with more of a chuckle and less alarm. My very active 94-year-old friend who recently broke his hip falling off his bicycle was complaining about how long it was taking for his hip to heal. When he told me this, I laughed and almost reached into the phone and the 1,500 miles that separated us to berate him and comfort him. To remind him how miraculous it is to be healing at all. To be alive at all, to be moving, talking etc. He being a smart guy got it in short order and soon we were both giggling. But being a smart guy, he also got a second opinion and is now, bravely, heading back to surgery to correct what was not properly repaired the first time round.
What if natural decline were not frowned upon but greeted with more welcome and acceptance? What if at retirement from the regular workforce one was welcomed into a new chapter of life with as much reverence as a young girl is welcomed into society during her coming of age ball, or welcomed into womanhood when she first gets her period? She is welcomed by her circle of elder women with flowers with song with story, with love.
The proverbial gold watch at the end of a long stint in a job is a kindly kick out the door, not a welcome into the next chamber.
What if openly heralding ‘the coming of aging’ chapter includes time and space for deeper consideration, time and space to broaden our horizons of thought and opinion, to smell the roses and not only have to plant and tend them. What if, a true welcome into this new chamber includes ways for us to consider the fact of and the merits (note to self) of softening into our own diminishment, not only fighting against it, or working so hard to maintain, as a hedge from it? We encourage the young to deal with the heartbreak of first loves, the losses inherent in entering the work force and the disappointments as they scrabble for their place and centrality in their own created universes. Could we not offer the same level of support as we exit that full, fulfilling and stressful chapter?
We talk more freely of death these days but not enough about orienting ourselves to loss. Loss of function, loss of mobility, loss of memory, loss of digestive capacity, loss of being pain free or even of rest or sleep. We do try to insulate ourselves from the many, often incalculable losses on the way to death, but seldom do we take the time and give ourselves permission to truly grieve those losses. We allow ourselves to grieve the loss of a beloved partner or a special friend, but do not so easily allow ourselves to grieve the one we once were, the perks we no longer have. We complain lots, we fight even more, but do not simply grieve, which might be the portal to allow more acceptance of the many losses we accrue along the way.
This grieving process allows us to dis-identify with who we were. A form of re-fresh. A sort of a re-set. This is who I am now. There is, after all, nothing sadder than being with friends who still try to milk the stories of ‘who they were’ and whom they used to know and the things they used to do that were important and of merit. Instead, we are the ones who are ‘not anymore that person’, but we get to re-discover ourselves, if we can truly let go of what once was and is not more.
If we ever do get to the point of accepting those inevitable losses, we are thereby also accepting our relative lack of control. Much happens which is out of our hands and I think, speaking at least for myself here, that I sometimes skew towards either over control or hands up in bewilderment. More realistically, I suspect we all tend to have both dominion and be subject to forces way beyond our control or dictate.
It was only after I had to stop working, which I grieved, due to a medical condition, which I also grieved because it changed my body’s resilience and stamina, did I find the internal space to start writing, poems, books, even these blog post pieces. Had I stayed a robust physical specimen, I would not have been forced to find a creative outlet that required less raw physical stamina and drew from another part of me that hitherto had been dormant or deeply underdeveloped. So yes, there is life on the other side of losses, but, and it’s a big but, we still have to go through the loss portal to find that out. Again and again.
There are those who certainly have attempted to shine such light; Zalman Schachter’s book, “From Aging to Sageing” is a stellar example. For those sentiments to hit a more acceptable cultural tone, each of us, no matter our age (again, note to self), have to examine and confront our own prejudices against loss and change. What it is to accept years, wrinkles, white hair, aches, conditions, even pain, as well as accepting the extreme privilege that age has the possibility of heralding; the space, the out breath, the chance of another but different round of creative output, the chance to develop more kindness, feel less pressured, be more exploratory, and maybe develop a different but hitherto undernourished aspect of self?
If you are reading this and are under 60 years of age you will not relate unless you have intimately known illness or unless you have had parents or older friends who find themselves in a new land for which they have neither a welcome mat nor a map.
If society does not change its stripes, we still can. We can do that for each other rather than constantly and only supporting each other to stay young, active, engaged in the same way as we used to be. While in conversation with a new friend, as we spoke freely and frankly about our fears for the future, he commented that, having lived so long, we might by now trust ourselves to simply ‘show up’ for whatever this uncertain future may have in store for us. After all, we have already weathered many a storm to have come this far. Sound reckoning, it seems.
I’m so in favor of living as my dear irreverent mother was apt to say, ‘each day as if it were your last, because one day, you will be right’. Loving it all, which includes knowing that some of us may be entering into or living in the season of loss, of less and letting that be ok, rather than constantly fighting the pull of the cycle cresting downhill at ever gathering speeds. Instead of the great argument, why not have one massively loud raucous holler all the way down. Each to our own natural resting place.
May this season of natural darkness bring with it the courage to look into rather than away from that darkness even as we snuggle into the warmth of loving connections and the wonder of those magical seasonal lights which get both switched on, and off, at their appointed time.
Holy Solstice and seasonal blessings.
