Inner Beauty

A few weeks ago, June honored me with this award.  There are lots of blogger recognitions out there, but this one really touched me, probably because I’ve certainly not felt very beautiful of late, or very powerful.  Today, reading this simple sentence, I started thinking about the times in my life when I did walk with a sense of strong inner beauty, times when I felt powerful enough to turn winter into spring and set flowers to blossom in my footsteps.  Times when I had the confidence to take on the world and all its challenges, when I felt as if my life had a purpose, as if it mattered in more ways than just getting through another day. 

The first year of my marriage - oh, how beautiful and powerful I felt then.  And certainly that feeling arose from being loved so much, but also from being in charge of my own life for the first time, and seeing the future spread out before me, twinkling with promise like a million stars in the night sky.

Finishing college, finally getting my degree after 10 years, and graduating with honor, in spite of doing it all while working part time and caring for a toddler, gave me a unique sense of accomplishment, one I hadn’t felt in a long time.  Walking across that stage to get my degree, I could almost see the ice melt and smell the flowers springing up behind me.

Certainly playing music, performing, working as a team with other musicians - that’s heady sense of beauty for me.  Over the past dozen years I’ve pushed myself to new heights in that arena, worked to overcome performance anxiety and discovered what fun it is to entertain.  There is power and beauty in making people smile, through music.

And through writing.  Coming again to the practice of writing, finding a way to share thoughts and ideas with others- well, that provides a uniquely beautiful experience. 

 So it was good to recall those days when my sense of inner beauty reigned.  It reminded me I need to search for ways to allow the beautiful girl inside me to come out and play.  I don’t do that often enough, and I suspect most of you don’t either.  Because there is a beautiful girl inside everyone of us, even if they sometimes get lost among the tarnished realities of everyday life.

The words of Mary Oliver’s poem, When I Am Among the Trees, have really been speaking to me lately.  As a matter of fact, I printed the poem on a small card and have it tacked above my desk at work.  Here are the verses that resound in my heart…

 I am so distant from the hope of myself

in which I have goodness and discernment

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly and bow often.

And yet, the trees remind her with their simple grace and inner beauty, it’s really quite simple - “you too have come into the world to do this…to go easy…to be filled with light…and to shine.”

So now -thanks to June and Mary Oliver- I’m looking for ways to shine, my friends.

How about you?

 

 

Raised to Read

Although my mother wasn’t much of a reader, she honored my lifelong passion for the printed word, and took great pride in the early manifestations of my bookishness.  Books were never denied me, and whether obtained from the library or local department store, they were the things I most coveted throughout my childhood (along with fashion outfits for my Barbie doll).  I give my parents a lot of credit for indulging my book addiction, since an obsession for reading was probably rather foreign to them.

My son would likely have a different story to tell about me, and the way books figured in his life.  I suspect he would relate to Eudora Welty’s description of her mother, which I happened across yesterday while re-reading One Writer’s Beginnings…

I think of her as reading so much of the time while doing something else.  In my mind’s eye, The Origin of Species is lying on the shelf in the pantry under a light dusting of flour - my mother was bread maker, she’d pick it up, sit by the kitchen window and find her place, with one eye on the oven.  I remember her picking up The Man in Lower Ten while my hair got dry enough to unroll from a load of kid curlers trying to make me like my idol Mary Pickford.  A generation later, when my brother Walter was in the Navy and his two little girls often spent the day at our house, I remember Mother reading the new issue of Time magazine while taking the part of the Wolf in a game of “Little Red Riding Hood” with the children.  She’d just look up at the right time, long enough to answer - in character-”The better to eat you with my dear,” and go back to her place in the war news.

Reading is infectious, but there are lots of ways to raise a reader - just because you aren’t necessarily one yourself doesn’t mean your children won’t be.  I’m thankful my parents and grandparents recognized and nourished my love of stories, for it is one relationship that has stood the test of time.

All this by way of introduction to my essay, Raising a Reader, which appears in this week’s issue of BiblioBuffet.  Go read it - and the rest of this fine e-zine, which focuses on the living the literary life. It’s one of my favorite bookish reads each week. 

And ~ keep reading.

cross posted at Bookstack

 

 

Sunday Scribblings-Telephone

She was on the phone when it happened.  I was playing on the floor in the living room, so I could see her standing in the archway between the dining room and kitchen, the dark corner where the telephone sat on its narrow wooden table. 

I wasn’t listening to her conversation, being wholly absorbed in lining up a series of Matchbox cars on the ramp of my Fisher Price service station.  I can still hear the skittery sound their tiny wheels made on the hard plastic ramp, like dry leaves blowing across the pavement on a fall day.  The pleasant tone of her voice droned in my ear, probably an ordinary conversation with one of my aunts, whom she talked with daily. From the corner of my eye the hem of her pale blue house dress was visible, its wide circle skirt hanging in gentle folds just above her ankles.

It was the skirt that first caught my attention, for it puddled across the hardwood floor when she fell creating a pale lake on the dark wood.  I turned my head just in time to see my mother’s body crumple to the floor, a dull thud the only sound she made.  The heavy black telephone receiver fell from her hand as she went down, taking the rest of the telephone clattering to the ground behind it.

Within seconds my grandmother came tearing through the kitchen door - I”m sure she was screaming, because she screamed at everything anyway, and the sight of her only daughter lying unconscious on the floor would certainly have set off paroxysms of alarm.  But I didn’t hear her - I was frozen, transfixed by the sight of my mother so still and motionless on the floor, one arm awkwardly folded beneath her back, the other outstretched, reaching toward me.  The next sound I remember was the relentless cry of ambulance sirens, racing toward our house.  Huddled behind the brown sofa, I stared wide-eyed as paramedics burst through the front door, quickly buckled my mother’s still form onto the stretcher, and rushed her into the ambulance.  As they sped down the road, sirens screaming away into the distance, I became aware of the telephone, ominously droning one long penetrating tone into the empty room.

In medicine we talk about sequela, a pathological condition resulting from an injury, disease, or attack.  Not surprisingly, there were a number of sequela resulting from my mother’s allergic reaction to penicillin, back on that spring day in 1959.   For her, it spawned a life long fear of taking medicine - even though she had been taking penicillin all her life,  that one dose nearly killed her.   For me, a frightened three year old who watched her mother collapse instantly in front of her eyes, and then be rushed to the hospital where she would remain for nearly two weeks, it triggered an obssessive need to be close to her every moment, so great was my fear that something would happen to her.

Oh, and one more sequela from this event - I despise telephones. 

for more telephone tales, go here

On Level Ground

Lots of ups and downs lately, a veritable roller coaster ride through life.  Things have evened out a bit on one front, thank goodness- my daughter in law came through her surgery with flying colors and a very positive report from her physician, so my worries on that front have eased up a bit.  (Thanks to everyone for their concern and good thoughts - the vibrations apparently reached all the way to the South Pacific!)

When I came home today, my husband was on the phone with our friendly mortgage company, trying to work out the details of that re-finance on our property in Florida, and I felt the roller coaster car speeding toward the top of the next precipice, preparing for another belly wrenching plunge.  But I held on to the safety bar, pressed my feet firmly to the floor, and gutted it out.   My darling husband managed to come up with a few choice “questions” for the banker that actually sent them scampering into their corner with a pledge to “check with their supervisor” and “get back to us tomorrow.”  He’s really good at that kind of thing

And that’s only one of the reasons I’ve stayed married to this guy for the past 32 years (today). 

On May 8, 1976, I was nothing but a baby - 20 years old, and I had never even spent the night away from home- really!  What in the world was I doing getting married?  I’m sure nearly every one of the 150 people in that church were shaking their heads in dismay. 

I was the first of my 13 Michigan cousins to get married - but I’m the only one still  married (to their original spouse, that is!)

So there.

Not that it’s always been a picnic.  Of course not.  We’ve certainly been apart far more than I would have dreamed back on May 8, 1976, when I could barely stand to let him out of my sight for 20 minutes.  He’s worked away from home a lot - on long term assignments everywhere from Dayton, Ohio, to Chengde, China.  And he’s worked long hours even when he was home.  Sometimes I felt as if I were raising our son alone - and that’s a big reason why we didn’t have more than one child.  But the reason he worked so hard was to give me the ability to stay home and be a full time mother, something we both felt was really important.  And I’m more grateful than I can say, for those years were a true and lasting gift.

But the distance between us has never been in more than miles.  For at the end of the day, we can count on each other - he knows it, and I know it.  We cover each other’s back in those hard “life” things, but we also give each other space to pursue our individual dreams.  We share the same values - the importance of family, of caring for other people, of giving your best effort to everything you do.  And we share the same dreams -traveling the world, making beautiful music, trying to make the world a better place, and sharing life with our children and their children.

I’m certainly not complacent about marriage, even one of 32 years.  My parents marriage ended after 42 years, so I know we’re nowhere near home free in the longevity department.  As we move into this middle aged stage of life, with more physical challenges presenting themselves everyday, more world problems intruding on and affecting our hopes and dreams, our patience and thoughtfulness is called upon in new ways.  Because of Jim’s neuropathy, he has a hard time taking walks, one of the things we used to love doing.  I admit it, I occasionally get annoyed about that.  Or about the fact that his medications make him sleepy, so he tends to nod off the minute he sits down. 

But he still jumps up when I call his name, ready to do whatever needs to be done.  He still sends me little notes during the day (text messages now) with encouraging words when he knows I need them.  He still thanks me for making dinner, tells me I look great (when I know I don’t), and never complains if he can’t find a pair of socks that match (as long as he can find the tv remote, it’s all good!)  Next Saturday, he’ll get up at the crack of dawn and drive me to Sandusky, Ohio to play for my friend’s elementary school choir in a competition at Cedar Point - he does it every year.

On May 8, 1976, I might have been only 20 years old, but I knew what I was doing.

He’s a good guy. 

And he keeps me grounded on this roller coaster ride of life.

Happy Anniversary, Jamey.

 

 

 

 

 

Stormy Skies

For most of my life I’ve been an expert worrier - if there wasn’t a good reason to worry, I could make one up.  And there have been several periods in my life when stressful situations were outside the norm - the year my parents split up, the year my grandmother died and my husband lost his job (all in the same week), the year my son moved away from home.  During those times, I found it difficult to eat or sleep, found myself obsessing over the situation to the extent that I was unable to concentrate on anything else, found myself lying around staring mindlessly at the television for hours on end.

It’s been a long while since I’ve had a really substantial worry, and I guess I’ve grown a little complacent.  I believed I had learned how to handle life’s smaller vicissitudes with a bit more aplomb, and that’s probably true.  But I have several very substantial worries right now. 

Just last week I was musing about my son, comparing his life to a multi-colored kite soaring in the breeze.  That kite has encountered some stormy weather, and is being tossed about quite roughly, so we’re all feeling the effects here on the ground.  For not only have he and his wife run into some significant roadblocks in their quest to start a family, my daughter in law is suddenly facing unexpected surgery this week. 

It never ceases to amaze me how life can turn itself on a dime, how things can be going just swimmingly, and suddenly you’re caught in a riptide being sucked under before you have a moment to catch your bearings.  I find myself slipping into that familiar mode of obsession/distraction, riffling the problems over and over in my mind like strings of worry beads between my fingertips (maybe I should get some of those).  I had saltines for dinner,  spent two hours last night watching the Entertainment channel (ick), and fell asleep in the chair.  I wander around the house, picking up clutter and setting it down somewhere else, desultorily play a song or two on the piano, just pounding the notes mechanically beneath my fingers. I feel as if I haven’t learned a thing about how to handle stress, for I’ve simply reverted to patterns established years ago.

Most of my difficulty arises from the loss of control that is inherent in any situation like this -from not being able to fix things, from not knowing what will happen next.  I feel completely incapable of handling life, so I wander, dither, worry.  As the saying goes, “Worry is like a rocking chair - it gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere.”

There is much written these days about the power of positive thinking, of envisioning the future you want to have.   I would like to buy into that philosophy, but maybe I’m just too old.  I keep slipping back into my familiar mentality - bad things will happen, and there’s nothing you can do to change them.  Because lately I haven’t seen too much evidence of good things happening to anybody, positive attitude or not.  Amidst the continuing stories of economic and social doom and disaster clouding even the bluest sky, there hasn’t been much evidence that anyone’s vision for a brighter tomorrow are coming true.

But right now, the concerns of the wider world are of little consequence to me.  It’s just my small corner of the world I’m worried about - my family, it’s present and it’s future. 

And the skies are a bit too blustery for my liking.

Kite Flying

Children are like kites.  You spend years trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you are both breathless. They crash … they hit the roof …
you patch, comfort and assure them that someday they will fly.

Finally, they are airborne. They need more string, and you keep letting it out. They tug, and with each twist of the twine, there is sadness that goes with joy.

The kite becomes more distant,
and you know it won’t be long
before that beautiful creature will snap
the lifeline that binds you together
and will soar as meant to soar
… free and alone.

Only then do you know that you have done your job.

~~ Author Unknown ~~

Tuesday morning, very (very) early, we sent our son and his wife flying off to Thailand for a long visit with my daughter in law’s family.  As we said our goodbyes, it struck me how familiar this process has become.

“I never would have imagined it,” I said to Jim as we drove away, the sun rising at our backs, “never would I have believed we’d have done this so much.”

Yes indeed, my son is quite a traveler.  He moved far away from home right out of high school, and never came back.  He’s traveled countless times between Florida and Michigan, also to California, Hawaii, Australia, and now to Thailand for the fifth (I think -see, I’m losing track) time.  His frequent flier miles far outweigh mine, and he’s just 28 years old.

So we’re quite familiar with saying goodbye at airport curbs. 

That doesn’t mean I’m completely comfortable with it.  After all, I wasn’t raised to be a traveler - far from it.  Many of the people in my family harbor a pathological fear of leaving home.  My grandmother, her sister, and my own mother, have some deeply laden fear that if they go away from home, something awful will happen.  Granted, the only one of my grandmother’s sisters to leave the family home did contract tuberculosis, which was ultimately responsible for her death, as well as the death of another sister and their father.  So perhaps there were grounds for their fears after all.  And as far as I was concerned - well, let’s just say the kite strings were always kept pretty tightly wound.

My friend Pat gave me a copy of the “Children Are Like Kites” poem, just before Brian went to Florida for college. 

“You need this now,” she told me.  “You need to know that as hard as this is, you’re doing your job.”

I really believe that’s true.  I believe the hardest thing about being a parent, is also the most important thing. Giving children freedom to “soar as they are meant to soar-free and alone.”  Certainly not abandoning them, just allowing the bond enough elasticity so they can stretch and reach the places they were meant to reach, but can quickly snap back if they need to. 

Really, all Brian’s traveling is about more than going places.  It’s about having the courage (his courage and my courage) to move out into the world, try new things, open yourself to new people and experiences.  Trusting yourself, having confidence in yourself.

Soaring.

Driving home from work today I passed a community college which, for some reason, is a favorite kite flying spot. There was a gorgeous rainbow colored kite plastered against the blue sky, it’s multi-colored tails flapping in the spring breeze.  They’re meant to fly, aren’t they?  For they’re certainly more beautiful aloft than bound to earth.

I enjoy watching my son soaring through life - it’s what he was meant to do.  It’s still hard saying goodbye at airports, unspooling that string a little more, but it’s worth it.

It’s all part of my job.

 

Communication Gap

One of my co-workers and her husband travel regularly from Detroit to Burlington, Vermont, which is about a 14 hour car trip, and I once asked her if they listened to music or books on tape while they traveled.

“Oh no,” she said brightly.  “We just talk.  We always have lots to say to one another.”

Lest you think this is a couple of starry eyed newlyweds, I must tell you that they will celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary this summer.

This conversation came to mind tonight while my husband and I were waiting for dinner,  sitting outdoors at the little cafe located a short bike ride away from our house.   I was gazing peacefully across the lake, watching the herons diving for their own evening meal.  And Jim was -well, totally immersed in communion with his telephone.

A couple of weeks ago, he got a new cell phone that allows him to connect to the Internet anywhere.  You can surf while standing in line at the grocery, while waiting for dinner in the restaurant, while riding in the car (suddenly, he’s all too happy for me to do the driving, so he can play with his telephone). 

Is there a word that describes the willful destruction of an electronic object - cybercide?  Or a word for divorce caused by alienation of affection secondary to the Internet? 

I realized tonight what an inordinate amount of time my husband spends staring at a screen-televsion, computer, and now telephone.  Of course, I’m no slouch when it comes to cybersurfing.  Just last night, we were both standing at the kitchen counter, staring at our individual laptops, racing to see who could be first to find the site to download a song we’d heard earlier in the day.

But I find myself resenting his constant immersion in all things electric.  “I can see I need to start bringing a book everywhere we go,” I remarked this evening.

“Why’s that?” he asked, without even looking up.

“Since you’re so enthralled with that telephone, I need some way to pass the time,” I answered.

“Oh for pete’s sake,” he said, shoving the little stylus back into its slot.

But then we sat in silence until our burgers arrived.  

Sometimes I wonder if our reliance on electronic devices for entertainment and communication has gotten out of hand, if its hampered our ability to communicate with people in the real world and in real time.  When Jim and I drive to Florida, we stock up on audio books, and dowload movies onto our laptops.  Frankly, I can’t imagine what we’d talk about on a 14 hour car trip. 

Of course, it wasn’t always that way.  Before we were married, we talked on the phone for hours every night, even if we’d been together during the day.  And we wrote letters -ten pages or more! -everyday when we were in college and separated by the whopping distance of 32 miles.  In those days we were like my friend and her husband - there was always plenty to talk about. 

But it seems we’ve become more interested in virtual communication than in exerting the effort to communicate with each other.  So we fall prey to an increasing sense of isolation and disconnection with one another. 

 Perhaps every couple should take a long road trip now and then, with no electronic distractions allowed, and see how many things they can find to talk about. 

How about you?  Have electronics impacted communication in your relationships?

 

Dreaming the Night Away

Last night was a terrible, horrible, very bad night. 

Oh, don’t be frightened, I’m fine.  Nothing bad really happened.

It was all in my dreams.

Usually, I don’t dream.  Or at least, I don’t remember my dreams.  And last night, I was really looking forward to a good night’s sleep.  You see, I’m at my Florida house all alone -  no dogs hogging the bed, no chainsaw massacre snoring - just the king sized pillowtop mattress, the gently whirring ceiling fan, and me.

Alas, it was not to be.  I had nightmares of epic proportions, a continuing saga of a dream that kept waking me up with a start, and then, picking up where it left off when I managed to doze off again.  Somehow it involved me and two of my friends on a trip somewhere, and terrible things kept happening so we couldn’t get home.

The last scene involved a gunman holding a woman hostage - she was tall and blonde and dressed in a forest green business suit.  “Don’t hurt me, Paul,” she kept saying, as he pointed the gun directly at her head.  Meanwhile, my two friends had disappered and I was crouched in the hallway of some conference center, not ten feet away from where this drama was taking place. 

Despite her pleading and the police totally surrounding him, he fired the gun and she crumpled to the floor.  A policeman tackled him, but he turned and started firing the gun randomly in the air, until the policeman wrested him to his knees, taking the gun from his hand by grabbing it with his teeth!

Dear Lord.

So much for a restful night’s sleep.

Where in the heck do dreams like that come from?  Was it the late dinner at PF Chang’s where we stopped on the way home from the airport?  Was it the extra glass of wine I polished off before bed?  Was it talking with my son and daughter in law about their upcoming trip to Thailand?  Was it being all alone in this big house?

Some people believe our dreams have important messages for our future.  The high school kids I work with just presented the musical Fiddler on the Roof, and it contains a scene where Tevye uses a (fictional!) dream to convince his wife their eldest daughter is destined to marry the “poor tailor” instead of the butcher chosen by the matchmaker. 

“Tell me your dream, and I’ll tell you what it means,” Golde says to Tevye.  And he proceeds to recount a horrific tale that involves Golde’s grandmother and the butcher’s first wife, both of whom have been dead for years.  By the end of his story, Golde is convinced.  “It is a sign,” she says.  “So that’s how it was meant to be, and it couldn’t be any better.”

Of course Sigmund Freud made a scientific phenomenon of dream analysis.  In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, he contended that the foundation of all dreams was “wish fulfillment” and the instigation of a dream was always to be found in the events of the day proceeding it.

If that’s the case, then I think Sigmund and I need to have a talk.  Neither of these options is very appealing in light of last night’s dreams.

Last week, a blogging friend had some interesting things to say about the connection between depression and dreams.  Seems a book she read indicated that depressed folks dream more, and as a result, wake up feeling less rested, thus perpetuating this vicious circle of depression and bad feeling. The whole bad dream cycle begins as a result of “failing to have ones basic needs met,” thus inciting worry about these particular difficulties.  The authors of this particular tome (which she never identified, more’s the pity) refer to this as “misusing the imagination,” by allowing “emotionally arousing thoughts to go round and round in their heads.” 

And so night falls, and one’s mind must deal with all these bad thoughts and feelings that have been roiling around all day.  The mind converts them into dreams (and not necessarily good ones), but in doing so it prevents the body from falling into the deepest level of REM sleep needed to feel rested and refreshed the next day.

Remember those “basic needs,” the lack of which started this cycle to begin with?  Well, one of them is (of course!) plenty of restful sleep.  And so the cycle begins again, in all its viciousness.

If you visit here regularly, you’ll know I’ve had some worrying things to ponder lately.  Perhaps last night’s dream was the equivalent of “worry soup,” an amalgam of all my concerns and fears, all poured into the stockpot of my unconscious mind, and set to bubbling in my sleep.

Surprisingly enough after last night, I’ve felt rested today.  I spent the morning quietly, drinking coffee, sitting on the lanai doing some writing, taking a long bike ride before lunch.   Jim arrived this afternoon,so I’m no longer alone.  The four of us enjoyed a good dinner on the lanai and sat around talking in the cool evening air.

And now its late once again…the king sized pillowtop beckons. 

What dreams will come tonight?

I wonder.

How about you?  What are your dreams (or nightmares) telling you?

 

 

 

Renewal

This week has seemed rather long, and today seems like Thursday instead of Wednesday.  That’s probably because I worked in the office on Monday, which I rarely do.  But I’ve taken on some new reponsibilities in my office job, which means I may be working a bit more.  That’s okay though - I’ve rediscovered how much I like my office job this week.  True, there’s lots of paper shuffling going on, but in the past few months I’ve started developing some new procedures for doing things, started training a co-worker to help me out, and convinced my boss to let my department handle more of the documentation the nurses were once required to do (which will be quite a bit more cost efficient for the company, and makes the nurses happier too.)

So I’ve been bustling around there feeling quite proud of myself. It’s been good for me - takes my mind off some of the other problems I’ve been dealing with on the domestic front.  (And thank you all for your kind and supportive comments.  How lucky I am to have such a wise and wonderful network with which to share.)

Elaine, one of the nurses in my office, came in quite excited herself today.  A long term client of hers- a young man with brain injuries and physical impairments resulting from a car accident when he was 12 - has been working for a while in a rather dull sheltered workshop, a kind of place where special needs adults can perform manual labor and get paid a small amount of money.  She’s noticed that he’s been getting more and more depressed,  talking less and less, and using his wheelchair nearly all the time instead of trying to walk with a cane.

So she started looking around for other opportunities for him.  Knowing that he liked art, she tried to get him a volunteer position at the Detroit Art Institute, but nothing was availble.  However, staff members there suggested she try the Opera House. 

It’s been a miracle.  Not only have the staff at the Detroit Opera House been accepting and welcoming, they have gone out of there way to provide this young man with the best possible experiences he can have.  He’s going downtown now at least three times a week, ushering for special programs, working in the office, and having the opportunity to see all sorts of great musical productions.

He saw his first full length opera last weekend, and his mother said he was in tears at the end, completely overwhelmed by music and pagentry.  As a result, he’s decided to take an adult piano class at the community college.  And Elaine reports that he’s speaking more, smiling and laughing a lot, and using his cane to walk with.  At his neurology appointment today, his physician said he “looked better than he’d ever seen him.”

Amazing, isn’t it?  How finding something you feel passionate about, activities that are fulfilling and satisfying, is the best medicine for one’s physical and mental health?  It’s given him confidence, stimulated his mind and body, and enriched life on so many levels.  If it can make such a dramatic difference in the life of a young man with a brain and spinal cord injury, imagine what it can do for ordinary, healthy folks?

Sort of like me this week, working away at my new job responsibilities, writing memos and re-organizing files, creating policies and explaining procedures. 

It’s given me a new little lease on life.

So here’s to finding something you can get excited about - a new hobby, planting spring flowers, a committment to help others, whatever it is that sparks a sense of enthusiasm about life in general. 

How about you?  What gives you that sense of renewal, that extra spark of energy and confidence that can make you say “yes” to life?

 

 

 

The New Territory of Old Age

Until I was 12 years old, I was lucky enough to have my great grandmother living right across the street.  My Gramma always seemed very old in my estimation, although in actuality she was only in her mid 70’s when she moved in with my aunt and uncle, and 85 when she died.   But we spent lots of time together, watching her favorite stories on TV (General Hospital and Lawerence Welk), drinking Cokes and eating Fritos, and piecing quilt squares together.  In addition to having this wise and wonderful old lady across the way, my maternal grandparents lived with us.  So, I grew up with the elderly and I became quite familiar with the aging process.

I only recall my Gramma becoming weaker and less energetic that last year of her life.  She was often in bed when I’d dash over after school, and sometimes I would just sit in the chair beside her bed and read quietly while she slept.  One day I came home to the news that she had fallen and broken a hip.  Surgery was performed, but within a couple of days she developed pneumonia and died in her sleep.

“She was ready to go,” I remember my mom saying through her tears.  “Bless her heart, she was just all tired out from living.”

Today, people who are “all tired out from living” have spawned their own cottage industry.  Assisted living, memory loss neighborhoods, respite care, nursing homes - all euphemisms for warehousing the aged.  My mother in law “lives” in such a place, and I place quotation marks around the word “lives” because I’m not sure that what she does qualifies as living, at least not the way I define it.  She doesn’t remember that she was married, that she raised a child, that she worked in a productive, responsible job.  She recalls her mother- whose photograph she will bring to her lips and kiss - but she doesn’t recall her own name, or her only son’s, or her husband’s, or mine.  She’s been “banned” from participating in the one activity she might enjoy (playing Bingo) because she becomes “adversarial” if she doesn’t win.

Sigh.

I’ve just been conversing with my mother in law’s physician (a young woman who sounds as if she’s about 15 years old) and she tells me that recent test results indicate her creatinine levels are “alarmingly high,” and her potassium levels are also “quite high.”

“Normally a physician would be very concerned about this because it signals kidney failure,” Dr. C. says.  “I’m only telling you because I need to know how you’d like to proceed.  With creatinine levels this high, we might start talking about dialysis.  But considering her age and mental status, I’m not sure this is the direction you’d want to take.  And the elevated potassium, if left unchecked, could lead to atrial fibrillation and heart failure.”

(At this point, I press my finger to the ear opposite my cell phone because there’s a cacophony of background noise on her end.  Did I hear someone say “do you want fries with that?”)

“Well,” I say, taking a deep breath and looking over at my husband who is sitting at our dining room table on a business conference call of his own, “at this point we really aren’t pursuing any course that will prolong her life.  We basically just want to keep her as comfortable and pain free as possible.”

Do you realize what I just said?  I’m standing in my kitchen on a sunny spring morning, coffee cup in hand.  My dogs are sniffing around the back yard.   And I’ve virtually just pronounced a death sentence on my mother in law.

“I understand that,” Dr. C. tells me.  “I can document that you want me to check her potassium levels in three to six months and then go from there.  If I check the potassium and it’s dangerously elevated, we can do something as simple as providing medication to counteract it.  Or you can decide to let nature takes it course.  It’s completely up to you.”

Oh god.  I speak enough “doctor” to know that she’s asking me whether we should check her potassium levels at all or let her die a (semi) natural death.

At this point, I’m longing for the ease of a broken hip and pneumonia.  How easy that would be.

Of course, it isn’t really my decision to make.  This is my husband’s mother, every difficult, stubborn, pessimistic bone of her 90 pound body.   She doesn’t really belong to me - she never has.  The two of us have absolutely nothing in common save our relationship with this man sitting at my dining room table talking to a fellow engineer about heat calculations.

“I need to talk to my husband about this,” I tell the good doctor. 

“Of course,” she says again.  “Just let me know how you’d like to proceed.”

So here I am, plopped squarely in this brave new world of old age.  It isn’t anything like the old age of generations gone by, where the elderly tended to be cared for by one family member or another until they died.  Oh no, it’s much more complicated than that.  Now we have “living wills” and “do not resuscitate orders” and hospice.  We have to make “decisions about how we want to proceed.”

My oh my, how life (and death) have changed in the last 40 years.

Of course, I’m not the only one in this predicament.  It would take all my fingers and toes to count the number of people within my circle of acquaintance’s who are currently dealing with similar problems. 

Sometimes,  I  imagine myself in this situation at some point in the (hopefully) very distant future, when my son and daughter in law might have to make these same decisions.  My worst fear is the loss of my mind, my ability to read, write, think, know what is going on in the world around me.   Would I want to continue living in some institutional type environment, sucking up time and money to prolong my existence?  Or would I advise them to “let me go” as peacefully and painlessly as possible? 

And does one person really have the right to decide for another just when life is no longer worth living?  But what do you do, how do you “proceed” when the person in question cannot decide for themselves?

When I talk to my husband about this, his reaction is basically what I’ve come to expect in regard to dealing with his mother.  “I really can’t handle this right now,” he says, staring at me glassy eyed, the look that means “don’t push me too far or I’ll break.”

Sigh. (again)

I’m traveling through uncharted territory here, folks. 

Wish me luck.