Shinto "floating" Torii at Itsukushima, Miyajima Island, Japan
Sometimes it's hard to talk about significant, delicate issues. Sometimes it's hard to read about them. Sometimes it is hard to open (or carry on) a discussion of potentially touchy subjects many of us would prefer remain in abeyance. This is one of those times ... one of those subjects ... one of those posts ... and no, it's not about politics.... (grin)
Visualize (from memory or imagination): A nebular dreamscape ... a familiar, generic metaphor for our inescapable yet existential lifescape. We are alone in the scene, of course, conscious on some deeper level of the essentially solitary nature of our being, though we know there are others, kindred souls and spirits ... and perhaps others not so kindred ... out there somewhere. Imagine the landscape in chiaroscuro ... "the middle ground between light and shadow" (with a nod to Rod Serling) ... pallid sunlight giving way to shade, shadows fading to deepest ebony, bordered by gray moist curling tendrils of mist and fog ... not unlike the scene in Gone With the Wind when Scarlett realizes that she is really in love with ... has loved all along ... her long-suffering knight errant Rhett Butler ... and she runs to him through a clinging, clutching, grasping fog ... only to learn after her harrowing sprint that he really no longer gives a damn, and that her enlightening epiphany has come too late. But I digress....
Each of us has traversed such fog ... or experienced the sensation of being resident in a camera obscura ... alone and vulnerable, enveloped in suffocating darkness, the world tilted crazily ... flashing from light to dark, or dark to light, and back again. You look for familiar landmarks to show the way or mark the path. Behind you, a sound ... what???? You turn and look, but there is nothing there ... or at least your eyes fail to register another presence.... But...? You stop for a minute, listening, straining for any sound in the half-light ... but there is nothing.... Is it nothing?
You walk on, reluctantly but ineluctably quickening your pace, listening.... There ... again.... A quick succession of small sounds, stopping you in your tracks ... and freezing those echoing, trailing steps in the same moment. Something is there ... something is stalking you ... unknown but implacable. You resist the urge to call out "Hello?" because maybe it hasn't seen you, doesn't yet know that you are ahead. And if somehow you've escaped its notice, you don't want to draw its attention....
Rooted to the spot, you strain your eyes, your ears, all your senses ... something (what? what?) just outside your ken. Waiting.... You move, oh so slowly, cautiously, deliberately ... feel inside your pockets, your purse ... is there any small protection, some beneficent talisman, you might find there? Finally, whistling through the unseen graveyard, muttering incantations against the darkness, you casually saunter away ... then moving faster, faster.... And the sound ... now just behind you, so close ... your mind leaps, your heart pounds ... and your brain sends the message to your feet that they should be pounding too ... get away ... get away ... but you are transfixed ... and that sound, that thing, is coming closer. You don't know if it's something good or bad ... you just know that it's unknown ... and you must find safety, escape, surcease.... Where is home? Your car? Perhaps you can swiftly drive away before it catches you.... Where is safety? What is safe? Where ... and who ... are you???
Top of the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, in the fog
There! At the signpost up ahead ('nother nod to Rod) ... that thing ... that stalker ... pursuing you so relentlessly through the fog.... You see it now ... in the mirror ... just over your shoulder ... under your eyes.... Agggghhhhh!
It's age!!!! And anyone reading this blog, this post, will have at least made its acquaintance, if not be (literally) old and comfortable friends with it by now.
Inescapable Truth: Age happens, people ... except to those who in the alternative die tragically young, perhaps leaving a beautiful corpse, but with so much of life and its promises unfulfilled. We can't change it, or bargain with it (Dorian Gray and his portrait notwithstanding), or finesse the game. It comes to (and for) all of us. The best we can do is make peace with it ... accept it as a gift that we have been given ... learn to laugh at the vicissitudes it unrelentingly visits upon us and the life lessons it insists we learn.
As I muse on these things (and play with the words), I wryly recall two specific times in my life when I was suddenly, without preface or real warning, confronted with the fact that I was actually getting older ... like my parents ... like my grandparents (eeeek!) ... that I would not somehow magically live forever, glowing with the light (and blissful ignorance) of youth. (Note: when I graduated from CHS, my grandparents were 63 years old, having been born in 1900. I will be 62 in October.)
I remember my first "awakening" so well. I was 24 years old, working at Crawford & Company in Dallas and three of us were "eating in" on that particular day. My co-worker Carolyn was two years older than I, but we had lived through adolescence during the same time and had much shared cultural experience. The other girl was Tracy, recently hired at the company just out of high school ... probably 18 years old. I can see us so clearly, sitting around the table eating our sandwiches, Carolyn and I dominating the conversation with a lot of "Do you remember...?" Poodle skirts ... Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan's show (where he was cropped at the waist to keep our parents from getting All Shook Up) ... Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard and the Platters ... "Your Hit Parade" and the early days of "American Bandstand" with Justine and Bobby and Arlene and Kenny ... bobby socks ... saddle oxfords ... penny loafers ... rolled up blue jeans ... doing "The Stroll" and "The Twist" and "The Watusi" ... back-combed bubbles with velvet bows....
Dick Clark, American BandstandCarolyn and I were rapid-firing memories back and forth, laughing and having a great time ... and then I looked over at Tracy, and she was sitting there with her mouth open, eyes wide, looking at the two of us like we had just beamed down from the Starship Enterprise ... listening to us reminisce about things of which she had no knowledge and absolutely no frame of reference. And I remember thinking ... so distinctly ... "My God, I'm getting old!" Strange new thought.... Brave new world.... And then I put the idea out of my mind, as some anomalous and not very welcome spectral visitor ... and resumed the conversation.... And it was about four years before I revisited that terra incognita....
In October 1975, I had my 29th birthday ... I cannot say I celebrated it ... and it was the most depressing birthday I have ever had. I recall so clearly being morose for that entire year before I mercifully turned 30 and extricated myself from the grip of that wretched, stifling malaise. No matter how I tried to look at it ... no matter that I told myself I was being totally ridiculous and melodramatically melancholy ... no matter that I joked about "considering the alternative" ... and despite Yahn's bemused but unwavering, loving support ... I felt despondent every time I thought about the fact that I was 29!
Age 29 marked a fundamental shift in my vision of myself as a young person ... an immortal youth. After the 29th, reaching 30 was (for me) a piece of cake. And I have sailed through all of the other yearly milestones that resonate more deeply with others, or strike some with particular force and poignancy. I've heard from many people over the years that their 30th birthday was particularly difficult ... or their 40th ... or their 50th ... need I mention the 60th .. and beyond?
I know that many of you have your own stories to share, of your own intimations of mortality and maturity ... and we would love to hear from you about your own moments of truth and clarity ... the birthdays or other days that affected you in meaningful ways, that caused you to confront your advancing age ... whether those days were hard, or sobering, or funny ... the life lessons you learned, the insight you gained, and anything else about your significant days or moments in time.
As we racket noisily and sometimes bumptiously through the fog of life, we are blessed to find others who ease our passage, who care, who quiet our souls and soothe our minds with compassion and empathy ... "fellow travelers" to borrow a phrase which had an entirely different meaning in a very different time long, long ago. Many of us have (or had) supportive spouses or significant others, most of us have children, we all have friends ... but, but ... we also have each other.
We were classmates 45+ years ago at Childress High School ... diverse and distinct, yet bound then as now by commonalities of life experience and history. And we are still classmates in the science lab of life ... ... sometimes poking and dissecting and analyzing each other ... but also supporting and reaching out to each other as we together tend the Bunsen burner to light our way through the darkness. (I don't think until I wrote these lines that I ever imagined seeing life as analogous to dead and dismembered frogs in Richard Couch's Biology class ... but sometimes you just go where the metaphor leads you.)
When I think of the passing of time, and of life, of the days figuratively growing shorter in the "autumn of our years", I am reminded of Shakespeare's words (spoken by Lysander) in A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night.
Lysander was speaking of true love that "never did run smooth" ... but I believe the words are equally applicable to life itself. "Life is short" is more than just a cliche. It is a cautionary bedrock truth ... otherwise it would never have made it to the status of "cliche". We are all in transit on the journeys of our lives; we laugh, we love, we have days of unalloyed joy, and nights of peace and serenity, and times of trial and stabs of pain and sadness and regret. In other words ... we live ... and if we are aware, we learn to cherish our families and friends, and nurture and grow our knowledge for use in lives to come. And eventually ... through the years, through the lives, if we are lucky and introspective and wise, we reach the state the Japanese call satori ... enlightenment. Or, as Tan Twan Eng wrote in The Gift of Rain:
... for the briefest moment I saw how everything and everyone and every time was connected in some manner. A golden light brighter than the sun filled my room, and it was all so very clear, so lucid, that I let out a soft sigh and closed my eyes, hoping to capture it in the memory of my heart. I felt completely at peace, ascending higher and higher in an all-encompassing understanding. I saw it all, everything, from beginning to end and then to a new beginning again. And after a moment of eternity it was gone, that complete clarity and total contentment, and though I did not know it then, I would search for it for the rest of my life....
Endo-san stared at me with unmoving eyes. "Satori," he wispered.
Satori, indeed....
)O(
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
10 comments:
In reflecting on your commentary on aging, I think for me that aging is like a big elephant in the room. We would like for it to go away and we try to ignore it, but it is always there and often in the way. I don't remember having any particular birthday that sent me into a tailspin, but I have to admit that turning 60 was not something that I looked forward to or embraced. On the other hand, I do feel that this is a great time in my life so all in all it isn't too bad! Now when we are automatically given the "senior discount", we take it no argument even if we might be a bit younger that the designated age limit. I don't even mind being called a senior citizen (well not too much), but I do draw the line at being called elderly! I have seen in the newspaper descriptions of people involved in accidents or whatever who are in their 60's described as as "elderly". Obviously this was written by some young whipper snapper in his thirties. I have not yet decided when I might be called elderly, but probably not in my lifetime. :)
For a few years, I even resisted getting an AARP card because that would mean "giving in", however, a couple of weeks ago, I actually sent in my $12. I guess my seniordome is official now.
My first awakening that I might be getting "old" came in my mid-50's. Suddenly I realized that all of the new teachers being hired were ridiculously young and inexperienced and totally non-professional. Of course, this all came from my perspective as an experienced teacher. You know, it was a bit of a "Bye-Bye Birdie" moment such as "Kids, What is the matter with kids today? Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way.." or something along those lines. Over the next few years, I came to terms with the reality that in my job at that time, technology and use of computers in the classroom, someone much younger would have more credibility and would be a lot more effective with those "kids" who faced so much more in the classroom than we old-timers ever dreamed possible. I knew it was time to go, before everyone started talking about it being time for me to retire.
Oh yes, there is much to be said about being in the same boat with all my aging friends. We are all on the same wave length and it is oh so nice be be able to laugh our way through this time of our lives. We can make fun of ourselves, but pity the younguns who try it! I think we are all in agreement, that "aging is not for sissies", but we are up to the journey with grace and dignity as long as it doesn't interfere with having a great time!!
BTW, Jennifer, your "Life is Short" paragraph is wonderful! Thank you for sharing.
Jennifer, you’ve put together a most perceptive and most beautifully written post, as all of your observations are.
Coincidentally, old age has been much on my mind of late—not only because I reached my own biblically allotted three-score and ten this past November, but also because my mother (who will be 95 on 9-11) has been experiencing pronounced age-related difficulties for the past year or so. She has lost sight in one eye (due to a detached retina that was improperly repaired) and is gradually losing sight in her other eye as a result of macular degeneration. We recently took her to an ophthalmologist in Lawton, and there is some chance that treatment may delay the degeneration somewhat but probably not cure it entirely. We’re to see the doctor a month from now to determine the course that the treatment will take.
After visiting the ophthalmologist, Sharon and I took my mother back to her home in Wellington. She would be living with us right now were it not for the fact that she has some fractured vertebrae (due to pronounced osteoporosis) and is undergoing a three-month-long regimen of daily injections to strengthen the bones enough to give the vertebrae a chance to heal. Her back problem causes her intense pain; and, because she cannot exercise in any fashion until her back is somewhat healed, she is totally run-down. At my mother’s house, while Sharon went to the grocery store to replenish her food supply, she and I sat at her breakfast table and talked.
At one point, and somewhat out of the blue, my mother said, “Well, I really would like to make it to my 95th birthday; but, Son, I just don't think I'll see another one after that.”
I said, “Well, is that all right with you?”
Without a moment's hesitation she said, “Oh, yes! If it's my time to go, it's my time to go. I've had a good life. I got to teach for a long time, and I’ve had a lot of good friends—and a good family.”
“And lived to see your descendants get their lives well underway?”
“Oh, yes! And that means so much to me . . .”
Then she added: “Maybe you'll get your longevity from my side of the family, the Johnsons.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but when it comes my time to go, I want to die like a typical Morris—just keel over while I'm doing something I enjoy doing.”
“Yes,” she said, “that would be the way to go, but we don't get to choose, do we?”
About that time, Sharon returned and I helped her unload groceries; so I didn't get to say what I will definitely say the next time we're together:
“Well, before you go, you need to know something that people unfortunately don't get around to saying while everyone is alive. You need to know that Sharon and I, your granddaughters, and your great-granddaughter will miss you terribly; and, above all, you need to know how very much we love you. You've been a wonderful mother to me all my life, and I love you with all my heart.”
I appears that my mother has set a sort of timetable for herself—as very old people sometimes do; but, during the time after my mother comes to live with us (as she will when her injection cycle is finished), Sharon and I intend to savor every remaining moment we have with her, bittersweet though I know it will be. And we intend to say those appreciative things to her that we should have been saying all along.
Again, coincidentally, this past week I finished reading a 1959 novel, entitled Memento Mori, by the British writer Muriel Spark. I don’t know what prompted me to buy the novel from amazon.com over a month ago before Sharon and I went to Seattle to visit our youngest daughter and her husband. I read/heard about it somewhere (probably in a book by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, an author whose works I’ve been devouring recently), and it sounded interesting to me. It was interesting. Spark’s novel is about a group of very elderly people who have received anonymous phone calls telling each of them, “Remember you must die.” How each person reacts to this message is revelatory of the character of each of them and their outlook upon life and death in general; but all eventually request that Retired Chief Police Inspector Henry Mortimer investigate the calls for them. He does so with no result. He suspects that the phone calls might be a product of “mass hysteria” among his aged acquaintances; but he also remarks to his wife that he wouldn’t be surprised if the phone calls were made by “Death himself.” However, he does report his findings (rather, non-findings) to his aged friends; and then he concludes with the following remark:
“If I had my life over again, I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practise which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without the ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
[Before you chastise your old English teacher for misspelling “practice,” I’m using the British spelling found in Spark’s novel.]
Another book I bought before going to Seattle (and about half of which I have read at this point) is one entitled The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age, by Ronald Blythe, a British writer and editor. Again, this is a book I read about or heard about somewhere and purchased it because it sounded like an interesting treatise on old age and the attitudes that the elderly have toward the aging process and the approach of death. Blythe writes: “In the midst of life we are in death, they [the elderly] said, and they meant it. To them it was a fact, to us it is a metaphor.”
I don’t intend these observations of mine to be morbid, and I hope they won’t be taken as such. I only mean to point out that each of us has now reached the age where, as a good friend of mine says, we have more life behind us than what lies ahead. We can view this, I believe, either as a melancholy observation or as a liberating one. When you know, definitively, that your time on earth is limited, you can do one of two things: roll over and assume the dying cockroach position—or see to it that you make the most of every day, hour, minute, or second you have left—no matter how much or how little time you may have left. My father-in-law used to say that after you reach the age of 70, you’re living on borrowed time. Certainly he borrowed a great deal of it since he passed away at the age of 90—but his point was that each day is something of a miracle to be savored as fully as possible. And he did savor each day, and I watched him do it and learned a lot from his example.
We’re all getting older, and soon we will all be definitively old. (I’ve already reached that benchmark.) So, while we might relish memories of our past, the past is no longer a viable place to set up mental or emotional residence. The past brought us all here, to this very moment, and it couldn’t have happened any other way. The church father Saint Augustine said that if the past and the future actually exist, where are they? Good question.
I wish for all of you to have a good day. Today. And if tomorrow comes, I hope it’s a good one for everyone as well. I know I certainly intend to enjoy the rest of my life as much as possible.
Darryl, thank you for your wonderful comment, and compliments. I could not help but think as I read about your conversation with your mother ... your resolve to tell her how much you love her, to savor all of the moments you have left, with her and throughout the remainder of this life that is granted to you ... that you yourself have already attained a remarkable grasp of satori.
It is so important that we tell those we love how much they mean to us ... and often. I sometimes feel as if I overdo saying "I love you" or even "Love ya" ... or whatever is equally meaningful ... to those I love. But I always think that if, or rather when, the veil of death parts us, I want that to have been the last thought they heard me express. Oh I do believe that they know ... that they will know even after they are gone ... that I will meet some of them again ... on other planes, in other lives. Nevertheless, it is the last thing I want to have said to them in this life.
I was so touched by your thoughts and your words ... and envious in a small way that you have had such time with your mother. My grandmother and my parents and my brother all died unexpectedly, without real warning, without time to savor all the moments of their last years. Perhaps I should have been more attentive and aware ... perhaps I should have been more conscious that every day could be their last ... or mine.
Anais Nin said "People living deeply have no fear of death." And so we should all live ... as deeply and meaningfully as we can, with great compassion and love for others, and with complete awareness of the transitory and terminal nature of this life.
I have read some of Barbara Grizzuti Harrison's work ... so beautifully written, such marvelous pictures manifest in prose. And of course your other literary references have added, as always, to my reading list.
Thank you so much for your eloquent words ... and for refusing to "assume the dying cockroach position." How undignified ... not at all the way I would visualize you ... gleaming carapace notwithstanding. (grin) Okay ... heading for the corner now....
Suffice to say, I second your emotions, and return your wishes that all the days ahead for you are good ones....
)O(
The weatlth of knowledge and wisdom that I encounter in comments and posts from Jennifer and Darryl never ceases to amaze me! Both of you always give me so many things to think about and, of course, new authors to consider. I am convinced that I tend to take a more light-hearted and shall we say shallow approach to life. However, I thank you for shaking up my sheltered and probably self-serving world and for forcing me to use some of my brain cells so long ignored.
Darryl, I very seriously envy your relationship with your mother. I grew up in a family where feelings were never encouraged much less expressed so we have been left with regret for things unsaid and the recognition that there are no "do overs" after death.
While I do find your discourse on death a bit morbid (only a tiny bit!), for death is not something on which I tend to dwell, I accept death as a fact of life. I have a friend who reminds me that dying is a part of life and we are all doing it. After all, God promises that we will all have one death. I do like to think of death as just one aspect of living. However,I must share with you that two of my favorite poems are
"Death" by Emily Dickinson, particulary the line, "Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me"
and the lines
"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost
Both of these poems remind me that even though I am really too busy to think about death or to die, when my time comes, it will be okay for the "woods are lovely dark and deep."
As far as the past is concerned, here are words of wisdom to live by, "The past has no value except as experience to be used in making today and the future more fruitful." I will have more to say about the past in a future post.
I totally agree that the coachroach position is most unattractive and not something that I wish to be wearing when my time comes!
I love you both for what you bring to the blog and to our lives! There I said it!!! No regrets. : )
Ah Nicki ... my dearly loved friend ... you've brought a tear to my eye and a lift to my heart ... and have touched me deeply with your lovely words. "Thank you" seems inadequate ... but will have to do since I can only give you a figurative hug at this distance.
I do love you and your quiet, considered wisdom ... and Darryl, too, with all of the wonderful thoughts and words he brings to provoke our minds and expand our souls ... and my dear LK, and Rae, and Jobey, and Pat, and Lynn ... and of course my darling Yahn, who has so inspired me on my journey through this life.
I must tell you that I almost used the Emily Dickenson quote in my comment to Darryl, and I frequently think of those lines from Robert Frost. So I will share these lines by Sara Teasdale, from her poem "Love and Death" ...
Soul of my soul, no word shall be forgot,
Nor yet alone, beloved, shall we see
The desolation of extinguished suns,
Nor fear the void wherethro' our planet runs,
For still together shall we go and not
Fare forth alone to front eternity.
)O(
Jennifer,
I do love the Sara Teasdale poem and I was not familiar with it at all. I will have to remember that one for future reference.
Thanks so much for the kind words, too!
Another awesome post-----and comments by Darryl Morris and Nicki.
Death is something I'm not squeamish about. Neither do I dwell on it. Like Nicki, I see it as a part of life.
I just attended the memorial service of a member of the cancer support group I attend. Jane is my new hero. She was a breast cancer survivor of many years. When she learned it had returned to various parts of her body she attacked it with vengence, knowledge, clinical trials, and strong faith. She continued her life as though she would be here forever, always upbeat and an inspiration to all.
She planned her own memorial, called in her family several days ahead, had lists for everyone. They laughed, ate, went through old photos and recounted all the good things in their lives.
She was buried with a fork in her hand as requested. She had an older friend who always told her to save her fork, for the best part of the meal was coming.
Clar,
Your friend Jane sounds awesome and she sounds a bit like my friend Janice who died in February. The fork story is wonderful. I had not heard that and I will never forgt it now. I only hope that when my times comes I can handle it with such grace and dignity!
Thank you for sharing!
Clara, thanks so much for your comment ... and the great story about your friend Jane. What spirit! I have also been inspired by your courage and attitude toward this necessary and unavoidable aspect of life. Like you and Nicki, I don't believe I dwell on death ... still, I think an awareness of that transition serves us all well in (and at) the end.
Although I am in no hurry to "shuffle off this mortal coil" ... I do believe that death is only the end of this phase of life ... and the beginning of another. And yes, I may need a fork....
Thanks again for a wonderful comment. And BTW ... I love you, too, dear friend....
)O(
Jenn, I have just finished getting caught up on the blogs on "the way we were." One of several things that caught my attention was your comment about being employed by Crawford and Co. I didn't realize you had ever worked for them. As you are probably aware,they were known for handling casualty claims, whereas GAB was known for property losses, but attempting to crack assignment of casualty claims.
You talked about your turning 29 years old in 1975, and the problem you had with it. That was the year I rec`d my 25 year watch from GAB and I was 51 years old. Also, I had no problem with reaching 30, it was turning 40 that really bothered me, but it didn`t take me very long to get over it.
Post a Comment