Deletion and erasure

Writing entries for this blog, I sometimes bump up against this imaginary, but somehow very weighty, line between what’s appropriately “open” as I explore my experiences of retirement, aging, and life in general and what’s “too personal.” In recent weeks, I’ve been thinking about a topic that hangs right close to that line, making me hesitant to discuss it here. But it seems important as part of the complexity of life as I get old, so here I go. It’s about death. Not death in general, but the death of someone who holds a singular place in my life, and about questions her dying has raised that haven’t been raised in the same way by earlier losses. 

One of our trips this summer was to a memorial service, a “celebration of life,” for one of my sisters. She had died in January after a long decline from a head injury, so her death was not a surprise. But it was, as these things tend to be, a shock nevertheless. She lived in Oregon, and we hadn’t been particularly close, but we had kept in touch over the years—mostly by email, often sharing political rants. I had visited her last November, knowing it would likely be the last time we talked. So it was some time after her death when gathered with other family members last month to scatter her ashes in the ocean off Ecola Beach, her favorite stretch of the Oregon coast. The wind made it impossible to cast them out over the ocean, so we took turns tipping her ashes from the container into a little inlet so that they would wash into the sea.

Just after we got home from that trip, I received a reminder email from an e-card company that my sister’s birthday was coming up. This reminder would usually trigger a rather casual process of finding an appropriate card and crafting a birthday message. In earlier years, when she was still communicative, I’d likely have sent her an email, too. If it was a “major” birthday, I might have sent flowers. But this time, it was different—and not just because I wouldn’t be sending the card. Seeing her name in that email stopped me in my tracks. I was stunned, paralyzed for a moment. The message offered me the option to “remove this reminder” for future years. Staring at the screen, I thought of a column I had very recently read called “My Digital Cemetery.”

The column I was recalling talks about the dilemma of how to manage digital “contacts” when someone dies. It’s a thought-provoking piece, which I recommend, not because it has answers, but because it so makes you think about the meaning of identities and of relationships—and of what happens to those entities when someone dies. It’s couched in digital terms, but the questions are far squishier than the title suggests. When I first read it, I set it aside, thinking I might blog about it at some point.

Now, seeing my sister’s name and being offered the option to delete it, I noticed my internal monologue. How could I remove her name, remove her from this list? That would imply … acknowledge … that she isn’t any longer. But why not remove it? There is no logical point in continuing to be reminded of a birthday that isn’t any longer. Besides, I don’t really need reminders of her presence in my life (for all of my life). With no digital record of their existence, I still feel a twinge when I see or hear the birthdate of other family members who’ve died (and there are now four).

I went back to the article, hoping it would help me think this through. The author, Rob Walker, a tech writer for the New York Times, talks about the names in his digital files as a catalog not only of contacts but of his personal history. Each name, he says, is a reminder of a person, a relationship, experiences that collectively make up his own past. He admits that he does occasionally delete names—but never those of people who have died. He attributes this to the sense that erasing those names would be participating in the impression that they were gone, whereas in truth, they live on as part of his own history. “What I’ve lost is part of who I am,” he writes. “So is what I choose to save.”

But here’s what still puzzles me: Why, then, is it easier to erase the names of people who are still alive? They, too, have contributed to who I am, what I have experienced. They, too, are part of my history. It must be that death changes the meaning of these markers of someone’s (prior) existence by adding the reality of their (current) non-existence. It’s the simultaneous realization of both states of being that is so troubling, that makes the reminders startling in the short term and twinge-inducing as time goes on.

She’s gone, I say to myself, so why not delete her contact information? It serves no purpose. But, I reply, what does it mean if I do remove it? But if coming across her name occasionally makes me sad, then why would I want to keep it in my list? Or do I need to feel sad? Is that very sadness, the shock or twinge, such an appropriate response to loss that trying to avoid it amounts to negating the importance of relationships? Maybe this is the difference between deleting living and deleting dead contacts: coming across the names of still-living people doesn’t usually elicit great sadness, so deleting them isn’t an act of avoidance. But coming across the names of people who have died can cause a sense of great existential loss—the awareness of something deeply, finally, and irretrievably gone. And that feeling keeps alive the duality of loss and life, allowing us to live with relationships that have ended. Deleting those names amounts to erasing the possibility of moments like the one I experienced, moments that keep present the truth of a now-gone relationship.

I know that plenty of philosophers have explored this existential moment—I did the requisite stint as an avid existentialist in college. I also know that authors, poets, playwrights, musicians, artists, and spiritual teachers have mined this moment in far greater depth than I ever will. But oddly, none of that prepared me for the particular, peculiar moment when I saw my sister’s name, Judy, and was asked whether I wanted to delete it.

I have no answers here. Just musings. And Judy’s contact information, still in my phone.

© Janis Bohan, 2010-2015. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to the post. 

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There are no guardrails on the people mover

I’ve written before about this image I have of life as a people mover, a moving sidewalk of sorts. We all get on at birth and ride along until our turn comes to rotate off the end. I find this image helpful because it reminds me that there are people coming along behind my cohort, folks who are now in the early stages of finding their place in the world, folks who are at the peak of their adult lives, and folks slowly moving along in various ways toward the step-off moment. It puts my life in perspective as part of an ongoing flow that includes, but isn’t centered on, me. But this simple image misses an important reality: not everyone travels smoothly to the end of the ride. There are no guardrails on the people mover. People can—and some do—slip off along the way.

Recently, I’ve been reminded of this truth by a series of illnesses and deaths among people I know, mostly people around my age. I’m also reminded of it when I hear stories of people who die much younger than I am of illnesses, accidents, homicide, suicides. People frequently step off the people mover not at the end, but sideways, because there are no guardrails.

I’m tempted to wrap all such endings in language like “they died too soon.” And for those who know and love these people (and usually for the people who pass), that seems self-evidently true. From our pained, grieving perspective, it is unquestionably too soon. Still, from the perspective of life’s inevitable trajectory, indifferent as that may be to our feelings, no time is correct or wrong. The end can come at any time.

It can happen to any of us, any day, expected or not.

It seems that as we age, my friends and I are more and more aware of this uncertain certainty, more prone to acknowledging it. “It could be any of us,” we say. Tomorrow. Today. “You never know.” That’s always been true, of course. From its beginning, life’s continuation was always uncertain. But with age, the increasing proximity of life’s inevitable end surely makes us more keenly aware of its tentative, contingent quality. And then periods like this happen, and the message seems to be everywhere.

On one level, these recent, personal reminders of the absent guardrails serve as alerts, insisting that I not take living for granted, that I appreciate each day I have here, because those days are numbered. For all of us. And we don’t know what the number is.

And on another level, it strikes me that what we’re wrestling with, what we’re trying to get a handle on is so much more poignant. It’s the fact that, to mix metaphors, our image of life as a continuous path leading off into some obscure sunset is flawed. The banks on either side of the path may be steep and unstable, and it is really, actually, painfully, inescapably true that none of us knows when we might slide off. Truly grasping this reality is a tough task, at least for me. I only sometimes “get it.” Usually, I just mutter the right things about “any of us, any day” without fully grasping the fragility of my position on this planet. It’s a protective thing, I’m sure. But sometimes, when these experiences with illness and death pile up—which they increasingly do as we age—I feel the futility of the defense.

At those moments, I really need to talk to someone else who genuinely gets it. Sometimes I need to cry at the loss and the fear and the stark reality of it. And then I need to look around my life and be grateful for another day—or another moment—to cherish my time here. To appreciate the ride while I’m still on it.

I suppose to some folks, this may sound morbid. Some might even worry about my state of mind. But it’s not, and you needn’t. For me, at least, occasional existential encounters of this sort are part of aging, part of taking stock of where life has brought me and what life in this place looks like. On another day, soon, I’ll be marveling at the sky or the wind or the amazing artistry of a local chorus or the vibrancy of queer youth.

Life’s like that—it’s complicated. 

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Alive

By afternoon, last Friday felt a bit like Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Just after a difficult mid-day encounter that left me pretty bummed, my partner called with some bad news. A friend had died that morning. Her death was not unexpected, but very sad nonetheless. Sad in its own right and sad as part of this recent drumbeat of deaths in my age cohort. The reality of mortality staring me in the face. The whole day felt heavy, and I just wanted it to be over so I could wake up and start again—hopefully on a less depleting trajectory.

But as my partner and I talked about this friend, we kept returning to how inspiring she was. She and her partner of many years had spent their professional careers working in settings where they didn’t feel like they could be out as lesbians. They had a large and very loving social circle, so they never felt isolated, but their identity as a lesbian couple was never shared in their workplaces. Then, when they both retired, they asked themselves the question so many of us ask: “What can we do now that we couldn’t do before we retired?” For many folks—maybe most folks—the answers are things like take more time for ourselves, travel, grandkids, gardening, golf, reading all those things I never got to read, maybe some volunteer work. But for this couple, the answer was different: “What can we do now? We can be out!” And they have been. As retirees, they became hyperactive in LGBTQ politics, lobbying at the statehouse, prodding their local Democratic caucus to get on board with LGBTQ issues, generally making themselves heard and seen in circles that had been very unused to seeing strong, smart, committed, vocal old lesbians. Straight from the closet into the streets! And because they made this choice, I’m certain that they’ve helped change the world for folks around them and for folks who will follow.

Thinking about the legacy this woman leaves behind, I recalled a recent Bruce Springsteen song that is my partner’s current absolutely favorite song . It’s called We Are Alive, and it narrates a story from the grave, as you can see from these excerpts (you can listen to it here). 

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart …

Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend
It’s only our bodies that betray us in the end …

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our souls and spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
We are alive

The message seems so perfect to honor our friend. Physically, she has left, but her spirit is still here, still inspiring the rest of us. As I thought about that song, another came to mind, this one by Sweet Honey In the Rock, called Breaths. Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder will be singing this in their spring concert, and a woman in the chorus sent it along to my partner after learning how much she loved Springsteen’s song. The message is so similar—but this time, in women’s voices. And fittingly, women whose music focuses unwaveringly on social justice, just as our friends’ work has done. You can listen to it here. Excerpts:

Those who have died have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass
They are in the moaning rocks
The dead are not under the earth…

They are in the woman’s breast
They are in the wailing child
They are with us in our homes
They are with us in this crowd
The dead have a pact with the living…

Thinking these songs reframed our friend’s death and reminded me how powerfully people’s presence, in some larger sense, remains after they pass.

And then, like gift from the universe, into this difficult day came an email from a dear, longtime (younger) friend announcing that she has achieved a marvelous pinnacle in her path toward work as an immigration attorney—she will be opening her own practice next week. I’ve watched her journey, often a very difficult one, that led eventually to a move to Grand Junction where she managed to get a job with a law firm—a job that met her needs but never matched her passion. She wanted to do immigration law—not a lucrative field, and not a direction this firm was especially interested in supporting. But she has a deep sense of social justice, and her commitment from the start was to find a way to use her skills on behalf of folks who had less opportunity than she, who were trapped in an unjust system. So she worked really hard, gradually earned the trust of the immigrant community around Grand Junction, and finally found a way to do the work she wants to do. When I read her email, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. This, I thought to myself, is amazing!

The next morning, these two stories came together for me: One friend just died and another just came fully into her own. As different as those stories seem, they have the same heart to them. Both of these women chose to be alive—really alive—to their choices and to the possibility of making a difference. It’s this that makes their time here so precious and so meaningful. There's a certain symmetry to the two stories. Endings coinciding with beginnings, intertwined somehow.

“We are alive!” The words could be sung in either of their voices. 

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On being and nothingness, which are enough

We just got home from a funeral service for a friend who died last week while we were at Chautauqua in New York. On Friday, we’ll be attending a memorial gathering for another friend who died on the same day. Not surprisingly, matters of mortality are on my mind. I’ve awakened the last few days feeling off balance, and songs about living and dying have been running through my head. I realize that this is likely how my life will often look from here forward—at least until it’s my turn. It is my peers who are dying now, not our parents (mostly) but ourselves. Despite my outwardly sanguine approach to the end of life, I think I have to consider that these events not only feel sad, they also feel frightening.

This is not a new train of thought for me. You’ve seen bits of it before in my discussions of aging and the meaning of death. But it came up again, big time, this past week. First, unexpectedly, during my course on astrophysics, “The Elegant Universe.” And then again with the news of these friends’ deaths.

Last time I wrote, I promised blogs about three topics from my trip to Chautauqua: the experience of Chautauqua itself, thrilling stories of the universe, and musings on Being and Nothingness (to borrow Sartre’s capitalization). I’ve actually started writing blogs on the first two topics, planning to save Being and Nothingness for last. But events of the past week and the encouragement of some friends prompted me to get on with it. So here you have it: musings on the meaning of Being and Nothingness, life, death, and community.

It all started with a speaker who got stuck in Chicago. First, some back-story: Chautauqua in New York has programming all day, every day, some of which follows the theme for the week. During the week I was there, the theme was “The Elegant Universe,” so several speakers addressed that topic from various perspectives. One of these speakers was Jim Holt, a philosopher, whose topic was “Why Does the World Exist?” I was excited to hear this talk. It promised an exploration of weighty matters of existence, chance, and purpose, and I’m an old philosophy buff, so I love this hyper-abstract stuff. But severe weather marooned him in Chicago. Still intrigued, I went to the local bookstore and bought his book by the same title.

The early chapters considered a series of positions on the question of why the world exists (as opposed to not existing—i.e., Being vs. Nothingness). Most suggested that without a divine entity to create reality, eternal nothingness (the void) would prevail. I skimmed the next  few chapters, which were full of “ps” and “qs,” attempts to answer the question of why the world exists through formal logic: Is there a logical reason for the world to exist (or not)? Old philosophy buff or no, my eyes glazed over during this part.

But then, reading around in the last part of the book, my attention was caught by this line:

“Although my birth was contingent, my death is necessary.”

And this:

“The world got on quite happily for eons prior to that unlikely moment when I was abruptly awakened to life out of the night of unconsciousness, and it will continue on quite happily after the inevitable moment to come when I return to that night.”

Holt’s talk was to be Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday evening, I was deeply into the book and reflecting on these ideas. Then, Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, we learned about our friends’ deaths. The near-simultaneous news of their deaths flashed against the background of these lines from the book, and I started thinking a lot about death. The song “May I suggest” (which I have talked about here before) played and replayed in my mind. Clearly, it was time to think again about existence—mine and ours.

Another speaker had made a point that got me thinking anew about a very old question, and these thoughts seemed especially important as I reflected on mortality. The question: How it is that the universe has precisely the characteristics that allow for and sustain human life—not just life, not just intelligent life, but the particular form of life that we embody? Why, in other words, does this particular world exist in this particular form, and what does that have to do with us?

For many people, the answer lies in an appeal to a higher power: Clearly, they say, a universe so precisely attuned to us must have been created by a supreme being who intentionally brought both the world and us into existence, who made the world explicitly for us. But my thoughts on this question took me in a different direction entirely. It seems to me that, framed this way, the question circumvents a profound (if perhaps uncomfortable) possibility: It’s not that the world was made for us at all. Why the world is this way has nothing to do with us. Instead, the point is that if the world were any other way, there would be no “us” to wonder about it why it’s here. We humans are an accident, I think, of the particular physical events that arose when the stuff of the universe came together in this particular way. To assume that it happened with a purpose—especially, with the purpose of being perfect for us—seems to me inescapably anthropocentric. Holt paraphrases one philosopher’s position, “Our universe arose by chance from a quantum fluctuation in the void”—and, I would add, it emerged with properties that, by chance, resulted in us.

The latter part of Holt’s book (parts of which are quoted above) spoke directly to these reflections. If neither the universe nor we were created for a purpose, then what is the meaning of Being? And does this mean that the end is simply Nothingness? Remarkably, Holt dared write about the struggle to name the Nothingness we fear (his words are in italics, mine aren’t):

“The dread of death goes beyond the fear that the rush of life will continue without us.” Yet, I must admit that when I read this line, I acknowledged (perhaps for the first time) that some part of my fear is precisely this—the awareness that the world will go on when I die, barely missing a beat.

“It is the prospect of nothingness that induces in me a certain queasiness… How to envision this nothingness? From the objective standpoint, my death, like my birth, is an unremarkable biological event, one that has happened billions of times to members of my species.” Again, he nailed it. How distressing to be reminded that on one level, my death will not be at all special, that it will have no more significance than that of billions of other people.

“But from the inside it is unfathomable—the vanishing of my conscious world and all that it contains, the end of subjective time.” Exactly. How can we grasp, how can we even imagine the end of consciousness. The fact that all experience will simply stop.

It seems to me deeply, personally, albeit painfully, true that our being here—collectively and individually—is a quirk of cosmic chance. Our individual existence is, in Holt’s words, contingent—it might never have happened. But once born, our death is inevitable. And, since I believe that my death will be simply the end of my experience and nothing more (OK, I’d like for my cells to feed some trees or worms or fishes or something), my Being becomes a fortuitous happenstance and my slide into Nothingness an inevitable winking out of that happenstance. Describing the moment when his mother died, with him at her bedside, Holt writes, “I had just seen the infinitesimal transition from being to nothingness. The room had contained two souls; now it contained one.”

Some folks might hear in this a fatalistic, even morbid perspective. But for me, it is the most hopeful possible one, because it reminds me every time I think about it that what happens in these moments between the fluke of my birth and the certainty of my death is my opportunity, my responsibility. I have this time—however long I have between chance and inevitability—to give meaning to my existence. It didn’t come with my birth, no agent had a plan for my life; meaning is mine to create or to squander.

This perspective and the reminder it brings has new substance in the aftermath of these friends’ deaths. Each of them in her own way lived well and fully, gave much to others, thrived on the challenges of a complicated world. And each gathered around herself a broad and deep community. The woman who was memorialized today had already lived a full, productive, generous professional life when she decided, late in her life, to come out as a lesbian and work for the betterment of the LGBT community. She left a remarkable legacy that’s expressed in the work she did and the people whom she loved and who loved her with equal depth. The woman who will be celebrated Friday loved to travel the world, and she always performed good works en route to “spend her privilege” well. The folks who will be singing in her honor Friday know well the importance of community and the gift she was to theirs.

From where I stand, theirs were lives that enriched the world while they were here, and those of us who knew them are the better for their time with us. I have no need to seek an extraordinary origin for them or for the world they inhabited. Nor do I need the reassurance that they continue in some way, other than in the impact they had while they were here and its continuing echo in the people they touched.

For me, the amazing miracle—quantum fluctuation though it may have been—that gifted them to us was enough. And the thought that they were once and will again be star stuff suits me fine.

Solstice, cycles, and the Mayan calendar

Friday was Solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year. And it was simultaneously the moment when the days started getting longer, when the light began to return. It’s easy to understand how rituals grew up around this time of year. For weeks, even months, it seemed like the sun was leaving, dropping out of the sky to the south. How could we, being creatures who cherish and depend on light, not celebrate when it seemed to have changed its mind and started climbing back up the sky?

Not surprisingly, virtually every civilization has marked this moment in some way. Around the world, ancient calendars and other forms of time keeping showed some awareness of this change in the cycle of the days. Southwestern US Indians built structures that were perfectly aligned to this date, and, as we learned from endless coverage this year, the Mayans recognized 12-21-2012, Friday’s Solstice, as a key moment in their calendar.

I’m sure you all heard about the (supposed) Mayan prophecy that the world would end on 12-21-2012. This “prediction” became an excuse for end-of-the-world parties (including among high school kids, as I learned from the local filling station attendant, who had waited on several groups of such drunken revelers). And, as a website dedicated to this prophecy informed us, it also inspired thousands of people to flock to a mountain in France that was supposed to open up, revealing a space ship piloted by aliens that would take people away at the end of the world. Some folks traveled to an alternative safe place in Turkey.

Experts in Mayan culture, on the other hand, tell us that the Mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world. It predicts a new beginning.

The Mayan calendar is actually very complex. It’s based on several nested cycles, one within another, going back to the mythical beginning of the world, about 4111 B.C.E. on our calendar. One of these cycles is about 360 days long, similar to our year; another is about 52 years long, roughly a generation. And then there’s the “long count” calendar, which chronicles a cycle about 3000 years long. This is the calendar said to promise the end of the world. The long count does indeed mark 12-21-2012 as a special day—the transition from the first long-count cycle to the second. (Interestingly, after the fact, the website devoted to the end of the world now describes the day as a transition instead.) The next such transition will occur in about 4772 C.E., so it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be here for it.

Part of the discussion about the end of the world was the suggestion that the prophecy actually predicted the end of the world as we know it. This interpretation was favored in part, I imagine, because there’s a song to fit. In part because when it comes to the end of the world, the phrase “as we know it” is easier to swallow than the word “forever.” Perhaps in part because in some sense, every year, every day, every minute is the end of the world as we know it. No moment is ever precisely like any moment before it—if only because this moment is already a part of my past by the time the next one arrives. And in part because some people had somehow learned a more accurate interpretation of the Mayan calendar that recognizes this concept of ongoing cycles and renewal.

The Mayan calendar and our misunderstanding of it tells us something about ourselves. About how easily we accept misinterpretations of other cultures’ beliefs and artifacts, interpretations that obscure the wisdom those beliefs carry in favor of drama. About how easily we accept misunderstandings “sold” by folks who know how to market crises. But also, if we can step back from the hype, there’s something about the common threads that connect cultures and belief systems within cultures. And the threads that connect those beliefs with the world we all inhabit.

Like this notion of cycles. Solstice, the return of the light celebrated in some form across the centuries and across cultures, is at once the end and the beginning of a solar “year.” The Mayan calendar marks the end of a long count cycles and simultaneously the beginning of another. Cycles are like that. Life is like that. I often think of life as a sort of treadmill, with each generation fading into the one before and the one after. One generation slips off the front end, but the treadmill is never empty. There isn’t even a gap in the flow of generations because the generations flow into one another, each is both one generation and the next. Just as Solstice is simultaneously an ending, a transition, and a beginning.

We had a Solstice gathering on Friday night with a group of friends. We lit a lot of candles and dimmed the electric lights. We shared poems, writings, music, and personal experiences that spoke of darkness, light, and renewal. We talked (and talked and talked) about all kinds of things—about community and religion, about finding “light” in oneself, inspiration in music, hope in love, and comfort in the promise of home. About the “resurrection” that comes from the meaning and hope we leave behind us as we pass. And we talked about life and death. About the painful loss of beloved pets and dear friends, and about the new  baby recently born to other friends. We even talked about the Mayan calendar and its message of renewal. Without, I think, ever mentioning “cycles” per se, we talked about the cycles of our lives and of “life” beyond our lives.

Western cultures are so enamored of the notion of the self-contained individual. I wonder what we miss by thinking of ourselves in this isolated way. It’s true that if I focus on my self, I can identify a beginning and an end. But if I focus on cycles and on communities, then that demarcation disappears. Sure, beyond a certain point, my self-contained individual self won’t be here to witness the continuation of these nested cycles or the ongoing life of these communities. I’ll have stepped off the end of the treadmill.

But the Mayans had it right, I think: seen from the perspective of 3000 years, the moments that seem like endings are simultaneously beginnings, transitions. And there is no end to that.

Otherwise

Tuesday, I learned that a friend of mine had died. So on Wednesday, she was very much on my mind when the following poem by Jane Kenyan appeared in my email box, beneath a signature block. 

 "Otherwise"
 
 I got out of bed
 on two strong legs.
 It might have been
 otherwise. I ate
 cereal, sweet
 milk, ripe, flawless
 peach. It might
 have been otherwise.
 I took the dog uphill
 to the birch wood.
 All morning I did
 the work I love.

 At noon I lay down
 with my mate. It might
 have been otherwise.
 We ate dinner together
 at a table with silver
 candlesticks. It might
 have been otherwise.
 I slept in a bed
 in a room with paintings
 on the walls, and
 planned another day
 just like this day.
 But one day, I know,
 it will be otherwise.
 

It’s a beautiful, deeply conscious poem, noticing each minute the privilege of that moment. And I suppose the last line, “But one day, I know, it will be otherwise,” could mean all sorts of things. It could refer to, say, a change of job, a change of partner, a change in health, retirement. In fact, I guess it could refer to life. We all live always knowing that “one day … it will be otherwise.”

But coming on the day it did, the poem spoke to me of the inevitably of death. Each day, I go to sleep planning another day … but one day, it will be otherwise. This time, it was a friend’s “otherwise,” and my response to her death reminds me that one day it will be mine, too.

I met my friend through my work as a volunteer, a sort of “buddy,” with Boulder County Aging Services. From the first day I met her, I loved her spirit, her wit, her determination to be as engaged in her world as she could be—this despite a progressive illness that was stealing her physical abilities and would eventually diminish her mind as well. That first day, we spent a couple of hours talking, getting acquainted. In that conversation, I got my first glimpse of her sense of humor as she told me stories about her life and her kids. Like, about their embarrassment (which disguised delighted pride, I quickly realized) at her playful, unfettered approach to life. Once, traveling on a mountain road with her kids, she took a pit break next to the car. One son said (I imagine him rolling his eyes in jest), “I wish I had a proper mother.” “What would that be like?” she asked. “A mother who wears white gloves and plays Canasta.” She laughed and drove on. I learned so much about her from stories like that—and she had many.

That initial conversation also gave me an idea of what an active, engaged life she had led before she got sick—“back when I was alive,” she said. As I left that first day, she gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. Definitely not something my family has ever done, even with one another, but it seemed right and welcoming. I soon learned that this is the standard Dominican greeting and farewell for family and friends. Once, she asked me why I didn’t say hello to her when I arrived. “But I did,” I insisted. “You didn’t kiss me.” I got it: No hello (and no goodbye) counts without a kiss on the cheek. I left hoping we would become friends.

On our first outing together, we went to the senior center to see what programs there might catch her fancy. We signed her up for a simple fitness class (“Sit ‘n’ Fit”) that seemed suited to her ability and interest, and then for lunch at the center on the two days the class met. Leaving the building, she seemed quiet, and I asked, “Are you exhausted?’” She answered, very quietly, “I’m excited!” And I thought, “I love this woman!” It fit so well with my own wish to stay engaged and alive as I age. How could I not love someone who shared that wish?

I took her to the fitness class the next day, planning to drop her off at the class and return later for lunch. I sat beside her in the exercise circle before the class began and asked if she was OK. “I’m scared,” she said. My instant reply, “I’ll stay.” Now, I have to admit that some of my reaction comes from my own wish to be needed—after all, how better to stay visible? But I also loved her willingness to share this range of emotions—“I’m excited” and “I’m scared.” It was a great match. She was energetic (insofar as her disease allowed), witty, loving, enthusiastic, smart—just what my soul craves. And she seemed to like and trust me. Perfect.

And so began nearly two years of bi-weekly exercise classes followed by lunch at the senior center. Over the past year, I have seen her health declining. She complained more often about not feeling well, but she still wanted to go to exercise class. “If I don’t go, I’ll do nothing,” she said. “That’s worse for me.” Conversations had always been hard for her because her disease meant that her ability to speak lagged way behind the thoughts she wanted to express. Over time, this had become more noticeable. Plus, it was harder and harder for her to show any sort of facial expression, and that bothered her. Try though she might, she could barely force a slight smile for a picture. In fact, I didn’t realize how much her physical appearance had changed until I compared two pictures I have of her—one taken at last year’s holiday party at the senior center and the other at this year’s party. Last year, the smile came easily. This year, it was faint. She reminded me (and others) that this was “the mask” that characterizes her particular illness.

I saw her last Thursday for the annual party. We ate junk food together. (She loved chocolate. She said she ate chocolates because opening them was good exercise for her fingers.) And I took her picture with the fire chief, who stopped by to visit. (She loved firemen. She always said that she liked to fall because then the handsome firemen would come help her up.) Then I dropped her off at her home, saying two goodbyes as we always did—once inside, with a kiss on the cheek, and then again as I stood outside the door, our palms touching through the screen. I said I’d see her Tuesday. Instead, Tuesday was the day I learned she had died.

So now it’s Thursday, a week since we last met. I went to the visitation today and saw her lying in her coffin. Some folks say that this experience provides “closure.” Perhaps the reaction is cultural or regional or dependent on one’s religion. But I didn’t grow up with “viewings,” and the few I’ve attended did not bring closure for me. Her lifeless figure didn't feel like the woman I knew—whereas the picture to the side, the one with just a hint of a mischievous smile, did. Tomorrow is the final service, and my time with her will be over.

Just last Thursday, I saw her. We joked, talked about her plans for Christmas, and ate chocolate. Tuesday, “I got out of bed on two strong legs,” planning to see her … but it was otherwise. Inevitable perhaps. But it makes me really sad.

Leonard Cohen, a thousand kisses deep

Saturday night, we went to hear Leonard Cohen in concert. I was about halfway excited and about equally wishing we weren’t going … an un-frantic end to the day sounded pretty nice. But we’d had tickets for months, and although we always see tickets as an opportunity and not an obligation, Cohen is getting up there in years, we both like his music and neither of us had ever seen him live, and it was right down the road. So off we went.

Little did we expect that it would be nearly four hours after the concert started before it ended. True, Cohen and his friends had initially left the stage about 10:30—already a longish concert. But they came back for an encore … and another … and another … and yet another. I usually think an encore is really just the tail end of the planned concert. But four of them?

My usual endurance level for concerts is right at two hours. By then, I’m ready for it to be over. I once sat through a delightfully timeless four-hour birthday concert for Pete Seeger in NYC, where my partner had taken me for my b-day. But that event featured many, many artists, lots of them personal favorites. The one last night, on the other hand, was virtually all one guy, with the help of his sidekicks. Actually, he featured all of his band members and back-up singers at various times. And well he should—they were all outstanding musicians. They were also a strikingly international group—Spain, England, Mexico, and Moldova, were represented (as well as the Republic of Texas.) Anyhow, they were great and he was amazing.

I’ve always appreciated Cohen’s music and his song-writing—how could you not like “Suzanne” and “Hallelujah” (the latter especially as sung by k.d.lang). But I had no idea I would be so entranced that I’d happily listen to four hours of his mellow, deep-voiced, often somber, almost always philosophical music. I really didn’t want it to end. Besides, watching him is almost as engaging as listening. He began many (most?) songs by falling to his knees, from which he rose effortlessly with nary a hand on the floor for a boost. Whether on his knees or standing, he virtually always sang with his head lowered and his shoulders rounded, his left hand cupping his mouth and the microphone. He wrapped his body around his music as if he were guarding it. My partner likened his posture to Kokopelli, and it fits.

I could say so much (did I mention it was four hours long?), but I want to talk about two things … two very different elements of this program that I found especially nice. The first was his frequent references to aging. He sang about aging in what seemed to me a really lovely way, not tragic or morose, not superficial or trivializing. Like you might describe an evening. His music seemed to comment on his aging as an interesting element of his life. Inevitable, present, sometimes getting in the way or disappointing, but never to be mourned or resisted. My partner thought he might be Buddhist, which would explain this attitude: death is simply part of the cycle of life, all things are impermanent, attachment causes suffering. Sure enough, I learned, he is a Buddhist monk. He is also a practicing Jew, and his music is full of Christian symbolism. Although that seems complicated, it also feels completely compatible with his deeply philosophical lyrics.

Back to aging ...

Several of his references to aging were sort of in passing—a line in one song about “this old man’s face,” another about “now I hurt in the places where I used to play.” But the song that really captured my attention was “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” which I had never listened to carefully before. I searched for the piece online and learned that it was initially published as a poem. He has performed it both as a song and in spoken-word form countless times over many years. And there may be as many versions as there have been performances. Folks who follow these things have explored the question of which is the “real” song and why he's created so many variations of it. But I figure a person can have as many versions as s/he wants of a song s/he wrote (and apparently keeps on writing). It's actually interesting to hear some of these—some are strikingly different from others, whereas some variations are rearrangements of lyrics seen in other versions. For a taste, you can read two very different sets of lyrics here and here. Better yet, you can listen to a fairly recent sung version of “A Thousand Kisses Deep” and also a recent spoken version. Then, if your curiosity is still curious, as mine was, finish up with an older spoken version (as a bonus, if you click on “show more” beneath this last video, you’ll see yet a third set of lyrics).

But the point I want to make is not about the fluidity of the lyrics but about the message this song carried, at least for me. Of course, I have no idea what Cohen actually meant to convey with this poem/song—and his meaning very likely changes along with the lyrics. But to me, at least on this particular evening and in the context of his other references to his aging, it sounded like a love song to life. Sung by a man who is growing old (78) and has had a rich, if not always smooth, life. By someone who regards aging as simply a reality. Someone who sees life as a lover with whom you speak gently and make love but to whom you don’t cling, as a lover whose passing is marked and whose departure is expected and even accepted—not sought, but also not resisted or dreaded. And if that doesn't sound Buddhist, I'm missing something.

    

If I were a psychologist for real, I might think that this is all projection—that I’m hearing in Cohen’s lyrics the song I’d like to (be able to) write to my life. But see what you think. Here are some of the lines that sound to me like an ode to life, recited from its waning years. These are excerpts from various versions of the song/poem. Most were in the version we heard the other night—not necessarily in this order. You can hear them all in his voice through the videos linked above.

Excerpts from (various versions of) “A Thousand Kisses Deep”

by Leonard Cohen

My mirrored twin, my next of kin    I’d know you in my sleep   And who but you would take me in   A thousand kisses deep   I’m just another snowman   Standing in the rain and sleet   Who loved you with his frozen love   His second hand physique   With all he is, and all he was   A thousand kisses deep   I hear their voices in the wine   That sometimes did me seek   The band is playing Auld Lang Syne   But the heart will not retreat   There's no forsaking what you love   No existential leap   As witnessed here in time and blood   A thousand kisses deep   The autumn moved across your skin   Got something in my eye   A light that doesn’t need to live   And doesn’t need to die   A riddle in the book of love   Obscure and obsolete   Until witnessed here in time and blood   A thousand kisses deep       The ponies run, the girls are young,     The odds are there to beat.     You win a while, and then it’s done –     Your little winning streak.     And summoned now to deal     With your invincible defeat,     You live your life as if it’s real,     A thousand kisses deep.     Don’t matter if the road is long     Don’t matter if it’s steep     Don’t matter if the moon goes out     And the darkness is complete     Don’t matter if we lose our way     It’s written that we’ll meet     At least that’s what I heard you say     A thousand kisses deep     We’ll that’s my story …     … all the twisted pieces fit     A thousand kisses deep

So that was my personal existential leap this weekend

And on a totally different topic …

Another thing I loved about the concert was the visual artistry of the lighting. We were sitting close enough to the stage that I was trying to catch some pictures of the concert. But soon, I felt like I was in a sunset-picture moment … you know, when each moment is more brilliant than the last, so you just keep snapping away. I gathered a slew of these pictures into a sort of rainbow so you can see how visually wonderful it was.

   

                                 

                       

        

A shot of the screen almost directly above us

 

                                                             

                         

  

 

                                                                        

  

           

And then he left ... over and over, the stage still changing color. Sort of like the song.

              

Last Act in the Footlights

This week, I encountered two very (very!) different blogs about retirement and aging. First, a friend sent me an “Opinionator” blog from the New York Times with the inspiring title, “For Healthy Aging, a Late Act in the Footlights.” Later in the week, I heard a Fresh Air segment on NPR in which Terri Gross was interviewing the author of a blog called “The Voice of Aging Boomers.” A starker contrast is hard to imagine.

First, the “Late Act in the Footlights.” This blog points to the challenge that many of us faced as we approached retirement without the resources to support the exotic adventures we imagined as we dreamed of retirement. As the column frames it, “Absent money and a sense of possibilities, retirement can become more time to fill with television.” This is the theme of countless columns and blogs and articles on retirement: how to make your retirement (and/or aging in general) a rich and satisfying experience. That’s harder when you come to it with limited financial resources. But, as this article and many others (including this blog) have argued, it really is possible to find great joy in aging. 

This particular piece offers a range of novel ideas to fill the void of all that extra time that retirement dumps in our laps. Artists' colony, senior Olympics, collective film production, or community theater anyone? Most of the ideas mentioned here are the brainchildren of a program called EngAGE, which is located in LA. But there's no reason these ideas couldn't be exported to any place where someone has the time and energy to clone them (and maybe some capital to support the effort, I suppose). Check them out ... maybe you're the person to bring them to your town!

So far, so good … aging can indeed be full and rich and expansive (even in LA)!

And then I heard the Fresh Air interview, and another door on aging opened. “The Voice of Aging Boomers” is written by a man who has early-onset Alzheimer’s. His condition put him in an assisted living facility at the age of 52—far younger than most of the residents there, and younger than most of us at retirement. But retired he was, and living in assisted living with fully intact cognitive ability, no peers of his own age (or even his own generation), and many years ahead. Since he’s there, he has decided to use his aging years well. He has taken on a role as the “voice” of people living in what he describes as a setting filled with disability, dementia, despair, and death. Many people living in this circumstance are unable to speak—or speak clearly—for themselves, he argues. Many others are dismissed as simply old people who are somewhat demented or depressed or just lonely. But in fact, they are desperately in need of more genuine caring, honest attention, and thoughtful understanding and less patronizing, idealizing, de-individualizing, and dismissive treatment. So he has become the “voice of ambient despair.”

This is the other side of aging. For many of us, some part of our last years will be spent beyond the reach of artists colonies and community theater. Beyond, even, Sudoku and crosswords. The stark reality is that no matter how many almonds and blueberries we eat, no matter how many miles we walk or how many weights we lift, no matter how little we weigh, smoke, or drink and how much we exercise, sleep, or pray, we will all die. Relatively few of us will slip painlessly and quietly away in our sleep. Most won’t, as the currently popular slogan urges, “… skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, champagne in the other … screaming, ‘WOO HOO what a ride!’” Many of us will spend the last weeks, months, or even years of our lives not in theater or painting classes but in extended ill health. I know it’s a downer, but there it is.

So, I ask myself, how do we balance these two realities: Aging can be rich and expansive … and … Aging inevitably ends. Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we balance our reaction to these two realities? How do we both fully live now and fully accept that we will die? How can one mind and heart possibly contain both our wish to relish the time we have and the knowledge that one day—one finite day, a day with a date and weather, a day that’s someone’s birthday, someone’s wedding day—it will all simply stop?

Better minds than mine have contemplated this question since humans had minds for contemplating. In fact, some folks argue that this is what distinguishes humans from all other species: we have the ability to know we will die. For better (we can “get our affairs in order”) and for worse (we have to live with this realization, however we may try to ignore or deny it). Some folks have argued that this is one purpose served by a belief in an afterlife: we don’t have to accept that our life will stop if we are certain that it continues beyond the grave.

Whatever your position on these arguments, my personal experience is this: I am occasionally stunned by the reality that the years ahead keep getting fewer (and they're passing faster!), and I'm eager to live as fully as I can manage today. Ask me about this again if/when I find myself in assisted living, staring at a world that seems full of disability, dementia, despair, and death. I may find that eagerness less compelling. 

Until then, pass the chocolate and the (alcohol-free) champagne!