How Accepting Aging Can Heal Loss and Pain; Finding Ourselves in the Sound of Rain

When my father was in his nineties, he said one of the worst things he was facing was the sense of being alone; that almost everyone his own age or older was gone. Sure, he was lucky to have lived so long and been mentally clear, able to remember all these people, able to manage his own life. Able to even do his own taxes. He was an accountant, so this was especially important to him. He was also lucky to have sons and other, although younger, friends and relatives. But the number of losses in his life, and the sense of emptiness was staggering.

 

He also thought about how his aging and dying would affect others. One morning he called my wife and me to tell us he was going to die that day. He wanted to say goodbye. I found out he also ordered presents for several people, baskets of fruit. But he did not die that day. The next day he did go into a rapid decline and died 2 weeks later.

 

He lived 8 hours away from us, so we immediately packed the car and drove to see him. I didn’t realize it then, but the act of thinking about and caring for others made his own passing, for the moment, less fearsome. Caring for others, compassion, love just has this benefit. It surely can hurt, and terribly. But that hurt, that grief, placing ourselves in another’s heart and mind, and valuing their life and perspective can help us value, understand, and expand our own perspective. By feeling some responsibility to others, feeling the need for kindness, compassion, we feel more able to be kind to ourselves.

 

I know that some of us think about others and their judgments of us, more than we recognize ourselves. We impose an image we think others hold of us on top of our sense of self, obliterating our sense of ourselves. This is different from what my dad talked about. He was actually giving up his self-concern, not replacing his own inner awareness with what he imagined others thought of him. Not replacing a living feeling of his own sense of inner reality with an abstract thought. And this allowed him to notice and be more.

 

I don’t want to romanticize this. My dad wasn’t entirely selfless, certainly not fearless. He greatly feared a painful death. The end was not easy. But for several days his concern for others helped him approach his own death with more grace and maybe less suffering.

 

And there’s great research on this, on the link between compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. By looking beyond ourselves to others, we think more clearly and better notice the larger context we’re part of. We feel ourselves right here, not in some time in the future or past, not as a thought or memory, but as right now.

 

We don’t put things off or separate our feelings and awareness from thoughts or with thoughts. We come alive in what gives us life, now.

 

I thought of this because I’m now having similar feelings as my dad did. As I lose more people I once knew, and so many of those around me have severe medical issues, I appreciate what he had told me more now than I did then. His experience then is educating mine now.

 

I wrote a short story years ago that was published by Sunlight Press and my website. It was about a walk I took with the headmaster of my school in 1969, when I served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. We were debating whether political change was possible. He said no; I argued yes. It started raining. I opened my umbrella and said, “I just changed the situation. We’re no longer getting wet.” He replied, “No, you changed nothing. It’s still raining.”…

 

*To read the entire article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Embracing Winter: And the Dread that Spring Will Never Return

I am looking out my second story bedroom window into the old orchard that surrounds the house and is being covered in snow. The snow makes the wind visible in constantly shifting currents. One minute, the whole earth seems to pause as if it was taking a breath in. The frozen wind disappears. And then, it breathes out and the frozen fury appears.

 

In November, when we set the clocks back, I felt a sense of trepidation, a fear of the approaching winter and of what it might bring with it. This year might bring more fear than most, due to the unstable political climate. Now, it’s almost the solstice and the holidays. Winter is clearly here, despite the calendar date. Snow covers the ground. It’s cold and the nights are longer and the daylight disappears faster each day.

 

I know some people love the snow and look forward to winter. When I was still working as a teacher, I remember the joy that filled the school with the first snowfall. Students could barely focus on the academic lesson when Mother Nature had a deeper lesson in store for us. They would rush to the window and look out with wonder. Each snow was the only snow they had seen, ever. The first snow, beautiful and exciting.

 

Yet, for others, winter is a turning in. We cuddle within a new skin or shell, not only of warm clothing, but of doubt. We wonder if the warmth will ever return. Will the earth ever bear fruit again? Will the dark continue to dominate the light?

 

And probably ever since there have been human beings, ever since there has been life on this planet, this dread has been experienced. Not only due to snow⎼ or ice-covered orchards and roads ⎼ but the earth itself turning within.

 

Somehow, we need to embrace rather than turn away from this challenging time, and appreciate this snow fall, the light reflected off snow drops, even the feel of being cuddled by warm clothing. The felt need to get to work, school or wherever can create a conflict within, set us at war with ourselves, and make it difficult to embrace this time. So, we need to be aware of our own warmth. …

 

To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.

It Only Takes One Good Moment

It was early summer, about 8:00 in the morning, and I was awakened by my calve muscles beginning to cramp. As quickly as possible, I got out of bed, started walking to stretch the muscles, and did my best to breathe into the pain. Once the muscles fully seize up, it can be impossibly painful. It happens to so many people. What an awful way to start the day.

 

But what a day to be awakened to! Once I walked off the pain and felt more normal, I put on some clothes and went outside. Milo, one of my cats, ran up to greet me and plopped down on the stone pathway in front of me.

 

Most of the summer, here, was wet. But on this day, it was cool, maybe 64 degrees, and the sky was clear. A catbird was squawking; a car was passing down the road. Young blue jays in their nest were screeching for food. A wood thrush was singing for love or joy or whatever a wood thrush sings for. The light on the leaves of a maple tree in the yard was so fresh, so full of life, it seemed to go on forever. I felt if only I could look deeply enough I would find places and sights never seen before, find people I would celebrate meeting.

 

Isn’t this, this sense of beauty or mystery, enough?

 

If I sat in my yard more often, with Milo, the birdcalls, the clear light and the incredible calm, would my calves stop cramping? Would my body more often feel like a gift I give myself than a source of pain?

 

Why is it so easy to forget this exists? To forget the feel of the cool breeze on our face? To forget how to be nice to ourselves and to keep easy company with the world? Even when the wasps and flies and a gray fox enter the scene, even when the phone rings and the mail is delivered and the human world cries for our attention, must we forget this also exists? Must we forget we have this ability to relax, open, and fully sink into a moment?

 

And what a price we pay for forgetting….

 

To read the rest of this piece, click on this link to The Good Men Project.