Dying is an Exercise in Futility

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

I have an old friend who is thinking about death and dying. Not in a fatalistic or pejorative way but rather as an objective and reflective exercise in self-examination and future planning.

He’s going on a retreat this weekend. He’s been doing that for over 30 years. It provides him with the perfect environment to help cleanse his brain of sundry matters and just focus on those issues in his life that really matter.

He’s been very successful in business, has been married to a wonderful woman for over forty years, great kids and grandchildren. He mentioned just casually he is also thinking about his life; taking a personal inventory and recognizing that there are less years left than when he was younger. He isn’t being fatalistic or a downer, just being realistic about his life as it is.

We agreed that we’re both at that stage in our lives where we don’t have much if anything left to prove. We’ve either done it or we haven’t. I wish I had done a few more things in my life but I didn’t. I wish some things had turned out differently but they didn’t. So be it. No apologies needed.

We agreed that we’re both old enough to see some things cycling around, coming back full circle into our lives. It’s really true that over time what goes around comes right back again. I guess it’s all part of that circle of life.

There is a movement in some of my city neighborhoods to bring back chickens. And chicken coops are now sprouting up in a number of backyards. My friend has a picture of his father in his old neighborhood back in the 30’s standing around a backyard of chickens.

My friend and I talked about streetcars choking downtown and our grandparent’s amazement at those new-fangled contraptions called streetlights to brighten downtown streets at night. A new University open-air stadium was being built on campus. It replaced the domed stadium which only 17 years before had replaced an open-air stadium at the same University.

I was raised in the city but couldn’t wait to get out of it. Now, young couples are flocking back to the very neighborhood I fled forty years ago. It got me to thinking. Does that mean that my circle of life is almost complete? Is my thirst for…. just an excuse in futility because who cares anyway? I hope not. There’s still so much to do and who knows how much time to do it.

I’ve talked about meeting my old high school classmates in my blog “In the Company of Old Men.” I mentioned how shocked I was to see that a number of them had passed on. It feels very strange to look at an alumni picture book, spot an old high school chum and then read the caption: ‘Deceased.’ It leaves an unsettled feeling in your stomach. And you don’t know if you should be looking over your shoulder for that shadowy figure in the black shawl anyplace close.

There are so many inconsequential ways to spend the rest of one’s life. I don’t want to spend countless hours shopping for groceries just because I’ve got the time to do it. Or sit with other old men in the coffee shop, bitching about anything and everything. I don’t want to travel just to keep moving or get a job just for something to do.

Role models are hard to find. I only know of a couple of older folks who are still active and alert and pleasant to be around. But the few I know are an inspiration for someone anxious to ‘do what I’ve always wanted to do’ and then some.

There are thirty plus books in my office that I haven’t read yet and if I count those books in my library that I’d like to revisit again or just review, I’d be page-locked for the rest of my life.

I will continue to seek out and welcome past acquaintances who want to share the good and sometimes not so good memories of a time since pasted. I’ve done it with several high school friends and it’s brought laughs and sighs and subtle nods.

Both my kids have promised to tell me when I’m acting like an old person. The trouble rests with their definition of getting old. Melanie thinks that my blog ‘Growing old without underwear’ was simply TMI (Too much information). I guess I’ve failed to make my case to her. She says the first thing to go are the social graces.

So, either my assumptions are correct and I just haven’t yet been able to communicate my thoughts and ideas in that area. Or my kids are right and I am getting old without even realizing it. In either case, as I ponder my predicament, I found the following quote that pretty much says it all for me.

Risk

To reach out is to risk involvement

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self

To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is to 

risk their loss

To love is to risk not being loved in return

To live is to risk dying

To hope is to risk despair

To try is to risk failure

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life

is to risk nothing

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing

is nothing.

He may avoid suffering and sorrow but he simply cannot

learn, feel, change, grow, love, live…

Chained to his certitudes, he is a slave

He has forfeited freedom

Only a person who risks is free

-Anonymous

Swig is Just a Repeat of Itself

Photo courtesy of Jerry Hoffman

Swig and Sota are two of the newest drink fads grabbing teenage imaginations. In case, you’re over the age of twelve and out of the loop, both of these drinks are newly manufactured liquid concoctions old timers like me would call a witch’s brew. Back in the day, at my corner drug store, it meant a glass of Coca Cola with a squirt of chocolate, cherry or vanilla syrup mixed in. A decade later, in Sharon’s Wabasha, they called it a suicide drink. Some things never change when it comes to tempting the virgin palate.

Along the same lines, my daughter and I have this ongoing discussion about changing times and opportunities. She believes that Sharon and I had it easier growing up, raising kids, buying our first house and so forth. “Yep, you guys had it easier than my husband and I have had doing the same thing.”

Not so, say I. Different times, yes. Different challenges, yes. Different social-economic-political pressures from both sides to taint and/or coat the equations of differences, yep. But, at its most basic level, not a whole lot has changed over the decades.

Now, I will admit that I have a distinct advantage over my daughter with my own miles traveled. I have earned the education, information and life scars gleamed over a lifetime of living. In turn, that has benefited me with the ability to look back and see remarkable similarities.

We live in a world today that is rift with misinformation and propaganda from both sides of the political aisle. Artificial Information has enhanced the dissemination of information but also spread mistrust and illusion in its wake. For many of us, it can be discouraging at times. Yet, in reality, some things never change. History really does repeat itself.

A quick glance back at historical events paints quite an interesting picture. Every generation thinks it has discovered sex, will end all wars, is the best collection of humanity around and knows more than any other generation. The world of business is one good example of this.

Today’s Wall Street darlings all hype the same mantra; new, innovative, ground-breaking, revolutionary, etc. History tells a different story. The reality is that the world of business is constantly changing, evolving, growing out of date and at the same time being truly innovative. The brightest stars of today could be the relics of tomorrow by this afternoon.

Block Buster once ruled the home video market. Then, upstart Netflix came along with their revolutionary idea of sending DVDs in the mail. Now, Paramount is trying to dislodge that giant of streaming content with its own version of content distribution.

In the 50s and 60s, IBM was ‘it’ in computer technology until a little upstart in Seattle sold them it’s operating system and kept the rights for themselves. Now, Microsoft is competing with other surviving giants in the newest fields of AI (artificial intelligence) and quantum computing.

After World War Two, Sears Robuck, Montgomery Wards and old stewards like the Emporium dominated the retail world. Now Walmart and Target have taken their place and even Target has stumbled recently. Uber and Lyft replaced Yellow Cab. Airbnb edged out Hilton and Marriott in the lodging business.

In historical terms, nothing ever stays the same and whatever goes around, comes around. Time changes everything.  Civilizations are born, grow and die over time. Innovation changes the world and it stays the same. Nations and nationalities become convinced they are the conquering force and then they aren’t.

Japan and Germany went totalitarian in the 1930s, trying to conquer the world. They never did. Japan tried to conquer Vietnam during World War Two and failed. Then the French tried to continue their colonial rule. They couldn’t. The Americans also tried and failed. Afghanistan was no different. First, it was the Russians then the Americans. Neither country was able to dislodge the ethnic, religious and political forces tearing the country apart. Now Israel and America are trying to do the same thing in the Middle East with Iran. See a pattern here?

Education is paramount for Melanie’s children’s advancement as it is for the Colorado cousins. Compared to the standard approach in achieving a college or tradesman degree my generation had to follow, nowadays, educational opportunities mean almost endless possibilities unheard of only a few decades ago.

High schoolers, as well as adult students, are inundated with extracurricular activities of every scope and area of interest. There are AP (advance placement) classes available. Community and Technical Colleges play a critical role in furthering education for those unable or unwilling to follow the four-year traditional approach. On-line educational courses, Adult Ed classes, and correspondence classes can all lead to advanced studies toward a MA and PhD degree. It is no longer a case of one single approach for everyone to follow.

Everything seems fluid except for one reality. There is still hope in age-old values and a common-sense approach to life.  Those basic core values of hard work, determination, common sense, thrifty smart vs stupid cheap, ambition, etc. It’s the same philosophy of life that’s been around forever.

There is nothing new in this category. While ‘Think and Grow Rich’ may have grabbed the reader’s attention in the early thirties, the mythical tale of rags to riches by Horatio Alger had already arrived at the turn of the century. The Sixties and Eighties philosophers followed suit as did Tony Robbins later on.

‘The Basics’ as old school teachers have preached for centuries are still has tried and true as they were back then. Hard to remember with all the distractions around but still as reliable as ever. So, yeah, some things change and some things just come on round back again.

Memories are Made of This

Our parent’s generation had their Brownie cameras, thin airmail letters, and sketchy oral history sessions to collect a lifetime of memories. They had little else to encapsulate their era, decades of living and snippets of generational history. My, how times have changed.

A while back, I was able to escape Minnesota for a week in Palm Springs. It was a respite from the craziness that had become my life over the last six months.  A retreat to the desert was meant to being clarity to my brain and recharge my batteries for the continuing challenges ahead for me as a caregiver back home.

Not surprisingly, my long list of have-to-do projects was pretty quickly set aside for quiet times on the back patio and time to reflect. I made a point to playing catch-up with our neighbors and little touch-up tasks around the house. Most importantly, I made a point of seeing several close friends, one of which was Howard. 

Howard is a wonderful man at ninety-three who has had a good life. We were lunching at the Senior Care Facility where he now lives. Bob, his partner and husband of 54 years, had passed away this fall and Howard was struggling with his new reality of living alone again.

One particular statement he made touched a nerve with me. “All I have left now,” he said “are my memories. I lived the first fifty years in a straight world and then the next forty-four years with Bob.” A smile slowly escaped from his face and it was all good. Despite being almost totally blind now, living in an assisted-living facility, Howard still had his memories to keep him alive. He is keeping busy, reading through an instrument from the Braile Institute and making new friends and, most importantly, cherishing those memories of ninety-three good years well lived.

It was only in her later years that my mother was able to recollect and relish (to some small degree) her life growing up on the farm, the early years working in the Twin Cities as a domestic, then raising two children on her own and finally meeting her second husband and another thirty good years spent with him. Unfortunately, collecting memories weren’t paramount on her mind back then.

Handwritten notes (really scribbles) of her life are now the only tangible thing along with some photographs that she left behind. Her later-in-years recollection of past events were often clouded by old age, memory loss and fractured truths that often didn’t pass the test of reality.

Howard’s comments about holding on to memories brought up an interesting realization. While my parent’s generation wasn’t very big on picture-taking or memoir-writing, my own generation was and is. With the advent of the iPhone, everyone can now be a photographer and able to capture any of life’s moments in an instant.

With Cloud storage and digital capabilities, the total amount collected is almost limitless. The same can be said for data, documents, videos, and any other form of digital-capture. More memories can be captured, created and stored in one day than our forefathers could muster up in a lifetime.

When both my kids did their semester abroad sessions while in college, I was able to capture their experiences on video (now digitized). It’s a visual benchmark upon which their kids can compare their own future explorations abroad. We captured the same precious moments when Sharon’s parents were interviewed about their early years growing up in Nebraska and then Minnesota.

Over the years, I written more than 700 blogs. Each is my own version of a memoir, covering various aspects of my life, interests, failures, success, places I’ve been and dreams I’ve captured. Writing my own obituary and that of Sharon is simply another way, she and I can capture (in our own words) a lifetime of living. For us, memories are made of that.