Oughtta, don't wanna

 A long-time but not intimate friend (K) died a couple of years ago.  She had been a best friend in junior high, but once I moved from where she lived, our friendship became more desultory.  We liked one another, but our paths seldom crossed.

I knew her husband, although not very well.  I liked him fine but I don't think he and I ever had a one-on-one conversation while K was alive.  After her death, I called him just to express my sympathy and concern.  The call seemed to mean a lot to him; they had moved not long before K died, and he hadn't made friends in their new town.

After that, I called a few more times, but every call was the same.  He would talk for more than an hour and I would listen and murmur "uh huh" in the right places.  He was never grim nor complaining; he had a dry wit and made a lot of puns, told jokes, just talked and talked.  He never asked me about myself, and didn't introduce topics of wider interest. I got absolutely nothing out of those calls except the thinly rewarding feeling that I was doing something kind.  My calls became less frequent and eventually I stopped calling altogether.

I have a friend (N) here in Seattle who is part of a gang I hang out with sometimes, most of us actors, all of us aging.  N has aged the most drastically.  He now lives in senior housing, and although his mind is still pretty good, his body is terribly, terribly fragile, and to have a meal with him means spending 2 hours watching him try to get food into his mouth.  I am one of only two of the gang who has ever visited him, and now the other one doesn't drive any more so it's just me.  N lives about 40 minutes north of me, so when the gang gets together, I'm expected to pick N up and bring him, which turns what would be a 2 hour outing into about 5 1/2 hours, what with getting to N's, getting him and his walker into the car, the drive, the gathering, the drive back.

So here is where I'm torn.  On the one hand, I have many, many blessings in my life, and can certainly afford to be generous with my friendship.  Being a friend to people who don't have friends is the right thing, the kind thing to do.  On the other hand, I'm older myself now, and more aware of how precious my time is.  I want to spend it doing things that are rewarding and interesting and stimulating.  I don't really want to spend an hour on the phone listening to the maundering of someone I didn't know all that well to begin with, and it's a pain in my ass to be N's driver and only friend.  I didn't have a friendship with N separate from the gang gatherings.  I like him well enough, but I just don't feel I like him well enough to give so much of myself for his sake.

I think I have the right to say "I want to do this, I don't want to do that."  I think we all do, at any stage in life, but certainly by our 70's, when there is so much more past than future for us.  For close friends, for family, for Bill, I would do anything and everything.  But for these peripheral acquaintances, I just don't know how much of myself I want to spend.  And yet I feel as though I must be awfully selfish not to be willing to make a boring phone call now and then, or clear my schedule so I can be a taxi.

I just don't want to.  Why do I feel I have to?  Why don't these men have other people showing up for them?  Why does it fall to me to make up for the fact that they didn't make friends?  I'm sure I could be more generous, but, sadly, I sometimes end up feeling impatient and resentful, although I do my best to stay attentive and kind.  I don't feel good about giving these men my shoulder, but I also don't feel good about denying it to them.  As I said - torn.

Panic

Eons ago, in another life, I was driving up winding, unlit Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast at midnight on a Christmas Eve, headed north  from Los Angeles to spend the holiday with my sister, whose then-husband was a ranger in a coastal park.

I hadn't seen another car in several hours, which was actually rather nice as I could take my time and not have to navigate around slower cars.  Finally another car passed me heading south.  When I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw that car turn around; it was now behind me, following me, although it hadn't had a chance to catch up to me yet.

All I could think was that the driver(s) had seen a young woman alone and wanted to - well, I hardly dared visualize what might be on their minds/his mind.  It didn't seem possible that the U-turn was a coincidence.

Until recently, I had never been as scared as I was right then.  I stepped on the gas, taking the dangerous curves as a dangerous speed.  There was no place to turn off the road, nowhere to hide.  I was so full of adrenaline that I had no say in what I was doing; I felt as though I were running for my life.  The good news is that eventually I lost sight of their headlights; perhaps they knew I was on to them and they gave up.  Maybe they crashed.  I'll never know what would have happened if they had caught up to me, and I will always be thankful that I didn't find out.

That was the first time I remember feeling pure panic.  The second time happened quite recently.  Sweet Hubby and I were on the couch eating salad, settling in to watch a movie.  I realized SH was coughing very strangely and that he was clearly in distress.  "Do you need me Heimlich you?" I said, or maybe shouted.  He turned his back to me so I stood him up, wrapped my arms around him from behind, and punched. 

I know the basics of the Heimlich, of course, as we probably all do.  But knowing the theory is as different from actually performing it as reading sheet music is from singing.  Oh my god oh my god what if I try to save him and I can't and he dies in front of me and it's my fault?  What if I'm doing it wrong?  What if this doesn't work?

The second punch got the slippery bit of lettuce off of SH's windpipe and he was all right.  I, however, was a gloppy mess.  I don't think of myself as a hysterical person, but I was as close to hysteria as I've ever been, even including that terrible midnight drive.  It took quite a while for me to stop sobbing.  Even now, a couple of days later, I get a sensation of hot water running from my stomach down my legs when I revisit the memory of that terrible moment.  What if the Heimlich hadn't worked?  I will always be thankful that I didn't find out.

Real questions

Last night I found myself imagining, as I sometimes do, what my life would be like (I refuse to say 'will') if Sweet Hubby died before me.  I pictured myself in a very dark place, wailing to the Universe, "How am I going to survive this?"

But I quickly realized that it doesn't have to be a cry of despair.  It can be a real question.  How would I survive SH's death?  What measures can I take now, what details can I plan for while I have my wits about me?  What support can I line up ahead of time?  For example, I need to think about who I know I would want to talk to and how I would handle the people I don't want to talk to.  Who could set up a meal train?  Who could take care of the garden?   

Most importantly: Who would be the best person I could call on to reassure me that I will figure out what I don't understand and remind me that there are lots of resources to turn to.  It will take a very special person to be able to do that because it will take a lot of work on both our parts for me to stop feeling frightened and helpless.  I have some idea who that person might be, but I may not truly know who it is until the moment I need her or him.

That's another thing.  I must decide now that I'm going to listen to exactly what my heart and guts and brain tell me and be brave enough to do what they say to do or not do or change or whatever.  I have to put it into my mind now that I am going to be able to survive and figure everything out and get the help I need.  

Original thought

 I used to find the Amazon logo faintly - unsettling?  Annoying?  I couldn't understand why the arrow that swoops under the word Amazon didn't go from one end of the word to the other other.  It looked incomplete to me, not well thought out.  But of course it had been well thought out; someone paid someone else a lot of money to come up with that logo.  I would ask people what they thought about it and they would usually either shrug or say "It's a smile", but that didn't satisfy me. 

I can still remember the moment when I realized that the arrow started at the A in Amazon and ended on the Z.  That logo is subtly implying that Amazon has everything from A to Z.  I've never heard that mentioned in any of their adverts, and I haven't met anyone else who has come to that conclusion, but to me it seems quite clear.

That was one of those moments when I felt I had had an original thought, one not prompted by anyone else's suggestion but which I truly came up with myself.

There haven't been many moments of pure insight like that in my life, but another that stands out to me was when I solved a koan to my own satisfaction.  A koan is defined as "a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment."  One of the most famous is this:

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?  

I've never come up with a satisfying answer for that one.  However, I have what I feel is a perfect answer for the question:

Is the glass half empty or half full?

Most people use that question to determine if a person is an optimist (half full) or pessimist (half empty), as in "She's a half-empty glass kind of person."  But I realized one day, one moment, that the glass is always completely full.  Even if it's only half full of water or whatever, it's still completely full because the rest of the space is filled with air.

I love that answer because it's such a great way to live, such a nourishing way to think of things.  Even if there is not what I want nor expect from a situation, the situation still contains a lot, and can I let go of what I expected and deal with what is actually present?  Every situation, every moment, is always completely full; just not always full of what I want.  I'm an all-full glass kind of person, or do my best to be.

What's really important

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, one of my favorite activities late in the day is to put on music and dance around the living room, losing myself in the rhythm and movement.  Sweet Hubby once remarked that he was always pleased when he heard certain music in the evenings because he knew it meant I was dancing, and that meant I was happy.

As I was dancing last night, I realized he was right about that.  When I'm dancing, either I'm feeling great and I'm celebrating, or I'm feeling bad and I'm cheering myself up.  Music and dancing provide all of that to me.

And I realized that those are the people and things with which we should fill our lives: the ones we want to celebrate with, and the ones we go to when we want cheering up, whether friends, family, pets, music, parks, mementos, sports, poetry, whomever and whatever it might be.

I hope you have plenty of them and those in your life.

More about stuff and The Activist's Credo

I realized something recently, as I have continued to mentally peruse my belongings and wonder what to do with them all.

Possessions used to be handed down from one generation to another, sometimes for centuries.  This was partly because a lot of folks probably couldn't afford new stuff, and "Why get rid of it if it's still useful?", and "This was Great-Grandmama's, so it means a lot to my family."  Also, things used to be built to last.

Now, because tech developments and styles change so quickly and so often, a lot of products are considered old by the age of four, and are often not only no longer fresh, but completely dead.  Just trash.

I realize that not only are my nieces and nephews not going to want my treasured personal artifacts and mementos, they are also not going to want, and maybe won't even be able to use, my vast collection of DVDs and CDs.  Sweet Hubby and I have a large library of books, and fortunately they have not gone completely out of style, although they are on their way to obsolescence with the gaining popularity of e-reading.  So eventually it's all going to be landfill.  In fact, every single thing on Earth is eventually going into landfill.  And then what?

I take very seriously the 3 Rs of reduce, reuse, recycle and SH and I do our little bit, such as always taking our own reusable leftover containers to restaurants, and wearing our shoes until they have holes in them.  It's something.  Not enough, but something.  It feels as though there's no such thing as doing enough, not in any realm.  I guess I just need to stay awake and aware and keep doing what I can.

In fact, a boyfriend of mine who was a lifelong political activist made that point.  We must do what we can to address the problems of the world, and we must also live our lives with joy.  We must take action, not because we think it will make a difference but because we have to live by our own values.  The results almost never show up immediately, maybe never in our own lifetimes, but still...  

Which leads us to the activist's credo: Do what you can.  Start at home.  

Acceptance and the end of the world

Last night as I was lying in bed, I found my mind dancing through the past, revisiting incidents from different parts of my life.  Not the significant events, just moments from childhood, adolescence, young adulthood.  And suddenly I realized: I'm at the stage of life when I have more past than future.  I've been at this stage for a while, of course.  But it never quite came home until last night.  I understood it in one of those lights-turning-on sorts of insights.  And I don't find it distressing at all to think that quite a bit more than half my life is behind me.  In fact, I find I'm feeling quite calm about my approaching end of life, in this moment at least.  I certainly don't feel ready to check out, not yet.  But I also don't know how hard I want to fight to stay in this world.  Of course I don't want to leave Sweet Hubby, my friends and family.  There are plays I'd like to finish writing, states and countries I'd like to visit, and I'd like to keep learning, trying new things, meeting new people.  

But along with the acceptance of the coming of old age and eventual death has come the understanding that it's too late for the human race.  We were doomed, we doomed ourselves in fact, as soon as the Industrial Revolution happened.  We've been poisoning ourselves and the planet since, and it's clear we're not going to stop.

I say it's clear because I look at my own life, the way I live, the choices I do and don't make.  Supposedly I'm one of the smart, informed, educated people who understands the dangers of climate change and the role of humans in that change.  SH and I take the right actions of composting and recycling.  We bring our own doggy bag containers when we go out to eat.  I reuse plastic bags for as long as possible.  But I still use them.  There is plastic everywhere in our home.  We drive a hybrid, very fuel efficient.  But I still fly when I want to go somewhere farther from home.  Air travel is supposed to be one of the major causes of air pollution.  And what materials did it take to make my car and the billions of other fuel efficient cars on the road and how are those materials mined?  And the battery in the car is eventually going to go into landfill.  In fact, ultimately, everything is going to go into landfill.  As was said in a documentary, we throw things away, but there's no such place as 'away'.  Everything goes somewhere, and somewhere is either the land, the air, or the water.   Thwaites Glacier, also called the Doomsday glacier, is melting and will collapse.  It is inevitable now.  And I know it, and still, I continue to live the way I live.  So much easier than to make the drastic changes which every single person would have to make if the human race were truly to reverse or even slow the decline of our environment.

I know this must seem dire and depressing, but for some reason, I'm not depressed about it.  I accept that my end is coming and that the end is likely near for all of us humans.  Not for the planet, which will immediately begin to heal once we aren't around to frack and strip mine and pollute.  That's part of why I feel sort of sanguine about this all; the Earth is going to be fine, because the Earth has all the time in the Universe.  We humans, despite these great big brains and our wonderful, dangerous imaginations, despite our amazing technologies and industries, are primitive beings who are able either see trouble coming and just not do anything about it or simply don't/can't see it because we're so busy thinking about our little selves.  Just as I am.  And that's just how it is.

Reflections on death and stuff

About a week before Christmas, Sweet Hubby and I flew to Santa Barbara to say our final good-bye to Chris, my brother's wife.  She had been diagnosed with cancer five years ago and given a two year prognosis, and although she had beat the odds and lived several more mostly good years, it was clear that this was going to be her last.

Chris was someone who was able to talk openly about how she was feeling, what she was thinking about, how this journey has affected her sense of herself.  These last few years have been for her a process of letting go: letting go of things, of relationships, of long-held spiritual beliefs, of all kinds of attachments.  We had several conversations with her which lasted as long as her waning energy allowed.  Finally, it came time to say good-bye and walk out the door, knowing it was our last time to be with her.  I had to work on my own sense of attachment, my own hard, reluctant letting go of someone who has been a central figure in my life for about a quarter of a century.

I came away from that precious good-bye reflecting on how much I hold onto that is completely unnecessary.  Mostly I have reflected on the things, the stuff, that clutter my life.  I've got a huge box of photograph prints, for example.  I don't look at them, have no intention of organizing them into albums. Those who have to clean up after me, my nieces and nephews, aren't going to want any of them.  Why do I keep it all?

I will admit that a lot of what I've held onto, such as photos, journals and diaries, etc. I've kept because of the crazy notion that someday I will be famous enough that someone will want to write my biography and will need research materials.  Finally, at 73, I'm ready to give up on that fantasy.  Time to let go of these useless things.

Useless yes, but also precious in a certain way, because they are the evidence of the unfolding of my life, of my evolution as a person, of the experiences I've had.  But it's time for me to acknowledge that this evidence is precious only to me.  And so I avow here and now that one of the major projects for this new year will be to let go and let go and let go.  It's clear to me that I will not be diminished in any way by no longer having these boxes which give evidence of my life, because the evidence doesn't matter.   What matters has been, is being, the living of this life.  

Chris died the day after Christmas.