Suicide is a right

It's Thursday. That's the day after the two long days, and it's a long day itself. I feel a bit creaky. Last night, I introduced a film (PBS, Independent Lens: A Fishing Story) and suggested to my young students that they were the foundation of my future, that they - in this class - needed to learn to recognize ethnocentrism and the human tendency to make "groups," and to distinguish between pluralism, assimilation, and tolerance, because they - future policy-makers and citizens - had to figure out to reduce/avoid/resolve conflicts between the myriad groups that exist, locally/nationally/globally. I frequently refer to my elderly-ness, and I (increasingly) sound more querulous as I demand they step up to the plate and learn enough to take care of me in my tarnished years.

So it's Thursday, which is also a day with chunks of time to prepare for future lectures. I will be teaching 'AGING' in two classes this fall. Gotta find some interesting, shake-them-in-their-flipflops kind of videos and articles. I found this in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/world/europe/24britain.html?ref=todayspaper.

From the age of 16, I have pondered the What-If's and the paradoxes I encounter. What's worse: to be smart and ugly, or dumb and beautiful? (That took up a lot of thought time a few decades ago!). Now, I wonder what's worse: to lose motor coordination and other physical abilities (like my sight) or to lose my awareness of the moment and memories? One of the things that my mother and I discussed in the year before her death, was the right to die. She seemed to feel that taking her own life would cause undeserved stress and angst among her family and loved ones. So dying had to be a natural occurrence. But she did have admiration for the strength of character that led the elderly Eskimos to the iceberg. My thinking (at this distance in time from the dying) is that I have the right to hold as much control as I am able to hold over the dying, and the death. (Cynicism alert: That may be more control than I will have over the distribution of my stuff and the way I am celebrated in ceremony.) If my life isn't worth living -- and surely, I am the one who gets to decide that! -- then I have the right to end it. Right?

Did you see Maureen Dowd's column this weekend? Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20dowd.html. It's about happiness, or lack thereof, in women over the age of "mid-life." Men get happier, and women get less happy (not to say "sad"). Dowd quotes a few studies, and concurs with their speculation that unhappiness is due to the huge number of options that women have today. The options collection creates a whirlpool of "What If's" and women are exhausted from trying to do everything. I wonder, in addition to the options, if it's The Potent Spell. According to that book, scientists and doctors have been telling women for a very long time that their efforts outside of the home, beyond the hearth, are futile and mis-guided, and -- at the same time -- that their role as mothers is the absolutely most important thing they can do for society, and it is so very easy to screw it up.

Now, with two out of the nest and the other one flying soon, it appears that my re-defined mothering job is to dole out money, send little love-packages, and worry when appropriate (I don't have time to worry any more about kids getting mugged in big cities, and anyway, all the worry in the world didn't stop it from happening). So, now what, for me? If I can claim any success at all at mothering, it may be that my children do not live at home AND still communicate with me regularly. They seem to be able to find friends, make a social life, clean their own bathrooms, feed themselves using kitchen appliances, and earn positive remarks from important people in their new lives (daughter got a promotion, son made the Dean's List). My "potent spell" may be mitigated by my success, but I can't fill my days considering that success or checking up those successful children. I think that if I were left bereft of a purpose in life, I would get very unhappy. So, I'm flopping around emotionally a little bit, trying to see the path that goes on into my older-age. There are a lot of options in existence these days -- but I'm thinking that there are several I can't see yet.

I seek answers from friends, I look eagerly for comments to this blog, I collect various articles about "successful aging." Sometimes I find a clue in what I'm reading. Dear Mr. Jefferson: Letters from a Nantucket Gardener includes this declaration: "Gardening is an undiluted pleasure for me. I enjoy every phase of it from pawing through seed catalogs to harvesting the fruit.... I like feeling the sun in my bones and clean air in my lungs, I like feeling my muscles stretch till they ache.... The act of gardening repays its labors...."

Children may not do that. Wage-Work often doesn't have a recognizable return on your investment. Marriage may have its moments, but it does not have a day-by-day guarantee. If my 101-year old paternal grandmother and her 93-year old maternal counterpart were any indication, living longer just to be "old" is not worth the candles on the cake: it's lonely and frustrating on many levels. So, even growing old "successfully" may not have a return on the labor involved (is our societal obsession with youth a new "potent spell"?). The Nantucket Gardener writes to Jefferson, who said at age 68 "Though an old man, I am but a young gardener," that we are all young gardeners: "Gardeners are ageless and the gardens we create go on forever." I have to figure out, I think, how to be the Best Of Myself, regardless of age, children, marital happiness, or any known measure of success. I want to be like humus: ever bettering and entertaining more worms, and contributing to the rampant growth in those who come in contact with me. The new potting room in the basement now has shelves of canned vegs, a cupboard of seeds, and lots of potential. The piccalilli jars all sealed yesterday, I got the rainbow tulips planted, and I ate a handful of raspberries. What's next?

Horrors in Life

The topic at my AA meeting last night was "Relapse." A new woman showed up, and told the tale of her several months of glorious sobriety, all crushed last week when she tied one on at a local concert. Everyone at the table except me & Bill & Lisa have been through the morning-after-you-wrecked-your-life. Though I have more than two decades in the program, I recognize that I am only one drink away from the wreck. What I ponder, when the topic is "Relapse," is what will cause me to lift that glass and take that drink? You know what they say: it ain't the first one that kills you, but it's the first one that makes you forget what you know.

My son was mugged yesterday, in the big city where he lives. He reported that the cops told him he handled it just right. A little joke, and hand over the Ipod and wallet. He did all the follow-up with the bank and the insurance and the school ID office. I suggested to him that he has now experienced VULNERABILITY, and that's probably a good thing, since the world is imploding around us and desperate people roam the streets. Charity is a great thing, if it's voluntary. Desperate people have nothing to lose. He's a statistic now. The issue is the vulnerability. I consider vulnerability to be one of the horrors in life. I like to be in control! The idea that a madman with a gun (or a banana- who thinks clearly at that moment?) can take my control and make me vulnerable, is a horror. I'm reading The Potent Spell about the horrors that mothers live with -- our children, their very existence, makes us vulnerable to several horrors. My children are grown, so that means I've missed several of the horrors. Now they fly out of the nest into their own lives -- and there is a long list of horrors I get to NOT think about now.

For good or ill, I tend to avoid thinking about horrors. It just makes them bigger, I rationalize. But what not thinking about them really does is protect my illusion of being in control and invulnerable. I wrote in an earlier posting about my recent breast lumpectomy. My brother responded: "You never mentioned it, but this must have been a a major moment in life when mortality passes by the window, blurred but pronounced. A glimpse. Frightening, inscrutable, and lordly. Like a monolith." And he's right, I didn't tell anyone except the Hubby, who had to get up with me at 5:00 AM and drive me to the hospital. Not thinking about the outcome, not even entertaining in conversation or writing that the outcome might be really scary -- this was a way to stay in control. "Don't borrow trouble" is an old saying; "Tomorrow comes soon enough." If the biopsy results had been bad... well, then we talk about it. Then we deal with it. Then we feel the emotions. Until then, I'll just block it all out, take one day (or one minute) at a time, and stay busy with the things that give me joy, strength, and peace (today's do-list: pickles, move the compost bin, haul the old National Geographics to the dump, iron my white shirts, grade some Sociology quizzes....). Tomorrow's list isn't yet made.

Girl Talk

I went kayaking today with my girlfriends, Moment and Lovelace. Those are nicknames, assigned today. Moment teaches me with her enthusiasm for "now" how to relax into the mood of the moment, whether it is one filled with quiet appreciation for silence or one that is hilariously noisy. There is only a very little innuendo in Lovelace's nickname. She loves, and is a quiet force of affirmation and acceptance. And she's pretty, and frilly, and lacey. After regretfully declining several invitations earlier this year, I took time away from garden and books today -- one of the last of the best of fall -- and it was worth every minute.

There is firstly, the gift of time. Selfish time, girl talk time, outdoors-not-working time, sunny but not too hot time, gentle exercise time, making relationships deeper and stronger time. Secondly, there was the forced acknowledgment of NOW: no way to make the river go any faster. I do not give up control easily. It is good for me to do that once in a while. Thirdly, there was the sugary frosting of empathy and sympathy. I spend energy, I think, in not whining, in not asking for help, in what I call acceptance of The Is, but what is really (thank you, Kathleen Norris) resignation, acquiesence, denial. It was a treat to hear "Oh, poor you!" and "Me, too!" Girls talk in mid-life about the same things they talked about when they were teens. We floated and snacked, and smoked cigars, while wearing sombreros.

I made a list earlier this summer of the things that gave to me some sort of energy. I love my garden, all the various bits of it. I cherish my books, the old favorites and the new discoveries. I really love my work: I feel valuable and valued, as well as challenged. I am looking forward to figuring out how to make pickles, sew a quilt, write the novel, weld a lawn ornament, and become part of the Sizzling Seniors. I assert that I recognize the importance of relationships, but I realized in reviewing the list that I do not give them the same importance as gardening, reading, and working. Not sibling ones. Not girl ones. Not even sex, and not even my bestest friend forever (aka BFF). I'm not sure that I take those people for granted -- nay, I think of them almost every day, and treasure the time gift-shopping, and react to emails or news stories with both my reaction and imagining their reactions. It's just that I don't take from those relationships the same breath or vitamins that I find alone, doing my favorite things. I'm not sure how to fix that, but I think I need to.

Here's a reminder: http://wimp.com/sweetinspiration. Let me always taste the coffee. That is the nectar of the gods, life's blood, the essence of living. It is the juice, baby.

Commemorating Mom

Two weeks from today, on September 22nd, will mark one year since my mother died. My siblings have been emailing about commemorating the date. I miss her every day -- what’s so special about the day she died? Commemorating, remembering, honoring the dead - my first impulse is that we should, yes, set aside time to attentively, actively, remember the loved ones we miss so much. I’ve always liked the idea of the Day of the Dead (All Saints’ Day), where all the ancestors are remembered and celebrated around the whole country. In America, we have Memorial Day (with way too much of the red-white-and-blue patriotic inspiration for the next generation) and Veteran’s Day (which is supposed to honor the survivors). But, the poems in the newspaper about how much “we still miss your smile” that start with “When God called you Home…,” give me the creeps. It seems to me, with a second thought, that commemoration of a death-day, as opposed to a birth-day, is in fact recognizing the day that your grief began. That’s selfish, and very disconnected from honoring the person who died. The national holiday is on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, birth-day, not the day he was killed -- so that we can spend the day thinking, “Thank God someone like that was born unto us.”

I spent Mom’s dying days at her bedside in a life-changing experience of intimacy with her and with my siblings, and renewed spiritual energy. One of the many things I pondered as I sat there with her, was how she influenced me and how much of who I am today is to be credited to her. If you like me, you have to thank my mom! She spent many years, I know now, trying to balance both her need to explore her options and to fulfill her familial duties, and she spent the last two decades being - finally - the person she always wanted to be: living in exotic places providing needed education and healthcare services, acting out her principles of thinking globally and acting locally. At her deathbed, I promised myself to become more authentic, and as much as allowed by personality and circumstances, more like her. September 22nd is actually my anniversary, where I mark my progress toward my life goals.

I do, and have done, and will continue to, commemorate her life. In the last week, I have harvested edible vegetables from the raised, wire-bottomed beds that her last monetary gift purchased. I moved her garden bench to a new-made spot under the shade of the maple tree, hug the blue-painted pvc bird feeder, and straightened the picket fence bits that I took from her yard (I want my garden to be recognizable to her spirit as well as inviting). I made pickles, dilly beans, and, as I promised in my eulogy, watermelon rind pickles! I traveled this weekend 100 miles to her sister’s 80th birthday party. I re-filled the bird feeders in my yard, and I will, today, order a few more fruit bushes, and more spring bulbs. And I talked about her, with a smile, a laugh, or an affirmative nod, to friends and family. I think of her every day. I commemorate her every day.

Yesterday, my dad emailed that he had knee surgery scheduled for next week. He has been limping for at least five years now, and has explained that he won't get a new knee 'yet' because they only last 10 years. He's 75 years old. He's getting a bit hefty. My thinking -- never said out loud, of course -- is that if he doesn't get the new knee, he won't be around in 10 years. According to him, his ortho-doctor told him in June to try crutches for 8 weeks and see if the pain went away.... I think this is the same doc who told him several years ago that there was neuropathy and degeneration (of some sort) in the knee. I think that crutches, and previously, a cane, were the doc's method of letting my dad think he was in control of the knee situation, and letting my dad justify putting off surgery. He's afraid. Like me, he has been blessed with good health and few episodes of owie interventions.

As Hubby and I gossiped about this news, I discovered that Hubby thought I was putting off the boob-fix -- for fear. What a revelation for him, to find out that I was much more afraid of the Big C than of the surgery -- but, since he's never had his breasts bound, or sliced, or altered, he didn't know that these things have to be carefully scheduled around expectations of using one's arm, lifting, wearing a bra.... I got a lovely note this morning from him saying that he was glad I still had all of my important parts and that I'd live a little longer yet. Ah, sentiment. All dressed up to disguise "make me happy." Hush, girl! Such cynicism!

This could lead to a whole meditation on Breasts and our (men's & women's) fascination with them. But, here, it is important to meditate on our / my changing body. Breasts of any size change their shape as we age. Lumps appear and must be removed. Fear of surgery -- of not waking up -- keeps us from getting fixed by one of the greatest health care systems in the world (yes, I have insurance). Fear of the unknown keeps us from even asking the question: What is that lump? Why do I have such pain? As we age, do we accept more easily that there will be parts breaking down (a.k.a. changing) and get less assertive and aggressive about fixing them? If pain, and changing shapes, are part of the aging process -- how will I know what is a "normal" change, and what is a pre-cursor to trouble? If I have one regret about this fix-it episode, it's that the lump wasn't in the left breast where babies' breast-feeding (I was a D-cup for about 3 months!!! Twice!!!) have left spider veins. Just a little snip there....

From "Travel Writings"

The River and I by John G. Neihardt, 1910 University of Nebraska Press

(from page 132)... Perhaps that is what an outing is for -- to strip one down to the lean essentials, press in upon one the glorious privilege of being one's self, unique in all the universe of innumerable unique things....Living in the flesh seems so transient, almost a pitiful thing in the last analysis. But somehow you feel that there is something bigger -- not beyond it, but all about it continually. And you wonder that you ever hated anyone....

And expanded by the bigness of the empty silent spaces about you, like a spirit independent of it and outside of it all, you love the great red straining Heart of Man more than you could ever love it at your desk in town. What you seek is at the end of the rainbow; it is in the azure of distance; it is just behind the glow of the sunset, and close under the dawn. And the glorious thing about it is that you know you'll never find it until you reach that lone, ghostly land where the North Star sets, perhaps. You're merely glad to know that you're not a vegetable -- and that the trail never really ends anywhere.

That is what I felt when I was young. It is what, I'm sure, my children felt when they turned their noses and dreams toward California. It is a feeling, I am convinced, that keeps one young: always curious, searching, questing. I'll sleep when I'm dead, sings Warren Zevon. I'll be a vegetable just a day or two before that. Until then, I need to re-read this passage, and take more trips, and re-fresh the feeling of youth.

PHOTOS: The Missouri River in North Dakota; train tracks headed west on the Empire Builder

Lumps and All

Yesterday I had a lump removed from my right breast.  The lump-thing has been a sign of age: according to the breast specialists I have seen for the last three years, since the first lump appeared, peri-menopausal and menopausal women get them.  And a little tiny chest measurement is no guarantee or safety-feature.   The fibro-adenoma recognized a year ago suddenly decided to grow around Easter time, and then some more in just the last month, so it may actually be a filodes tumor, which like polyps can host cancers.  I'm being pro-active and pro-philactic (is that a verb?) and also got the cyst with little calcium stars drained and biopsied.  Results in a week!

This showed up in my email basket today: barefootceo@e.femailcreations.com. An email newsletter all about empty nesting. I have been telling people about my vacation -- which was scheduled, I admit it, to check up on my kids -- and that I cried on the way home. The youngest child is so so so together, goal-driven, and open with her questions, that I can trust her to tell me when her life starts to crash (right now, she may have strep throat). The other two play a bit closer to the vests, and I have to guess the emotion and the question behind their off-hand remarks. Martina, the wise woman in Palo Alto, has 6 adult children of her own and advises me to negotiate new relationships with each one individually and separately. The children/adults will know better than I do what they need from me. It sounds like the same strategy I used when they went to kindergarten, and then to Prom: leave the door open and let the face & voice project the open-door of my heart. I will add to that recipe: go to them, and sit with them -- let the silences fill naturally with conversations. I've already got some plans for next year's trip to CA!

Kids living across the country, and lumps in my breasts (not now!) --- I have to alter my way of thinking about my world. What can I control now? Not even the garden, which is the typical August jungle of lushness and happy health and weeds flaunting their power.