Category: Death / End of Life Matters

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Updates: Death Cleaning and Lifetime Learning

Today’s blog will be an update and comments on two projects which I wrote about recently, “Swedish Death Cleaning,” and “Lifetime Leaning.” I started both projects a while back and they are my current obsessions or activities that I’m really deeply involved in. This is not a bad thing. In fact, I’m in one sense really enjoying these activities, or, well, at least glad I’m finally doing them and have the self-discipline to push through and see some results. In another sense, they are driving me crazy and to the edge of my sanity.

First off, let me say my death cleaning project is well, horrendous. Those of you who have had to clean up the mess of someone after they have died know what I’m referring to. Going through someone’s life accumulation of junk and other clutter and important papers is, well, not pleasant and pushes almost every button emotionally and psychologically. I can’t work at that project more than an hour or so without nearly losing my mind. So much stuff that has just piled up in a drawer or a corner of a room or wherever. So much stuff. So many memories (not all good ones, by the way).

During my cleaning project I find interesting things I didn’t know I had (hidden among all my junk). My old membership card in the Screen Children’s Guild and my brother’s Screen Actors Guild membership card.

Anyway, after reading a book on Swedish Death Cleaning a while back, I realized it was time to get my stuff in order and clear out a lot of junk. It’s going to take hundreds of hours more to get where I want to get, but I’m steadily working at it. Thank God my spouse is very supportive, or I know I’d never get through this without losing my mind. And it’s not easy to think of the end of life as I’m doing all of this, and that is what is on my mind as I proceed in doing this almost daily activity. We don’t like to ponder this subject much, do we? But we’ve got to, as I see it.

So, let me turn to another subject that I wrote about a while back, lifetime learning. I used to sell educational and motivational cassette tapes for about twenty years as a second job besides my airline job. I bought tapes from several companies and sold them in different stores as my own business. I guess I had an interest in education and motivation and it was an enjoyable job being a distributor of the products.

Some of my current, recent study in my lifetime learning project.

When I closed down that business a while back, I had quite a collection of the tapes leftover and I just stored them away in my garage for years. Well, as I stated in my blog many months ago, I came across those stored tapes and thought, what will I do with these? Just throw them away or perhaps listen to them? Many of the tapes I had not listened to, especially the more academic ones on philosophy and religion and psychology, etc. Well, I started to listen to them and decided I would like to transfer them to CDs and start a library of them for my own “continuing education,’ or lifetime learning as they call it now.

I did convert the best ones to CDs and started an in-depth study of the subjects I was interested in. As I was doing that tape to CD conversion I came across a CD and a DVD I had that I purchased from an educational company years ago. I got a catalog from that company one day urging me to come back and try out another course of theirs. I somehow resisted the urge to toss out that catalog and decided to give that company another chance to interest my curiosity in subjects of my interest. Well, I ordered a course of college / university lectures, and I was hooked. I have since purchased many, many additional courses in my fields of interest. Yep, they got me addicted to lifetime learning.

So, with the pandemic keeping us pretty much isolated and at home for many months, I have occupied much of my time with my two current projects. My death cleaning and my continuing education. Really had the time to devote to the projects and they did consume my time and energy. I’m clearing out my life substantially of unnecessary stuff and I’m putting into my life some good, intellectually and academically stimulating education and learning. It is a good feeling. I guess you could see it as, “out with the old and in with the new.”

So, is my lifetime learning/continuing education a challenge for me also? Ah, yes. I do not claim to be an intellectual or an academician. In fact, far from that. I’m just an average person, intellectually, as I see it. I have favorite subjects which I really enjoy and do understand to some extent. Then there are subjects I just do not seem to comprehend much. But that’s okay, really. The science courses I really don’t understand much at all. Way beyond my grasp. Oh, well, I do them anyway and perhaps later will make some sense of them. But the subjects I really have an interest in I enjoy immensely.

I am enjoying the history, philosophy, religion, psychology cultural courses. I’ve done a lot of study recently on evil and finding that subject is very relevant to today’s world, especially the political world. Studying Hitler’s Empire, I find very revealing on how people fall into a cult-like authoritarian political mind set. Evil has always been around as history has shown. A lot to be learned by studying it.

So, if we pick our addictions, I’m pretty satisfied with mine. A cleaned up, simplified, organized life, and an open mind to learning more about our world. I don’t need a recovery or twelve-step program for my current addictions. I’m glad about that.

Wally

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Death of a Sibling / Forgiveness [ Post # 74 ]

September 23rd of this year, I had a unique experience. I lost a sibling. My brother died. I never had a sibling die before. I have lost my parents many years ago. But they were of a different generation than mine, of course. My brother’s death felt different, perhaps, because he was, in a sense, of my generation. Although eleven years older than I am, we grew up together. In the same household. Shared many common experiences. Oh, we were siblings, so of course we had our fun times together, and we also had our rough times and as most siblings do, we had differences and at times fought, sometimes very roughly. I can recall at least a couple of times I was sure he was going to drown me in our swimming pool. Ah, sibling rivalry. I know I’m not the only one to experience this. But, now he is dead and I look over our whole relationship of growing up in our family. My memories inspired me to write a memoir of my experiences with my brother which ended up being read at his celebration of life service, something I did not expect at all.

Love ya, brother!

So, losing a sibling. A unique experience. All the memories. I have one other sibling. So, of course in the back of my mind is the thought of who is next? Well, as they say, in so many years, we are all gone. The way life goes. So, thinking of my brother, how do I feel now as I think of him? There was the good, the fun, and the bad. All part of life in the family. Since my sister got married when I was young, most of my memories of family life are of me, my brother and our parents.

After my sister got married and left home, my brother and I were pretty close. We had to deal with our parents, so I guess you could say we bonded being the only two kids left at home. We got along most of the time. But, as time went on, our differences would surface. Oh, we did have our differences. Sometimes we would fight, physically. Other times we would fight verbally. We had great differences in perspectives on life and people. We had different interests, of course. He was into horticulture, big time. He loved plants. He was an expert in that field. He knew everything about plants and their technical names. Of any plants, he just knew everything as I saw it. He even went to college and studied in the field. He really did a good job of landscaping our yard. An obsession you could say. Doing his thing, as I saw it. I, on the other hand was becoming obsessed with aviation and a desire to become a pilot. We made a bet, in writing, that I would be an airline pilot by a certain age. And you know what… I still have that paper that we made the bet on. If fact, when I reached the age stated, I paid off my brother the ten dollars or whatever it was!

Me, my parents and my dear brother in the mountains a long time ago.

He went off to the army when I was in junior high school. He got drafted. I cried the next day a lot when I realized he was gone and I would have to put up with our parents alone. My companion was gone. I remember crying all the way on my walk to school. A hard time for me.

But, life goes on. He eventually completed his army commitment, came home and got married. I went on to college and at my completion of that commitment, my brother, sister and .my father came to Seattle to participate in my graduation ceremony. I was amazed that they came to the event. And after that, my brother stayed a few more days and the two of us took a road trip to Canada. It was a good time of bonding again after a long time. He especially loved visiting Butchart Gardens in British Columbia, Canada.

He also accompanied me on part of my road trip to Chicago a few months later when I started my studies at a theological seminary after college. He didn’t have enough days off work to make the whole trip, so he went as far as Denver and then flew home. I did enjoy our couple of days together on that trip, bonding again.

He started a family and had a large one. He had always talked of having a lot of kids, so he got his wish. As I see it, he had, overall, a good life. He loved his plants. He wanted a big family. He got both and seemed to enjoy it all. I see that, overall, as a good life. But, of course, there were the dark sides of his life, also, as with most of us, as I see it.

I already mentioned that we had our fights. We had very different feelings and opinions on several subjects. He was a very stubborn person. He had anger issues. He had a temper. He was a physically strong person and could be very rough with me at times. He had his prejudices, strong prejudices, like some of the rest of my family. I strongly disagreed with him on many things. He would put me down at times, very strongly. Yes, he could be nasty and rough. So, what do I think of all this now. He has passed on. How do I handle this?

Well, as with all of life, I have found the only way to live a good life is to have a lot of forgiveness as part of my way of living. To have no regrets, unresolved anger, hatred, etc. Just my way of living which I think is the best way to go. Studying the scriptures of many religions, studying Jesus and his teachings, forgiveness is of primary importance, as I see it. So, I apply this practice to my relationship with my late brother. I hold nothing against him. I recognize he was who he was. He lived his life his way. He had his anger issues and perhaps hatreds and prejudices. Now, if there is a continuing existence beyond this life, which I do believe in from experience rather than logic, he’s somewhere probably looking at all of this, also. I pray that he is settled and comfortable wherever and doing whatever he has to do to enjoy that dimension, perhaps with loved ones. I don’t know much of what’s beyond the veil. I just trust that all is well. Like I said, I feel he lived a good life. The life he wanted, really. Isn’t that the whole point of this existence?

Wally

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The Stuff; And the Swedish Art of Death Cleaning [ Post #69 ]

Have you ever seen the documentaries about “hoarders?” OMG, isn’t that amazing, what some people do, what they live with? And, yes, I have known and do know some hoarders. People that can’t easily move about their house or apartment and have paths they have to make to get to another room, often with stuff piled up to the ceiling. It is real. It is unbelievable, at least to me and non-hoarders. An illness? Well, yes!

So, in all honesty, I must admit, I am no “neat freak” either. Yes, I’m somewhere in between. ( Please don’t ask my husband, he’d place me more on the hoarder side of the spectrum, but I won’t get into that here). Speaking of “neat freaks,” I’ve seen documentaries on them also, and that can be a bit abnormal sometimes, when people are extreme in that practice.

So, a couple of years ago I read about this book on the practice of “Swedish death cleaning” and it got my interest and so I bought the book. It was very popular, and I was getting older and I realized I needed to simplify my life so when I go to my “reward” of the next existence (okay, death, to be crude), I would not leave my survivors with a horrible mess to go through and clean up. Not the stuff we like to think about, usually, but, well, it’s going to happen some day, like it or not. I’m not much for denial. Denial has not worked well in my life as a habit to promote and live by.

I know many of you have had your time of cleaning up the clutter and mess of dealing with the passing of parents and others. Not pleasant, is it? A whole lifetime of “stuff.” It has to be taken care of, let go of, released. So, I figured I had better at least start cleaning up my lifetime accumulation of crap, so maybe this book would get me started in that direction.

For a normal person, it does feel great to clean things up and live a more simple, purposeful life. I admire people I know who live like that. I hope to get there some day, but I see a lot of work ahead of me. As the book says, it is a slow process with many pitfalls ahead once one gets started in seriously doing “death cleaning.” Oh, just that term bothers me, but being the stoic I am I realize it is the truth. We’ve taken a lifetime making our mess and if we have any integrity and honesty and compassion for those who are going to be left with our “clean up” project one day, we’d better get started and just “dig in.”

The ideal clean up and organization will probably never be achieved but it needs to be initiated. Procrastination just makes it worse. The morbid aspect of it all just makes procrastination the easier path to take. Well, at least last wills and testaments and a trust have been achieved, so now it’s time to handle the messy part. Like I say, I admire those of you who have cleaned up your lives and are keeping it simple. I hope I’m heading in that direction. Well, I am… I just hope I can keep up the momentum. Got to keep a positive attitude, I guess, just like with everything else in life. It can’t get me down, that would be a disaster. “One step at a time….”

Wally

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Surrender [ Post # 65 ]

Ahh, yes, another of those words that we often take as a bad, negative word in this world. To surrender is to be a loser, to give up, to admit defeat. Whether in a war, in a relationship or whatever, we usually mean something bad, losing, giving up as there’s no other choice, etc. But, in my later years I’m looking at that term in a different light. After living a long time, going through a lot of turmoil, chaos, confusion, uncertainty, etc., I have a revised view of what surrender can mean. I mean, after all, we are all going to have to eventually surrender our lives to the “whatever” that awaits us at the end of life. Well, perhaps some of us surrender at that point but others fight, often put up a valiant fight to the very end. Guess that’s our choice to make at that juncture.

So, surrender… looking back on my life, I wish I had had a better understanding of that word. In my early life I was a fighter. I rejected any thought of “surrendering.” I fought, even if the fighting was an internal struggle and conflict. I fought people trying to put me down, suppress me, control me, direct my life how they thought it should go (family and parents mostly and some teachers). And that was good, of course, as I went on to be myself as best I could under the circumstances at the time. I did not crumble, give in to the negative forces active in my early years. I fought for what I believed in, what I wanted to do and the direction I wanted to take in my life. A lot of fighting. Fortunately I was young and energetic. I succeeded in creating the life I wanted.

Probably my mantra in my early life even if I did not articulate it this way. Thinking this way probably saved me during that rough time in my life.

Looking back at that time now, I just wish I had had some sense of the good aspects of surrendering. By that I mean, yes, it was good that I fought for my best interests, but I could have felt so much better if I had surrendered to the fact that life was going to work out if I just trusted in life, that there is good in life and that good is mine to claim and live. I guess you could say a trust in God (or whatever good force there is in life). A “knowing” that all was going to be well, even while putting up the “good fight” against the negative forces.

Now in my later years I don’t have the energy and interest or time to waste in fighting everything in life. Fortunately my early years of fighting so many things and influences did pay off and I created the good life that was meant for me. I am grateful for that now. I ” fought the good fight,” to use a biblical quote. I now have a much greater appreciation for the concept of “surrendering.” I am living now a more surrendered life. Having engaged in a deep study of religion and philosophy recently, I realize that the philosophy that best fits who I am seems to be stoicism. Yes, that seems to fit best. I see that life must be faced, as it really is. Life is as it is. We may not always like that, but so it is. And the best, highest life is the ethical life. Doing right, living right. Making the best life with what we have. Living opposite to these ways, as I see it, creates a miserable life. A lot of people do live the miserable life, but it’s not for me. I’ve been there during brief times in my growing up and it was not good.

So, I am not advocating fatalism, a giving in to fate or destiny and resignation to what looks to be inevitable. Being powerless, believing defeatism, no, not at all. So let me say what I mean by having a healthy sense of surrender in life as I see it.

We can make good use of the practice of surrender in life. I’m doing a lot more of it than I ever did before now. Let me list some of the ways I see surrender now and have experienced surrender at this point in life.

My mantra now. My life today. The only way for me to live now at this stage in my life.

For me personally, I have had to surrender to the fact that some people may not, do not like me. I may not understand why, but that doesn’t really matter. And, I may have medical situations I wish I did not have, but I have them currently. I, at times, must suffer loss. Friends and family die. People leave my life, sometimes I understand, sometimes I don’t. Politics today is a “hot-button” issue. I’m very upset by what I see, how people I know are acting and believing. I can’t do much about that, they are the way they are. In my marriage, I don’t have the energy to fight. I surrender to the relationship, which, fortunately is a very good one (perfect in my humble opinion). So, let me give my thoughts on surrendering as I’ve come to understand the term and concept.

Fighting everything in life is draining and unpleasant and is a miserable way to live. You can’t control everything. For control freaks, that’s not good news. It works better to pause, step back, take your hands off the wheel at times to renew yourself. Recognize that obstacles can be detours leading you in a new, better direction. Surrender to that when that happens. If you are a spiritual person, pray and meditate and spend time in the silence with your higher self. Trust that things will work out, surrender to that truth. All will work out; trust it will all be okay. In other words, have faith.

Yes, surrender… a new way of living. Doesn’t mean accepting evil in any way, but surrendering to a “higher power.” God or Spirit is that higher power for many.

So, yes, my life has improved since I’ve surrendered to the idea of surrendering. Maybe it wasn’t so necessary in my earlier life, but it sure is now. Perhaps this is the great lesson for this period of life. Like I said, there is a big experience of the final surrendering coming up, like it or not.

So, I believe surrender can help us open up more to life, to embrace life fully, to be with the Divine Goodness (God) if one believes in that.

Wally

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Special Friendships [ Post # 62 ]

I recently lost a very special friend. A very unique friend. A very, very rare friend. Never connected before with someone in the way I connected with this friend. And, it was someone I did not frequently see or get together with. And, it was not a life-long friendship but rather a friendship of the last several years. And yet it was one of the closest friendships I have had. Deep and authentic and well, hard to express in words. That’s why the loss is deeply felt. She would be surprised to find herself the subject of one of my blogs. She was a strong supporter of my blogging from day one. She really loved my blogs and always let me know. The fact that she did not respond to my last blog concerned me, I knew something bad had happened, that’s how closely connected we were.

One of many birthday lunches

Every year since we met she would take me out for a birthday lunch. It was a given that we would always go out for my birthday and have a great time visiting since we often didn’t see each other that much. Of course, last year was the exception with the pandemic going on. Otherwise our meetings would be at church functions and church fund raisers at my home which she always attended. So, why was this friendship so different than all the other friendships I’ve had in my lifetime? I had to stop and think about that question. It’s hard to articulate, but I’ll try.

We always connected on a very deep, authentic level. This was a “no BS” type of friendship. No silly, time-wasting chit-chat or gossiping type of conversations. Always very open conversations about our lives, past and present. And very deep conversations about our personal lives and feelings. A couple of times I was surprised at the “wild times” that were confessed. It’s always refreshing to find out that the good people in our lives do have their indiscretions, hey, that’s life. But life is so much more than those times we were a bit wild in the distant past.

Another birthday gathering

So, really, I don’t know what else to say. I don’t experience relationships like this usually. And I have some very good friendships. This one just came along and I enjoyed it while it lasted. I may feel it passed too quickly, but I did thoroughly take advantage of the opportunity and enjoyed it. It affected my life. I am thankful I was there for this and did not just brush this off as a “friendship.”

We did meet at church. We were in a class when we met and agreed to become prayer partners for the class. So there was a spiritual element in our relationship. That probably helped start things off and it just took off from there.

At one of her church fundraisers

So, my point is, there are friendships and there are friendships. There are some “once-in-a-lifetime” friendships that are unique and can change us, for the better. I say, when they occur, go for it and enjoy the time, however long or brief.

At one of many church fundraisers

Wally

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Within Spitting Distance of Saint Peter [ Post # 52 ]

Watching an old rerun of “The Golden Girls on TV recently, the character Sophia used the phrase “within spitting distance of St. Peter” when referring to her age. So, here we are people in my age group, in this strange land of being near enough to the end of our life that we can almost taste it, see it, feel it, sense it, have an intuitive knowing that we are “close.” We can deny it but it’s there, none-the-less. We know our time is limited in a way we never felt before. A certainty. The evidence is all around us. I have outlived so many of my friends, as I have discussed in previous blogs. No way around it, “spitting distance.”

So, I have decided to delve into this area. I realize this is a topic most people prefer to avoid, in fact, most people do all they can to avoid. But as Tolstoy said, “If a man has learnt to think, no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death.” Hmmmm. I am not confining my essay to death, but rather this whole period of life where we realize that our own time is more limited than ever before. We always thought in terms of having decades and decades of life ahead of us, exciting and greatly anticipated life ahead of us, but one day we realize we are at what the world calls “old age” and we can tell, in various ways, that the “end is in sight.”

So, here we are. We have lived a great deal of our life. Has it been a good life? A so-so life? A miserable life, painful, sad, perhaps mostly unhappy life? I can only speak for my life. It has been a good life. but, as I have explained in my blog posts, there certainly were dark periods, difficult times in many different ways, but navigating my way through those times, my life has turned out to be a great life. I thank God for that.

So, this final period, what do we do? We know what’s coming. I personally have watched so many, (most, in fact) of my friends and co-workers pass on to the next world, whatever that is. I always am relieved it is them and not me, of course. Don’t we all think that way? Yet, we realize that our day is coming and it could be any time. Any time. Any day. Wow, are there things I have put off in life, unrealized dreams and desires and tasks? Relationships to be healed or completed or released?

Well, for me those areas are pretty clean and in order. No real problems in unrealized dreams. I have had a great time on this earth. Stumbled here and there at times as I said, but a great life was the result. Am I ready to go? Not really. I feel there is more to do. But at the same time I do live my life as if this may be my last day (my tagline on my Facebook page currently). I really do live that way every day, so in a sense I am ready but I am still very busy with my various projects and living a full life.

Many people I know seem to have a less happy life. As the seventeenth-century divine Thomas Fuller said, We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.” Philosophers and moral essayists, tragic dramatists and unhappy poets all agree about this. So sad. So unnecessary, as I see it. Yes, there certainly are tragic lives, sad lives, and I have compassion for those lives. But so often the amount of misery is compounded by wrong thinking, wrong living, ignorance and stupidity, etc. Good and bad things happen to everybody at various times. How we handle those times, how we handle our thoughts and actions and whether we have a faith and spiritual presence in our life can make dramatic differences among us.

So, some people do keep busy right up to the end of life. I’m thinking of Alex Trebek, who worked right up to the end of his life doing what he enjoyed; he never took a “retirement.” And that is good for a lot of people. Great, keep doing what you love. For me, I’m keeping busy ((very busy), but not doing work I spent thirty-three years doing, working for a corporation. I desired a retirement and I made that decision when I was burning out. I feel that I made the right decision, for me. So, we are all individuals when deciding how to live out this last portion of our lives. I certainly do not believe there is only one way to do it. For me, retirement is the greatest experience. I’m doing things I’ve put off and discovered I want to do now. I am currently in the midst of studying philosophy and philosophers, a subject I pretty much avoided in my college years and now have a deep interest in, perhaps because of this final period I am in. Also, this is a period of some great travel experiences. I have always enjoyed travel (hence, my working in the airline industry), but now we are really enjoying the freedom of traveling a lot.

So, for me this is an exciting time. Doing interesting things. Including doing my hiking exercise, sometimes in the graveyard these days. I’m finding these hikes to be great times of deep contemplation as I wander among “the dead.” Lots of thinking about this “final period” of life. Together with my study of philosophy and religion, life is becoming more interesting, even if the real answers to the questions of life are always an elusive mystery. The journey is interesting, that’s for sure.

So, yes, I may be within spitting distance of St. Peter, but I’m not wasting this time being morose and fearing the end. Well, maybe we all fear death in a sense, but I do believe we can diminish that fear and be more accepting of all of life, including its end. We do have a choice how we want our life to conclude. At least we can be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared to a great degree if we work at it. If we never deal with it, well, then it will “just happen.” I have had two what I will call DPEs in my life. What is a DPE you ask? Well, you’ve probably heard of NDEs, “near death experiences.” And you may have heard of SDEs, “shared death experiences,” where a person shares the dying experience along with the person dying, being a companion during the person’s transition to the next world. Well, I’ve invented the term DPE to describe the “death preview experience,” of which I’ve had two in my life. Very vivid experiences.

Hiking in the graveyard. Good exercise and good times of contemplation on life and the meaning of it all.

I touched briefly on, in a previous blog, my experiencing of “going to God,” or a type of “death preview” I had as a young child. I was going under the ether to have surgery to have my tonsils removed. When I went under the ether I had a strange experience that I can recall today exactly as it was sixty-some years ago. I felt I was going to God. Hard to put into words, but a very vivid experience. And then, in middle age, I had a drug-induced experience of going through the death experience. It was very real. I knew it was a preview of what dying was going to be like. A letting go of everything in life. I mean everything, it was a very real experience. Again, hard to put into words, but so real, I remember it exactly. All the feelings and the absolute release of all of life. The dying experience. Today, I realize I was given that experience for some purpose, a preparation for what someday it would be like.

I had one other strange experience burned into my memory. I was driving a car (not my own) , in the 1960’s, I was alone and traveling very fast, perhaps eighty miles an hour or so. Suddenly I lost control somehow and went off the side of the road and down a slope into a ditch. I was sure that this was it, I was going to die, there was no way to get out of this situation. But, somehow I got the car out of the ditch traveling at that high speed and got back up the embankment and onto the road. Finally, I stopped to inspect the car, sure there had to be some damage from all of this. But, miraculously, no damage, not a scratch.

So, I find the stories of NDEs I’ve read to be fascinating. And the stories of the SDEs I’ve read also fascinating. And these three experiences of “dying” or previewing the dying experience of my own, well, what can I say, they were life-changing.

Looking back on my life, I see that so much of life has been BS. We waste so much life being controlled and manipulated, coerced and sometimes abused by others. What really matters in life? Isn’t that the question of all philosophers, all philosophies, all religions? People get yanked around by their jobs, their bosses, their relationships and friendships, by society, by our culture. People give up their freedom and join groups, religions, cults, etc. Why? Why give up your God-given freedom? Life is short. Be free. That’s what I have come to see in this last portion of life, in my evaluation of it all, of life on this planet. That is what I have come to understand at this time of my life. This is the good life… freedom.

“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man”- Leon Tolstoy.

“Everybody has got to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what” – William Saroyan (on his deathbed)

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness” – Vladimir Nabokov

“Tell them I have led a happy life!” – Ludwig Wittgenstein (last words)

May my last words be like Ludwig Wittgenstein’s. I’ve stayed on my path and am having a wonderful life.

Wally

(1948 – 20__)

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Retirement – Aging – Passages [ Post # 49 ]

If you live long enough, manage your life fairly well (including your finances), and have the desire, you get to move on to a life of retirement dreams and hopes. When I was in the middle of my working life, the life expectancy of someone retiring was around three years. Not a great thing to look forward to, working hard your whole life and then just having three years free from work to enjoy retirement life and then death. Fortunately, today the prospects are much better. Life in the retirement phase is now much longer for most people. I am glad for that improvement.

I took retirement in my fifties, earlier than the norm for most people. I was burned out and was ready to be free from the usual working life. I was thrilled to retire. I had a fun career and enjoyed many benefits of working in the airline industry, but the last few years were a turnaround to where the job was no fun anymore and a great stress for me. So, time for retirement, freedom from going to work every day. Time to work on things I want to work on, and do whatever comes my way and interests me.

I was ready for retirement. I realize others are not ready for retirement or not prepared for being free of the working life. Some have made no preparation for the transition or even thought much about this big change in life. No matter how ready or not ready we are, it is a period of adjustment. I would say, for me, it took probably a year to feel really comfortable in the new environment. Several friends I know did volunteer work to help make the transition. I can understand that, but for me, that was not my path. I really loved not having to work every day. A few years after retiring, I did take on one post-retirement job, just for fun. It was a very unique type of job, one where I got to set my own hours and work days, only working when I wanted to. I was a “mystery shopper” for Safeway stores. I would go grocery shopping and write up reports of my shopping experience, noting employees that were doing their jobs in a commendable manner and those that were not functioning at their best in their “customer service” capacity. I also had to cause employees to go out of their way to handle certain situations, see if they would help me, etc. I got to experience this experience from the other perspective when I was an airline employee and we had encounters with “secret passengers” that would fly around the country and write up reports on the employees they encountered and rated how well they did their jobs. So now I have had experiences on both sides of this issue.

So, being retired and being done with the work-a-day world, that was my choice (except for the brief job with Safeway). Now what? Well, I have a very curious mind and always seem to have projects to work on . I do not sit around and get bored. Fortunately, I have a great home environment and marriage, so no stress, really in my personal life (unlike earlier periods in my life). We were now free to travel as much as we wanted and enjoy my airline travel benefits. We acquired a good timeshare system which had many timeshare locations that we loved visiting. Life was good! Life is good! Due to the current virus situation, we have had to modify our travels to do car trips instead of air trips and train trips. We, of course, are hoping that some kind of a normal life returns during our lifetime.

Speaking of our lifetime, that’s a subject that seems to surface a lot for me during these retirement years. This period of time being the last third of life, there’s a real awareness that the end is coming. A lot of time may be remaining, or maybe not. Who knows? The way I look at this situation is I figure that I may have twenty minutes remaining to my life, or perhaps twenty years. Who knows? Twenty minutes or twenty years. Hmmm, heavy thoughts to consider.

My cemetery hikes and contemplations

So, I work at keeping my body in decent shape by walking and hiking almost daily. One of the places I often do my hikes is the graveyard nearby that is nice and hilly. I get some exercise and I get to reflect on the deep issues of life and death. I mentioned in an earlier blog that in college I would climb the hill near my college and walk through the cemetery and contemplate life and what my life was going to be after I finished my education. So, cemetery contemplations is not a new practice for me. It’s just been a long time since I have done those practices. And my graveyard contemplations now are not about what my life is going to be, but now what my final period of my life is going to be about and reflections on what my life has been so far. The joys and adventures and loves I have had, and what it all means. Life is so short when you think about it, but that’s the way it is, isn’t it?

So, before you know it, you have aged. You have gone through the different phases or passages of life. You have survived a lot. Hopefully, you have achieved a lot and lived a lot and loved a lot. Or, maybe life has been a little less successful. Or even miserable and unhappy, perhaps. That can be sad, very sad. I think about these things in my graveyard wanderings these days. Look at all these graves, all these people who were alive for however long they had on this earth and did whatever they did. What kind of lives did they live? A million thoughts flood my mind as I study the gravestones. Who were these people? What would they tell me if they could? They were so alive, but now, they’re gone.

I have come to realize now that so much of life has been malarky. So much energy was wasted in life on such unimportant things. All the struggles and worrying and fighting and wasted life. For what? What is really important in life? I wish that I had more focus and intension and clarity in my earlier years. But, you know what? Life works out the way it works out. We learn our lessons, eventually. It just often takes a lot of time and energy that we could have avoided wasting.

So, I find that retirement is a time to try and do new things. Not a time to give up. Not a time to be bored. Not a time to be lonely. It is time to do those things you have put off during your working years. It is time to reflect of your life and appreciate the journey you’ve been on. Hopefully you appreciate your journey. It would be sad if you don’t. We all have our own paths and I’m very grateful for my path. It has been good. I have been given a long life. Many of my friends cannot say that as I have outlived so many of my friends. It has been a good life. I have been given time to reflect and appreciate it all.

Wally

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Letting Go [Post 36]

A very hard skill to learn, perhaps the hardest practice or skill to acquire in life is the “art of letting go.” If one can truly learn to let go in life, one can live a better life, a good life, even a great, joyous and happy life. Not being able to acquire this skill can wreak havoc emotionally and psychologically and mentally for one’s entire existence.

I feel very fortunate that I have been blessed with this ability as as innate part of my psychological makeup, or so it seems. Of course I’ve been hurt, I’ve been through some really dark periods, perhaps abused and abandoned at times. I’m not denying deep hurts in my life. But, I have been able to, with time and personal inner work and occasionally assistance from others been able to heal my wounds and move forward. Healing and moving on has saved me much mental turmoil and allowed me to live a freer, fuller life. I’m so glad I am not a clinger, a hanger-on to both bad and good experiences. I feel one of the great teachings of Buddhism is to not have attachments, to not cling to desires.

Now, I know what I just said can be easily misunderstood and often is in our culture. Desires and attachments and clinging and greed are big things in our society. They are normal, most people would say. But, I say the more you can eliminate these habits, the better off you will be.

Lets take bad experiences. We all will have bad, hurtful, even tragic experiences in life. Just gonna happen. They can destroy us if we can’t move through them and find some way to heal from our wounds. Death is one of the hardest experiences to go through. No one can avoid the horrible feelings of losing a loved one in death. Well, except for the psychopath or sociopath personality. I’m talking about normal people.

Some people get stuck at that point. They have experienced the gut-wrenching experience of having a loved one die, gone completely and forever from this earth. We feel we’ll never get over the loss and some people never do. I’ve come to believe that may be true. In fact, I believe that it may be true that we never really “get over a death of a loved one,” but we can “get through” the loss and have a great deal of healing from the experience over time, often a long time. On the other hand, some people never recover from a tragic loss, they are permanently damaged. I saw that in my mother, when her father died when I was a little kid. She went off the deep end, as they say. She went mental and never recovered, just got progressively worse over the years until her death when I was twenty-five.

We all have to let go of loved ones, like our parents if we outlive them. Those times with my parents (above), gone forever.

I have experienced the death of loved ones and friends as difficult times. I have grieved. I have eventually gotten through the grieving and moved on in life, not forgetting the loss, but accepting it as part of life. I certainly don’t mean to minimize the depth of hurt or the sometimes long process of healing. What I’m saying is that I don’t get permanently stuck in a bad mental state.

Now, besides the death experience, there are lots of times during our lifetimes that we have to “let go” of things and experiences and periods and phases of our lives. I’ve had to let go of my first experience of having a life partner. It was a sick relationship as I see it. It was bad, psychologically and emotionally. It was very unhealthy, as I see it now. I have had to let go of friends that were not good for me in my life. Friends and acquaintances who were mean, nasty, crazy, unbalanced, etc. Haven’t most of us? Not always easy. Not pleasant, but such a relief once we have done it and healed from our “sin” (mistake) of picking the wrong people to have around us in our perhaps more “needy” times.

Loved my flying days. Fulfilled my dream, but those days are in the past.

I have had to let go of some loves and pleasures of my life. I relinquished my wonderful “hobby” of piloting airplanes, my childhood dream come true. I thoroughly enjoyed the many years of flying, but the time came when it was too expensive and I didn’t have the time to keep up with all I needed to do to keep my licenses current and active. Yes, I have friends that don’t understand how I could give up that great love in my life, but that’s okay, they don’t have to understand me. I just knew the time had come to “let it go .” I did what I had to do at that time in my life.

I had no problem retiring from my airline career. It was mostly a great experience, my thirty-three years as an airline employee. I had picked the right industry and field of work for me and really loved it. But after my time there, I easily let it go. I know some friends that have a very difficult time retiring, adjusting to a new lifestyle, but not me. I had my great time working and it was time to go, time to begin a new experience of being “retired.” Yes, it did take a time of adjustment in some ways, but my head was good with it all. I let it go!

Looking at a different aspect of letting go, I’ve also had to let go of some assumptions and dreams, expectations and promptings of society and friends that were not right for me, in all honesty. I had to give up the assumed role in society of becoming a “family man,” getting married (heterosexually, of course), and having children, you know, that whole experience. It was in my twenties that I realized that dream, that picture was not going to happen for me. That was not the path I would want to choose. I had to let go of that expectation. I had expected that after college graduation I would follow the plan and become a stereotypical family man with all the trimmings. There was a different path awaiting me.

The good times. Playing charades with friends. Temporarily gone but will return.

So, life is a lot about living true to yourself, enjoying the good times when they come along, not grasping to hang on to them (yes, the good times), and also experiencing the dark or bad times and also not grasping and holding on to them, also. The bad times, I feel, must be worked through, doing whatever work one must to get centered again in life, grieve, and move on. Always working to be emotionally healthy, balanced, authentic, joyous and happy, that’s the formula for living a good life, as I see it. Not resisting what reality is staring you in the face right now, this moment. Handle it, heal it, and move forward.

Now, as I write this, the world is going through a complete upending of everything, with the virus affecting the entire world. Talk about “letting go!” We are being forced to let go of so much, all at once, almost everything which we consider a normal part of life. Living freely, gathering in groups, socializing, going to events. traveling, going to restaurants, whatever. Everything we took to granted as just a part of everyday life. We have had to let go, period. Not much choice involved. Just mundane shopping now involves dressing up in protective gear and avoiding people.

That final “letting go,” letting go of life, everything we were, everything we dreamed, all our loves, at least on this earthly plane.

So, of course we will all have to experience that final, grand letting go of all time. The letting go of life on our death bed or wherever. Yes, I know in our culture we avoid all thought of this final release of all we are, all we have been, with no hope of anything more in this life, on this planet. All of life. Adios, farewell, and all of that. The big release, letting go. How do you feel about that? How have you handled that thought? Will you handle that thought with the time you have left? Personally, I have had two experiences in my life where I faced my death. I mentioned them in previous blogs. I have a feeling those experiences will resurface in my final hours or minutes in as vivid a way as they did previously, except this time I will know that “this is it, for real.” Perhaps there was a reason I had a dress rehearsal for this event many years ago.

To sum this all up, letting go is a good skill to have as we navigate through life. A difficult skill for most of us, an impossible skill for some of us. It will affect how we live our lives. It will affect our deep serenity and happiness and joy in life, I believe.

I believe in enjoying life, the good times, such as a helicopter tour of Kauai, Hawaii, above. But I say don’t cling , hold on the the good times in an unhealthy way , enjoy them and let them be fun memories.

Wally

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Death – The Big Taboo [ Post # 25 ]

With my cousin John

Yes, in our culture and society, they say death is the big taboo. It is not to be talked about, thought about, or in any real way dealt with. I see that when the subject comes up in conversations. People want to move on and avoid the subject. I see that and somewhat understand that, but I don’t think that is good, in the long run, as it’s a subject we all have to deal with many times in life, and ultimately when we reach the end of our life, which in many cases, we never know when that will be.

For some reason, death has always been a part of my life, sometimes staring me right in the face. I remember talking with someone a while back and they said, “you know, I’ve never really had to deal with death because nobody I’ve know in any close way has ever died.” Wow, I thought, that’s hard to believe. You’ve never really experienced death up close at all and you are in middle age.

The picture in this blog post is my first encounter with death, at a very early age. It is a picture of me ( on the left) and my cousin John playing together in our yard the day before he died. His family had brought him down to Los Angeles from Oregon for heart surgery and they were staying with us. I don’t remember much except that the next day after this picture was taken, his mother and my mother (sisters) were crying and wailing all day long, non-stop. It was a miserable day. I really didn’t understand what had happened. Maybe they explained it to me that he had died, but I didn’t really comprehend what that meant.

I remember when friends I knew in high school were killed in a car crash in our neighborhood. It was a shock, of course. The next major death was my mother’s when I was twenty-five. The day before she died she expressed her wish to me privately that she wanted to be buried in her family’s plot in Florida and did not my father to carry through with his plans to have her cremated and scattered at sea by the Neptune Society. Now, my father was very stubborn and did not want to do anything different than what he was planning on doing. I stood up to him and demanded he allow her to be buried in her family plot. Fortunately, I had just started working for an airline the year before and they provided free transportation for her body and us to Florida. I had a very strong will to carry out her final wishes, no matter what it took.

Thirteen years later my father died. During this time I also had several friends die. I never remember a long stretch of time where there were no funerals or memorial services to go to. Death, it seemed, was always occurring in my life.

An interesting event occurred when I was in college. One summer, instead of returning to California from Seattle (where I was attending college) for the summer, I was offered an opportunity to stay in Seattle and spend the summer living in a mortuary as a caretaker of the facility at night and to help out during the day with assisting the morticians doing their work. I was given an apartment in the mortuary, so I had an up-close view of the business and the bodies, being alone at night and opening the building for night visitations and wakes, etc. Once again, death staring me in the face, literally. It was an interesting time and I took pictures just so I would remember the experience later in life. The one lesson I learned from that experience was that there was no way I wanted to spend every day for the rest of my working life dealing with the death business. It would be too much to handle on a daily basis. Death, day in and day out. I did have an aunt and uncle that were very successful in owning a funeral home, but I guess I missed out on inheriting that gene .

I wrote a blog earlier about the large number of friends I worked with that died in the past several years and how I was experiencing “survivor’s” guilt about surviving all of them, many my age. From 2015 to 2018 I was going to funerals or memorial services at least once a month, and that is no exaggeration. So many friends are gone, people I worked closely with and were my age. It’s a weird feeling. I’m amazed I’m still here. I never really expected to live much beyond age forty or so. It was just a feeling I had most of my early life, probably because of my childhood depression, etc.

So, while I have not had the technical, well known type of “near death experience,” or NDE as it’s called, I have had two experiences of death in my life that have stayed with me and are very vivid today as they were the day I experienced them. The first one was around age six or so when I had my tonsils removed in surgery. I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the ether mask being placed over my face. When that was done, I experienced the weirdest feeling. It was pitch black, blacker than black, in a way. The ether was applied and I was told by the doctors to count backwards from 100. I felt I was going back to God. I can’t really describe the experience in words, but it is as real today as I think about it as it was sixty-five years ago. My thought at the time was, so this is what dying is like.

My second experience of death was in the 1970’s. It was a drug-induced state, I admit. I did not really experiment with drugs much at all, but for a short time I did. This night I had a very realistic experience of dying. Again, it is impossible to put this experience into words, but I was facing my death, a real experience of death. I knew this is what dying was like. This was a taste of the final life event, a very realistic full awareness type of experience. I was confronting what I had to confront, letting go of everything in life. Like I said, impossible to put into words.

So, what I’m saying is that I have not had the pleasure of avoiding death thoughts or being able to avoid the topic of death like some people have. For some reason I was destined to have to confront this subject my whole life. It’s always been right there before me in one way or another.

I was reading recently about how some people avoid dealing with death and others seem to just jump right in and think about it, converse about it. There are those that are called “death investigators,” they really study the subject and have a kind of fascination with it. Maybe that’s what I am, maybe not. All I know is that it is a fascinating mystery, as is all of life. I recall that when I was in college and had some free time, I would go up the hill from my dormitory and walk through the cemetery next to the campus. I would stroll through the grave sites in deep thought about things. I know, saying this sounds weird, but that’s what I did.

When I talk about these things I sometimes encounter harsh reactions from people. I’ve been told to not go to any more funerals or memorial services, do not go visit people in hospitals or any ill people, especially terminally ill people. Wow, talk about being in denial. That advise just does not resonate with me. That’s not how I choose to handle this subject. In fact, I have recently visited a couple of morticians and mortuary counselors to discuss end of life issues and planning. I have been writing down our final plans (for me and my spouse) and wishes while we have clear minds. That’s how I am handling this stuff. It’s not easy or fun, but there’s no way to avoid this final big project or event that’s going to happen. We do have to deal with life as it is and live in the mystery of it all.

Wally

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Survivor’s Guilt? Reconciliation with Death? [ Post #13]

We’ve heard about survivor’s guilt, you know, when someone survives an accident in which others were killed. That nagging, perhaps lifelong feeling of guilt of “why me?” Why did I live and all the others died? Yes, I should just be happy to be alive and count my blessings, there’s no reason to be racked with guilt for being so lucky. Except that life doesn’t work that way with our psyche. It can be a bothersome phenomenon, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually.

It took me some time to realize on some level that I was feeling the effects of survivor’s guilt, in a sense. Let me explain how this feeling has come about. It has a lot to do with my work life, my thirty-three years in the airline industry. You see, I worked with basically the same group of people all of those years. From age 25 on, the same people, perhaps a hundred or so co-workers, often in close quarters, day in and day out. We were just kids starting out in life, then young adults, then middle-aged and finally older adults hitting retirement age. I knew these people well. We grew up together, married, had families. All the life events that occur over the years. I think that is quite unusual in this world, to experience all this with the same group, like a large family.

Most people I know, outside of my work group, don’t stay in a job or single career or stay in a single company for their entire work life. Most people do not have the same co-workers at retirement age (60’s or so) that they had in their twenties. A very unique situation and work life.

So, in a sense, it was a very close-knit family of co-workers for several decades. Like I said, this is very unusual these days for most people. We really knew each other, we lived through so many life events together. And then, one by one, we started thinning our group through death. It seemed to be a continuous decimation of the ranks and it kept happening at a faster and faster pace as we aged. There was a period of a few years where I was going to funerals or memorial services at least once a month.

These were people my age or very close to my age. These were very lively, fun people in a close-knit work group. I began to think to myself, “wow,” I am really surrounded with a lot of death. When I would tell my other friends about this phenomenon I was experiencing, they could not relate to what I was going through. Their responses would be like, “gee, that’s weird, I experience a death of a friend or loved one every few years, maybe, but nothing like what you are experiencing.” It got to a point that most of my friends and co-workers were gone. I began to feel like the survivor of my work group. Then it hit me, this feeling I had was somewhat similar to the phenomenon of survivor’s guilt. Unconsciously I was thinking, why am I still here? All my friends are gone, many who I felt were a lot healthier and livelier than I.

So, I have a close relationship with the death experience. Even in college, I spent one summer living in and helping out in a mortuary. I would help the morticians during the day and I would be the caretaker of the mortuary all alone at night. (Don’t ask to see my pictures from those days. I’d even have friends come visit me at night and show them around and they would faint on me.) So, death has been no stranger to me.

So, this survivor’s guilt and my experiences have caused me to reflect on a lot on the end of life. Call me morbid if you must, but I see great value in not denying death but rather in reconciling myself to the inevitable. Do I have a fear of death? Most of the time, no, I don’t feel I do. On the other hand, yes, there are brief periods or terror regarding the end of it all (this earthly life). Fortunately, most of the time I’m okay with this birth, life, death thing. I am spiritual, but I also am human.

So, what’s the bottom line of all of this? Well, three years ago, my brother-in-law died in his sleep. It was the day before his seventy-eighth birthday. He had planned to go golfing with his wife (my sister) that morning and before going to bed he was saying how good he felt and how he was looking forward to the next day with great excitement. But the next day was not to be as he passed away early that morning as he slept.

That experience has really affected this whole “thinking of death” thing. Besides all my friends dying around me, this sudden death hit me hard. I realize that every day or every night could be it, my last day here. I’m very aware of this fact. I now really live every day as if it could be my last. I mean really, this is not just a trite saying for me. Every day I think, am I living this day as I would if I knew that this was my very last day on this earth?

So, I feel I’ve learned my lesson through all this experience with death. I have been blessed with a long life. A lot longer life than I expected in my early, very dark and depressed, pessimistic years. I love every minute of life. I do not get bored. I will not let the crap of this world knock me down any more. Like I’ve said in an earlier post,my personal religion is now very simple, “love, trust God, and *#$&/% the rest!” May we all find our peace with life and the life force, which I call “God.”

Wally