Still Working My GPS

First, many thanks to all those who sent along best wishes in response to my July 19^th blog post.  Each sympathetic expression matters as I continue to recover from my two quite inconvenient injuries.

And so, not surprisingly, the ”G” in my GPS is getting quite the workout, including the daily gratitude list I make each day in my trusty 6 x 4 inch green memo book.

Also getting a workout is the “P” required for me to slow the hell down and do the daily back exercises and wound tending.

As for the “S,” that’s mostly come from lying in bed on top of the hot pad and reading. Right now, I’m plowing through three books on aging—surprise, surprise—paying special attention to writers like Joan Chittister who acknowledge both the “burdens and blessings” of living a long, relatively healthy, life.

And while I’ve missed keeping my weekly writing schedule—including not posting last week—I believe, as Samuel Johnson said, that the “greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man [sic] will turn over half a library to make one book.”

As for the library I’m currently turning over, I offer this selected list. It is a work in progress, as books on aging keep finding their way onto my shelf and into my hands.

John Banville, Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir

Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Further Life

Wayne Booth (ed), The Art of Growing Older: Writers on Living & Aging

Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully

Cicero’s treatise, On Old Age (65 BCE)

--How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life, (Cicero translated and w/ an introduction by Philip Freeman)

Dudley Clendinen, A Place Called Canterbury: Tales of the New Old Age in America

Thomas Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America

Frank J. Cunningham, Vesper Time: The Spiritual Practice of Growing Older

Nicholas Delbanco, Lastingness: the Art of Old Age

           

Ken Dychtwald, Age Wave: The Challenges & Opportunities of an Aging America

--Age Power: How the 21^st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old

Betty Friedan, The Fountain of Age

Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Aging: A New Approach to Embracing Life after 50.

           

Carolyn Heilbrun, The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty

James Hillman, The Force of Character and the Lasting Life

Institute of Medicine/National Research Council, America’s Aging: Productive Roles in an Older Society

Jeremy James, The Power of Experience: Great Writers over 50 on the Quest for a Lifetime of Meaning, (ed.)

PD James, A Time To Be In Earnest

Anne Karpf, How to Age (The School of Life series from Picador

Daniel Klein, Travels with Epicurus: A Journey To A Greek Island In Search Of A Fulfilled Life

           

Maggie Kuhn on Aging: A Dialogue, Dieter Hessel

Gerald A. Larue, A New Vision of Growing Old in America, Golden Age Books

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure in the 25 years After 50

Barbara Lee, God Isn't Finished with Me Yet: Discovering the Spiritual Graces of Later Life

Eda LeShan, Safe at Last in the Middle Years

Martha Nussbaum, Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations About Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret

Nancy A. Pachana, Ageing: A Very Short Introduction

Charlotte Painter, Gifts of Age: Portraits and Essays of 32 Remarkable Women

Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old

Mary Pipher, Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Our Elders

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Getting Over Getting Older: An Intimate Journey

Lewis Richmond, Aging as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older & Wiser

Richard Rohr: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Salman Schachter-Shalomi & Ronald S. Miller, From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older

Emily Esfahani Smith, The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters

Studs Terkel, Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century By Those Who Lived It

My Personal GPS

It’s not been a very good couple-o-weeks here in LaChapelle Land.

First, there was the back pain. Then, just as that was working itself out, I did something stupid and worked it back in.

Then on Friday, I got bitten—or clawed—by a small dog. It was being walked by a 12-year old who didn’t have a good grasp on the leash. When I’d already passed them on the sidewalk, the dog whipped around and did something nasty to my leg.

First, the pain, then the blood, then the mayhem.

Long story a little less long, the next day I made my way to a drugstore mini-clinic. Had the 2-inch long tear washed and steri-stripped; got a tetanus shot and script for antibiotics; then went home with instructions on how to clean and dress the wound until it—hopefully—closes.

Over the last several days of tending to the back and the wound, I’ve become a bit cranky. Like my father, I don’t do pain well, especially when caring for one injury aggravates the other. And when together they take up so damn much time.

What to do, then, other than take the Alleve and the antibiotic, wash the wound and ice the back, try and minimize the pain from each, and seek advice from the proper professionals?

Easy: along with changing the back patches and the wound dressings, I need to change my attitude. OK, not so easy. But the "Woe is me" internal chatter only keeps me in the woe.

What helps, not surprisingly, is meditating: lying still or walking, I slow down my breathing and with each breath, repeat a word that calms me. This practice, I’m hoping, will also calm the pain. Or at least distract me from it.

The three words I’ve been using—my personal GPS—are gratitude; patience; and serenity. Each in its own way helps remind me what’s needed to change my attitude.

Well, that, and a nice cold glass of Harp at my local sports bar. (We love you, Javy.)

Aging Gracefully

Several years ago, I entered a writing contest sponsored by Real Simple magazine. As I recall, the assignment was to list 10 secret ways to age gracefully.

Now, I wasn’t quite sure why these ways—tips, really—were supposed to be secret. Especially as they’d be published in a national magazine.

As for gracefully, it didn’t dawn on me until I read the winning entries—I was not among them—that in this instance, gracefully could be equivalent to beautifully, well turned out, fashionably.

In other words, how can we keep our looks and our fabulous style as the birthdays and the decades pile on? "Hey, foxy lady, how can you outfox Mother Nature?"

Now, I’ve never been especially foxy, and certainly not beautiful or fashionable. Even when being courted in my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s by Eddie and Philip and John and Bill, I didn’t wear much make-up, if any, and went in more for comfy than stylish clothes and shoes.

Now, in my 70’s, I realize that my definition of graceful aging reflects those life-long habits, having less to do with body and more with spirit, attitude, purpose, and, of course, good health.

So here's my rejected list, which I titled 10-not-so-secret ways to age gracefully. 

It almost wrote itself those many years ago, and now I offer it as a writing prompt to my readers. Have fun with it, and if you’d like to share any or all of your list, please email me at madmoon55@hotmail.com. I may want to post some of the submissions on my blog.

1.  Be grateful.  

2.  Become a mentor.

3.  Write your family stories.

4.  Move your body. A lot. Walk, bike, swim, dance, whatever.

5.  Be grateful.

6.  Take risks, especially in love and in work (paid or unpaid).

7.  Learn a new skill or retrieve an old one: drawing, skiing, playing the piano.

8.  Stay outraged by injustice, no matter its form.

9.  Live in your body, not some idealized version thereof.

10.  Be grateful.

Compos(t)ing A Life

Because I apparently don’t have enough to read, I’ve yet another selection for my bulging bookshelves: Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, by Sallie Tisdale.

It was reviewed in last week’s New York Times by Parul Sehgal, and, as the title suggests, is about dying. Here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the review:

But in its loving, fierce specificity, this book on how to die is also a blessedly saccharine-free guide for how to live. There’s a reason Buddhist monks meditate on charnel grounds, and why Cicero said the contemplation of death was the beginning of philosophy. 

OK, so not just about dying, but also living. No surprise there, I suppose.  Why even bring up death if you’re not going to eventually circle back to life.

Which puts me in mind of a quote from Henry David Thoreau in Walden: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

It’s the living deliberately part that I’ve tried focusing on for the past 15 or so years. And then when the dying part looms, I want to decide the where, when, and how.  This has been true for me since 1964, when I watched my mother die from breast cancer. She was 50 and I was 20. It left a lasting impression.

I had an essay published three years ago that includes a reference to that seminal event. Here’s an excerpt:

Years after my mother died, I imagined an alternative ending to her life, earnestly writing the intimate details in my personal journal. In that scenario, I, the awakened hero, steal into her hospital room in the dark of a May dawn, ease her small comatose body into my arms, then carry her out of there, into the car and home, to that particular place I know she’d have wanted to finish it: her own unassuming, but familiar backyard.

In this image, I place her carefully on terra firma, where she can lie with those things that had given her life its most elemental meaning—the garden, the flowers in bloom, maybe the dog and cat—to breathe her last. In this image, she now wears a faint smile in place of the awful death mask that covered her face on the day she actually died.

As for myself, I’d take this lovely fantasy a step further, saving anyone the bother of having to stuff my remains in a box. Because now, in this enlightened era, one can have one’s remains decompose, within certain natural areas, with or without the box.

In other words, one can opt for a green burial, an environmentally friendly way to leave our beautiful green planet, the kind of ending my nature-loving mother would have loved.

And so, not surprisingly: like mother, like daughter.

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For more information on green burials:

http://sections.chicagotribune.com/primetime/2015/09/18/#?article=2606801

To read the NYTG book review:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/books/review-advice-for-future-corpses-sallie-tisdale.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fbooks&action=click&contentCollection=books&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

Bull Jivin' at the CHA

The image of a bunch of oldsters staging a “die-in” in the lobby of the Chicago Housing Authority made my day. It accompanied an article written by Carlos Ballesteros in yesterday’s Chicago Sun-Times, the subtitle of which was “Seniors take over CHA lobby to protest faulty elevators, demand oversight.” 

Here are the opening two paragraphs:

A vivacious* group of senior citizens occupied the Chicago Housing Authority’s downtown office lobby on Tuesday morning to protest what they say are dangerous living conditions at many of the agency’s senior homes across the city.

The action…comes two weeks after an investigation…revealed how the CHA failed to properly inspect and maintain hundreds of elevators at its public housing facilities since 2015.

In addition to the elevator problems, there was more:

The group also reiterated long-standing complaints about faulty heating and cooling systems in buildings operated by CHA and alleged retaliatory behavior against senior residents by building managers. Seniors also chastised the CHA for, as one resident put it, “putting the interests of wealthy and politically connected developers over the lives of elders.”

What resonates and rings true in that paragraph is the retaliatory behavior toward pesky residents who dare to both complain and chastise.

But, I mean, come on. You reach a certain age, guess what? You get to complain and chastise to your heart’s content. Why, in an given day, I chastise lots of people: drivers who try to run me over as I’m crossing the street; Starbucks customers who talk too damn loud on their smarty-pants phones; old men in bars who drop the “f” bomb repeatedly.

More article excerpts:

Three-dozen seniors and their allies entered the building shortly before 9:30 a.m. and plopped down on the floor, disregarding warnings from building security to leave the premises. At 9:37 a.m, the group proceeded to stage a two-minute “die-in,” followed by a rendition of the Freedom Song, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round.”

Ooohhh, how I wish I would’ve been there, especially to hear that lovely and spirited song from my youth. Instead, I’ll have to settle for these two great renditions on youtube:

https://youtu.be/WPuBGcng6Tw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aa8G44S6_c

I also wish I’d been there to meet a fellow septuagenarian, Eugene Nelson, and hear his response to what CHA chief executive Eugene Jones, Jr. had to say:

“I’m tired of all the bulljivin’, Mr. Jones,” said Eugene Nelson, a 70-year-old resident of Flannery Apartments on North Clybourn Avenue and Halsted Street. “I want to enjoy my youth — I want to be able to walk out of my building and know I’ll be all right.”

To read more of this inspiring article, click here:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/cha-seniors-elevators-protest-sit-in-die-in-public-housing/

 *(NOTE: It will surprise no one to learn that I emailed Mr. Ballesteros, suggesting a better word than “vivacious” to described this concerned and committed group of CHA residents. He immediately responded, and gracefully.)