ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE SOUL TALKS

I’ve been obsessing about death and dying lately and that should come as no surprise:  I am IN THE ZONE.  

You know “the Zone?”  Until about age 50, death is something “out there;” it’s part of life but even if someone dear dies, somehow it doesn’t quite pertain to the “us” at our core.  That starts changing sometime between 50 and 60.  

I began noticing the shift because I’m a classic movie fan.  I started counting the beautiful people in movies that were gone. There they were, in their prime, gorgeous bodies, at the top of their professions - all gone. I really mourned the loss: Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Kelly, et. al. Is that weird?  

Then I had a serious illness and WHOMP! WE ARE NOT TALKING ABSTRACTIONS ANYMORE. 

For maybe a year or two I swung between “I am going to die soon” then, uh-oh,  “I did NOT die! So what am I supposed to do with this gift of time?” 

(Don’t start with that “value every day” stuff - it only adds pressure and stress! )

I did try a few things. I’m not a joiner but I joined. I’m not a good committee participant but I participated. I decided I should write my memoirs; they remain stalled in the early 1960s ( a LOT of things stalled in the 1960s!) I tried to keep an open communication line with the universe - “a door closes, another opens…but only if you’re ready.” I took a course in eastern thought and tried yoga.  I guess my doors were only ajar - nothing came to stay. 

I worked on “forgiveness” - I still do. It’s hard. Acceptance is another concept I can’t quite get my head around. When is it o.k. to accept and when do you fight like hell?  “Fighting…”is that merely trying to keep control? How does age and experience change my response to circumstances and how do I accept that my experience counts for very little in a culture of age discrimination?  (I often know the answer to a lot of stuff! Really! I’m a reader - a studier - a critic! but am just too damned disgusted to share them ONE MORE TIME with you immature morons! Don’t you people over 60 want to tattoo that one on your blouse or something?)

So here we are. More people are dying that I know and the obits list new “members” every day who are my age - sometimes younger, sometimes only a little older - and I am sad. But I enclose two wonderful poems that I really like because they make me feel better (Light bulb moment:  good writing can have that power!) and  a photograph of one of my all-time favorite “houses of worship.” You gotta’ love the human spirit!

I could be hit by a truck tomorrow or live long enough to actually pay off the house mortgage.  In the meantime, fuck it! I’m buying the chair!