Bless these bones

Recently I’ve been studying Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” from the Gospel of Matthew. It includes this teaching on prayer:

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened.
(Matthew 7:7)

I wrote the following prayer based on the three verbs in Jesus’ teaching:

Prayer on Growing Older

I ask on behalf of my body.

I know I’m growing older and I don’t ask for a reversal of that process,
but I would like to become a healthy old lady, one who still hikes and swims and circumnavigates her world with appropriate energy and joy, who handles the inevitable physical limitations and changes with grace.

I seek friendship in these autumn years.

Just as the trees turn gold, so let the gift of friendship grow richer and more beautiful, with my husband of so many years, with my grown children and their spouses, with my grandchildren and those greats yet to come, with my neighbors, and with friends from years past.
Help me to delight in them all and be a joy to them in turn. I seek warm conversation, laughter, intimacy, mutual adventures, and shared silences.
I seek opportunities to love my neighbor as I love myself.

Above all, I seek a deepening friendship with you, my Lord.

I knock on the door of wisdom.

I know that growing older does not automatically mean growing wiser which is why I’m knocking.
Help me approach the mysteries with awe and joy.
Open my eyes and let me see.
Open my ears and help me to listen.
Give me hope that one day the door I knock on will open wide and invite me out into a new place where I shall know, even as also I am known.

I thank you for this time of life.
And I ask, I seek, I knock.
Amen. So let it be.

The kaleidoscope of change

It’s a cliché to say that change is the one constant in life. Of course it is. We all know that. And we know that it’s our attitude to change that makes the difference. That’s common conventional wisdom.

But it’s easier said than done.

I sometimes think that the changes brought about by aging are the toughest to adapt to. Some days I don’t have a good attitude at all about those changes. I wonder who I am now.

This reminds me of a passage in Alice in Wonderland. I’m currently reading this book aloud with my friend Harriet who lives down in the Health Center. Harriet is 104 years-old and has been through more life changes than most of us. The time she’s in now is especially difficult. But she loves Alice and laughs in all the right places.

The passage describes some strange changes and their resultant identity crisis. Alice was a little girl, not an old woman and her dilemma had to do with magically changing sizes as she swallowed potions and ate cookies. She wrestles with change like most of us and wonders who she is now. In this scene she has just come in contact with a caterpillar.

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence; at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

“Who are you? said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

Being so many different sizes in a lifetime is confusing. Sizes, shapes, roles, tasks, relationships, responsibilities, circumstances—it’s a kaleidoscope and its constant spinning makes me so dizzy somedays that I can’t stand up straight. (Is that why so many of us use walkers and wheelchairs?) Which of all these selves and sizes is the real me? Is there such a creature? Is it even important to know?

The tiredness aside, most days I feel almost young and vital on the inside, much the same person I’ve always been. But then I look in the mirror.

I was startled this morning
to see a strange old woman
staring at me from the bathroom mirror.
Who is she? How did she get here?
Should I pull the emergency cord
by the toilet? Am I safe?
Such white hair!
Those lines around the eyes!
Those spots! Poor thing.
Even as I pitied her,
something about the pathetic look
she gave me made me laugh.
She laughed back.
In that very instant, I recognized
her, accepted her, and loved her.
Just as she is.

I realize that all the changes of my life come together to help make me who I am today. The changes are real and I’m at a different phase of life with its own challenges, but I’m still me. I’ll keep changing, but my core self, the essence of the person created by God, stays. It’s like the woman in Lisa Genova’s novel, Still Alice, who suffers the drastic changes of Alzheimer’s, but her family recognizes that she’s still the person they’ve always known and loved. She’s still Alice. And I’m still Nancy. And you are still your own unique self.

Joan Chittister in her book The Gift of Years writes that “We don’t change as we get older—we just get to be more of what we’ve always been.”

I love that passage in the book of Revelation that says that the person who remains victorious in all the challenges of life will receive from God “a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17). I’ve wondered if that personal name is God finally telling us the essence of our identity.

The search for identity, extending through the later years, is ongoing, perhaps until God tells us who we are. In the meantime, there’s a better way. We are to love our neighbor as ourself. Maybe these retirement years give us the leisure to appreciatively explore and affirm the essence of our neighbor—whether spouse, adult child, grandchild, or friend. Although we will never know the secret word written on their stone, we might come closer to genuinely knowing another person. What a good way to spend our time.

That’s a challenge for any age. 

On being ripe

 Really old people are sometimes referred to as ripe, as in “She lived to a ripe old age.” What exactly does that mean? When does ripe old age begin and when does it end?

Ripe seems more like a fruit word than a people word, but with language being the wonderful wiggly thing it is, words can go all sorts of places. People and fruit have things in common.

What is it about old age that makes it ripe? Is it an apple just about to fall, not yet wormy? Is it a whole vineyard full of choice grapes, ready for the presses? It is an avocado, getting soft, needing to be picked, pealed, and sliced away from its huge seed? Made into guacamole? Is it a lemon, tart and acidic? Or sweet like a plum? Why do we call old age ripe?

Is there an implication that after ripe comes…..dead?

The Collins English Dictionary tells us that “ripe implies completed growth beyond which the process of decay begins.” That’s OK in reference to fruit. Not so much for people. Taking that definition literally would mean that people become ripe in their mid-twenties, after which it’s all downhill, physically speaking. (“At the ripe young age of 25, he climbed Mt. Kilamanjaro.”)

But of course that’s not how we use the term. Ripe, as in “ripe old age,” refers, obviously, to old people. Webster’s informs us that a ripe person is one “having mature knowledge, understanding, or judgment” (would that were true!) or, more simply, a person “of advanced years.” The Cambridge Dictionary gives a positive description of “ripe old age”: “the condition of being very old; used especially to talk about someone who has had a long healthy life.” Christine Ammer in The Dictionary of Clichés says that the “expression itself is of a ripe old age—it dates from the second half of the fourteenth century—and is generally used in a positive, admiring sense.”

Well, then. I wouldn’t mind heading toward ripeness if it meant having finally achieved maturity of understanding after a long healthy life. Who wouldn’t want that? But if that’s what it means, then not every worthy old person could be considered ripe. Think of the one with dementia, an unfair disease of the mind that seems to attack the virtuous as well as scoundrels, and all degrees of character in between. What happens to “maturity of understanding”? Many wise older people die of diseases like cancer or heart trouble. These probably wouldn’t be considered ripe, lacking the health factor. Could a healthy old scoundrel be considered to have lived to a “ripe old age.”

Or are all these questions just silly?

Hal said to me last night, “I don’t want to get so ripe that I begin to stink.”

Me neither.

I’m playing with this term partly because I love language and am always curious about the origins and meanings of idioms and figures of speech. But I’m also pondering it because so many terms referring to older people border on stereotype. And I’m allergic to stereotypes, especially if I’m in the category being referred to.

In my search for information about the phrase, “ripe old age,” I came across a list of related words and phrases that refer to old people. It’s from a collection called SMART Vocabulary, produced by the Cambridge University Press. Here’s a sample from the list:

aged, buffer, centenarian, codger, crock, crone, dotard, elder, gaffer, geriatric, infirm, old boy, old girl, old man, old woman, old folks’ home, old-timer, oldie, ripe, second childhood, senile, senior citizen, supercentenarian, the gray dollar, the gray market, twilight years, wrinkly

Sound attractive? What images entered your mind as you read each word? Did you see yourself? Your parents or grandparents? I’m tempted to write a poem about Hal and me entitled, “The Codger and the Crone.” Gaffer’s a nice word; Sam Gamgee used it with affection to refer to his father. But I’ve never heard it used around here.

Actually, I love figures of speech and am always on the look out for new ones. I feel a certain affection toward “a ripe old age” and wouldn’t mind that referring to me someday, as long as I don’t stink. It’s that tendency toward stereotyping I resist. Stereotypes tend to erase personality. The categories and images make it hard to see people in all their uniqueness, no matter their age. I’m not a “senior citizen;” I’m a citizen. I’m not an old person; I’m a person. And I hope I’m never a crone.

Now that that’s off my back (another interesting image), I need a snack. I think I’ll go eat an apple.

Let’s hope it’s ripe.

Coming unglued

It was a simple exercise in a poetry writing seminar. The idea intrigued me. The facilitator had told us to choose a common cultural idiom, a figure of speech everyone knows and uses. The exercise was to take that idiom literally and write a poem.

I chose the phrase “coming unglued.” I was hearing that a lot, occasionally applying it to myself when a too busy schedule was making me grumpy and disorganized. Similar to not “having it all together,” or not “having your ducks in a row.”  

As I engaged my imagination, the image of body parts slowly coming unattached from the trunk made me grin. I know, it’s gruesome, but I tend to find weird things funny (except when they’re not). I began writing as the pictures formed, basically just playing with words. Nothing serious in mind. But, as sometimes happens in creative endeavors, the poem itself took over and led me where I didn’t want to go. Hansel and Gretel walked into the story and the whole thing ended up with us entering a darkening forest. Not knowing where we were going or what would happen next.

Sometimes, when a person asks me what one of my poems means, I have to confess that I don’t know. It was that way with this poem, until I figured it out. Apparently my unconscious self wanted to bring something up to the surface where I could deal with it. Poems can act like dreams, telling us stuff we need to know.

But first, here’s the poem. (You’ll notice I don’t even use the phrase “coming unglued.” No need.)

Coming of Age

It's all right, he assured me
as his ear slid
slowly
down the side
of his face.
His right index finger dropped
off
next.
He had always
known this would happen
someday.
His hairline had begun
to recede
years before.
We walked out of
the room
single
file.
I stumbled on
his left
foot.
He hobbled ahead,
scattering appendages
like
bread
crumbs.
About twilight
we entered the forest.

At the time I wrote this poem Hal and I were in our early 50s, still young and somewhat vital (as I know from my current vantage point). But we were noticing subtle bodily changes, things like lower energy level, less visual acuity, aches in places that had never ached before, and, of course, those wrinkles and grey hairs. Hal especially faced some serious issues involving operations.

I always knew I’d grow old someday, but it wasn’t of great concern. I couldn’t actually picture myself with white hair, using a walker, or living in an “old folks’ home.” And I didn’t pay too much attention to the tales my aunts and uncles told about doctor visits and body parts wearing out. Boring.

But while I wasn’t consciously worried, something else was going on deep inside where monsters and dragons dwell. The poem told me that I was afraid of growing old and especially of what might happen to my body and mind. My mother had died in her 50s and my father at age 63, both from debilitating illnesses. I was approaching that age. Would I be like them? It was unknown territory.

It was good to get the fear out into the open and look it in the face. Hal and I could then talk about it, pray, and make plans for when we’d actually enter the forest.

I’m over 20 years from the writing of that poem and I’m actually living in a retirement community (which I would never refer to as an “old folks’ home”). It’s turned out to be a lovely old growth forest where the sun slants through the trees, although there are days when path ahead still looks dark.

But I must confess that the image of body parts coming unglued is no joke. This forest is full of decay; ironically, that’s part of what makes it healthy. We try to laugh about it, and most days we do.

There’s a joke about how that when older people get together to talk, it always turns into a musical event—an organ recital!

I hope I’m not about to give an organ recital here, but in order to illustrate the idea of slowly coming unglued, I will say that my main concern is something called vestibular migraines, but that my marvelous doctor is helping me control the symptoms. Other than that, I have a bit of osteoarthritis in my hands and neuropathy in my feet. (There’s some other stuff that I won’t mention. Be thankful.) All in all, not too bad.

Hal is another story. (Hal is always another story, but that’s what makes him so interesting.) He’s looking at three possible operations this year—lower back, prostrate, and left hand. Plus he continually fights diverticulosis, assorted skin rashes, and leg cramps. And both of us find ourselves saying WHAT? more than any other word in our vocabulary. Wonder why? I guess we’ll have to look into that.

On the other hand, we have good hearts, lungs, kidneys, brains and other organs that are growing older but still doing their good work. Since cataract removal surgery, we see the distant hills as well as the words in our books. We have much to be thankful for.

Now that I’ve written that, I am determined not to give you another organ recital. Ever. Please hold me to it.

We need to face the rebellion of body parts as a reality of aging. We have no guarantee that we will not get cancer, break a hip, or suffer dementia. I read the description in Psalm 92 of the upright person who “will still bear fruit in old age, who still stay fresh and green” like a cherry tree or a cedar. A beautiful image—and one I hold on to. But I will still grow older and one day I will die. What does this fruit in old age look like? What does it mean to stay fresh and green, even as some of my limbs break off and fruit drops to the ground? As I become unglued?

I don’t know exactly. I just know that, on most days, I’m no longer afraid.