wisdom

Unraveling

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things are unraveling as they should

are they.…?

I have been thinking about this paraphrase that Debbie has used many times in our conversations. “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” is the line from the final stanza of Desiderata by Max Ehrmann written almost 100 years ago. I use it on the masthead of my blog. It is a calming peaceful poem. His view of the universe is much like mine a view from increased years. Some would say from wisdom. My years are more increased than his when he wrote it.

A principle of thermodynamics is that the entropy of the universe is always increasing. Debbie, when she says unraveling, is speaking a clearer pragmatic practical truth about our universe. It is unraveling as it should or more correctly as it will. Some would say God’s will. I does not matter as the unraveling happens on its own. Embrace it.

One should be aware of impending doom. Reporters of the weather often drill this concept to the masses of their audience. Aware but do not fret over it. In the case of weather, use the information to dress accordingly. Other situations present other doom scenarios. Prepare as best you can and then move on with your life. Progressive insurance tells you to bundle your home and auto insurance. I do just not with them. Boy scouts say be prepared. (yada yada yada)

It is a mistake to base your entire world view on no more than your own experiences. Max Ehrmann admonishes us to: Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. That is advice I got from my own father long ago. Less elegantly, he said, you should listen to the other guy even if you think he is a jerk because he might actually have a good idea. My dad was a really smart and practical guy. Sometimes I miss conversing with him. It is important to talk to people who do not share your life philosophy, that was his point.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Another line from Max, “aridity and disenchantment”, I read as highs and lows. Every love has that in it. (Give and take – if you like that better.)

Perhaps Debbie and I should sit and remaster Desiderata for our time together. Or perhaps not. The words are a philosophy for the spiritual but unchurched, for the Buddhists in a Catholic body like me.

Carpe Diem.

At the End of the Day

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“No matter what happens between now and then, tomorrow is another day” said the news anchor on “The Day.” I think, “Absolutely and thank you mister obvious.” I suppose it was his intent to sound profound. Walter Cronkite used to end with, “And that’s the way it is…”

I started using Carpe Diem a few years ago at the end of my commentary as a way to remind myself of the potential available to us to use each day. And yet, at the end of the day I spend little time reporting to myself the high points of the day. I also do not focus on the low points.

There are many things to think about at the end of the day. Am I brave enough to love again? Am I too open with others? What great things happened today? What did I learn today? What should I think about avoiding if I can next time? At the very end, I push all those and others away by reading a novel. It is a habit I developed over the last few years. About half of the time it worked. I was tired and Cheryl was asleep or mostly so when I came to bed. These days it always works. I have also become a critic of some fiction that I have selected to entertain myself.

Before reading some novel or ones that are not novel at all to me, however, other actions take over my interest. I am in charge of myself and what I watch and what is entertainment and what is not. I was disappointed in the movie version of “Wicked” for example. I think there was a rush to get a snippet of a story onto the big screen that is in many ways incomplete. Money people for movie producers need a return of money to keep going. I think I was greatly disappointed. The singing was great but the story line went nowhere. I have some of these projects.

Quite often but not when I was working I did not finish some project. I have many of these little abandoned projects (mostly little electronic things) scattered on my work surface in my office. I have a pleasantly cluttered office and once in a while I straighten things for a bit in order to find a place for another soon to be abandoned gizmo. And yet through it all I am able to keep track of important actions that I need to do to take care of myself – pay bills, cook, shop for food, laundry – the mundane tasks of life. It may be that I am not so disorganized as I perceive myself to be.

Sometimes my blog is a stream of conscience construct. This may be one of those times.

Many people I have known were, or seemed so, very organized. I am not – at least in my mind I am not. Is it okay to be un-dis-mis-organized? (Cheryl was so good at organization.) The answer is yes. Mis-organization, as I like to call it, indicates to me that I am often not satisfied with the path I have taken to somewhere. Something does not feel quite right. I look at it as taking the next fork in the road. How many forks are there in my road? Where is this trip around the sun taking me?

It may be that I am merely constantly learning about myself and this new life without Cheryl.

Carpe Iter!

Listening

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Listen with your heart. It is quieter than your mind.

Listening to my youngest son talk to his oldest son lightens my heart. They have common interests in sports. I do not have a strong interest in professional sport. Those are merely noise off to the side of the snacks and other refreshment.

Many years ago I listened to my father when he told me, you should always listen to the other guy even if you think he is a jerk because he might have a good idea. Dad rarely expressed his judgment of others. He also understood within himself that listening does not happen while one is talking.

Mom had a phrase that I remember from childhood. She used to say, you have to pull up your own socks. I do not know where that came from but I took it to mean that one should seek help from others when necessary but it is up to oneself to get up and move on from any difficulty.

Today I am listening to my heart. I believe I need to listen to that part of me. How do I feel about all that has unfolded in my life. Political noise has had no effect on that. Life and living with Cheryl for three quarters of that time has. She has made me a better man. But so has listening to Mom and Dad and listening to my son’s conversation with his son. So has listening to my heart. In a lifetime of conversation, real conversation, and listening to others in my life, I have concluded that only I can pull up my own socks. And as I write this I think about the times I pulled up Cheryl’s no slip socks (her name for them) in the evening and put her pajamas on her to prepare for bed. She would not accept my help to do that in the morning when she got up.

Last week I retreated from the every day so that I could listen to my heart. I find that to be easier and more fulfilling if I distract myself after awhile with some occupation totally diverse to a previous concentration. This method has worked often for me through life. (The mantra is “sleep on it.”) A book of fiction or movie that has no moral to convey, a romantic comedy will do this for me. The distraction refreshes. I can look for help where I can find it but only I can pull up my socks.

I have been listening to the Grief Share videos purposefully for several weeks. I find myself talking and commenting to the various experts and listening to the people relating their grief story. There is a yin and yang to it all in my thoughts. I resist experts telling me what wine pairs well with what cheese. Occasionally, Dad will say be quiet and listen. (Maybe not often enough do you talk to me, Dad.) So, today I will listen with my heart.

I will remind myself that my concept of God is not the same as other’s concept of God. It is important to see past the literal when reading the Bible or the Quran or any religious text and just listen. Listen to your heart. Meditation an eastern concept helps with this. Prayer a western concept helps with this. Keep an open mind. Be still and just listen. Read Siddhartha. Be still. Listen.

Yes, Dad.

Carpe Diem.

Grief and Sharing

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I recently asked to be a part of and help with a ministry at our church called GriefShare. It is a support group for those of us dealing with the loss of a loved one. Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Son, Daughter or Friend – Any or all of these losses in life. They are common and expected but not hoped for losses and we grieve.

I do not know what I am hoping to gain from this experience. For me, having spent a great part of the past few years caring for Cheryl, it may simply feel comfortable to help others.

The program itself which has a website and an abundance of videos and formal presentations seems to be aimed at guiding the participant toward some stable existence without whoever has left this existence. In many ways much of that journey occurred with me while Cheryl was struggling with her Parkinson and her accompanying dementia. I purposely try to remember things we did before her Parkinson. Sadly, perhaps because those are are farther in the past or perhaps because the Parkinson and dementia were so overwhelming during the past six years or so, this memory exercise is hard. I still make the effort.

It is not so much that I want to forget the past few years but it is very important for me to remember the fun we had for the few years prior. Those are the years when we hiked in parks and through the woods. Those are the years we out bid everyone for overnight hotel stays. Those where the years when we hopped in the car suddenly on a weekend and drove to Illinois because a grandson was coming. Those where the years we hopped in the car and drove to Indiana because a granddaughter was coming. Those are great memories. And when I purposely think about those times I do not see her deathly ill face.

Cheryl still lives in me and I do grieve for her but I think the long time we had with Parkinson and cognitive issues (I think) helped me to come to terms with her eventual death. She was very much not the wonderful person I spent fifty years of my life with during the last six or so years as she drifted deeper into dementia. I have written this before to myself but I am happy for her that she is gone. She is in fact not suffering anymore.

And with that thought I do wish for her to be here with me. Happy. Disease free. Without encumbrances. Without walkers and canes and wheelchairs. I wish she was her slightly overweight but curvy self wishing to lose a few pounds by doing water aerobics. I wish, I wish, I wish.

I have let her go but I still grieve for her and will always. How can I not?

GriefShare emphasizes that grief is a journey. Life is a journey too. I use a picture of us that my daughter took of us just a few years ago as we walked back to our spot after completing a fund raising walk for Parkinson research. I still use it and another version where Cheryl is ghosted. We are still journeying through life. She is still with me. I hear her admonish me for being a stinker because I am upset about something, usually a trivial something maybe yelling at another bozo driving along. She would tell me to calm down while she was still riding with me physically She is still traveling life with me even though she is not here. I still talk to her. I think of grief as a nuance to life’s journey.

Grief will always be there. My sister died in 2008 of MDS a form of blood cancer. My father died a few months before that in 2007 of colon cancer. My mother died in 2016 of old age. My brother died in 2020 of heart failure. Grief will always occur in life. It is one aspect of the journey.

At this stage of my life I search for purpose. A few years ago as Cheryl’s situation worsened I convinced myself that my purpose was to take care of her. That was true but I am beginning to think that there is more. I am wondering what that more is.

Carpe this Diem and all the more you are given.

What a Days I Have Been In.

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Yesterday we tripped to a couple wineries to enjoy a bottle and some snacks. Today we saw waterfalls.

Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you are used to. I know that you want to have it your way or nothing at all but you are moving too fast. – TLC

This song often pops up in my head. It has a good cadence for bike riding and as a result it is on my playlist from Spotify. It has a metaphorical meaning that I interpret as look around and understand where you are before you dash off looking for something better. Another phrase is – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe it is maybe it is not. I suppose that we always want the thing that we do not have. We want what the other guy has rather than merely celebrating with him that he has it and enjoying what we have.

When I would take mom to dinner at a restaurant which has not happened for some time, she would ask me what I was having. This a different form of the same thing. Why would Mom want to be interested in what I was about to order from the menu if she did not believe in some way that it was going to be better than what she was intending to select for herself? Is there something I am missing here? Once I protested telling her what I was thinking about having and made that argument to her. She responded with – I might want to change and get what you are getting. That is a reasonable response.(After we ordered and the food came, often she would take her fork and get a bite of my whatever it was. I loved Mom but that always annoyed me.)

We all have had experiences like this. We all have a fear of missing out (FOMO). We are not missing out on anything. We may be unsure of our decision but that specificity does not imply that the particular decision that we have made for ourselves is the wrong one. That cannot be known or understood until it has been executed. The decision may morph into a learning experience. That is a good thing.

These days as I wonder what purpose this portion of my life is for, thinking about and pondering big changes to my life, I look for the waterfalls.

In the background while I am doing the day-to-day activities of life, various chores, duties near to and necessary for the little part time job I have with a local community college, I think about making larger changes in my situation. Cheryl was all of my day before she moved to memory care. She was a huge part of my day when she moved and had full time care not from me. Now that she is gone there is a vast empty time.

I have thought about continuing with volunteer work or activities of some sort at the memory care facility where she had been. I just do not think I can do that. The memories are too raw. My heart sinks when I think about it. I feel that I am letting them (the patients there) down. I do not know where that feeling comes from within me.

For now, I have filled it partially with bike trips. These trips of 12 or 15 miles at a stretch let me get much needed exercise. They provide solace and distraction. It is easier to imagine the times when she was not sick.

This week I am filling my time with visiting with my sister. We have a commonality in that she became a widow a few months before I became a widower. We support each other in that respect. She was not expecting to lose her husband and I was not expecting to lose Cheryl. Even though it was right in front of me I refused to believe Cheryl would be gone. I have come to grips with that now. (I still do not like it but there it is.) I notice myself talking about Cheryl and trips we made. It is easier as time continues.

Where do I go from here? Should I look for a new waterfall? The pool below the fall is close to the ground but still agitated. Often the stream below is swift moving. When the water joins the river it is moving slower and calmer.

Carpe Diem.

Serenity and Serendipity

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THOUGHT FOR TODAY:What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? -Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (28 Jun 1712-1778)

Serene, serenity and serendipity,  calm, calmness and a combination of events producing happiness might that be simply being kind to others around you in life? There is a quiet calm that comes with a kind act to another. A friendly smile, a cheery “Good Morning” or a happy wave to a neighbor, these are all simple kind acts that bring calm and lift one’s spirits.

In this new life of mine without Cheryl, I seek the serenity and serendipity of this next journey. I do not know what it will bring but Cheryl helped me to understand that living in the moment is key to living. Over the weekend I began the task of acknowledging the mound of cards, letters, well-wishes and memorials for Cheryl left from her celebration of life eight weeks ago. These days I feel a complicated mishmash of emotions. I suppose that is what grief is; a mishmash. I read in a book once, “grief is just love with no place to go.” Whether grief is merely leftover love or not, I do not know nevertheless grief is only part of my emotional upheaval. There is an emptiness, a hole, a gap in the schedule, a longing, a want for something different. There is a “no one to check with first” feeling that leaves me on my own to decide what to do about anything. I truly do miss her. At the same time I am gladdened by the fact that she is no longer suffering with Parkinson and dementia.

There is nothing on this calendar square and there is no one to ask, “What shall we do today, Dear?” I don’t want to fill my day with necessary but meaningless tasks like laundry and cleaning. I read some; both novels and not. I have several books of poetry and i pick one of them to read and think with and about. I journal although not as much as when Cheryl was still alive and I ponder as I write here.

She does talk to me and lately I have been dreaming about her. These are calm dreams. She has no Parkinson in her. She does not need my help. And when I awaken she stays with me for awhile in the morning.

Yesterday while looking through various memorial cards she directed my attention to this poem in one of them. She knows I like poetry. This was written by Anne Lindgren Davison. (Thanks, Anne.)

 I Am Free
Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free.
I'm following the path God laid, you see.
I took His hand when I heard Him call.
I turned around and left it all.
I could not stay another day,
To laugh, to love, to work or play.
Tasks left undone must stay that way,
I've found the peace on a sunny day.
If my parting has left a void,
Then fill it with remembered joys.
A family shared, a laugh, a kiss,
Oh yes, these things, I too, will miss
Be not burdened with times of sorrow,
I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life's been full, I savored much,
Good friends, good times, a loved one’s touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief.
Don't lengthen it now with undue grief.
Lift up your hearts and peace to thee.
God wanted me now; He set me free.


Poetry is for me a comfort. In this poem with its simplistic rhyme I hear Cheryl’s voice. This an example of her telling me to not be too sad because there is no Parkinson or dementia in heaven. For that I am grateful.

Carpe Diem.

Almost Losing My Head

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Falling down and injuring myself has captured my thoughts for the time being. Some lessons can only be learned from one’s own experience.

The first and maybe the most important one is pretty straightforward. I am older than my brain is willing to accept. Maybe I should be more careful about things. Not surprisingly I am much less athletic than I used to be when I was a younger man.

The second is no longer will I focus on strength training. Exercise focus will be endurance and balance based. If the particular exercise helps with those things I will include it. Biking and yoga are two exercise activities that I am drawn to in particular .

The third idea is perhaps I should seek out help to deal with ongoing grief.

Carpe Diem

Words, Wordle and Anagrams

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An early morning wake-up activity for me is working my way through the Wordle, Quordle and Octordle, although I have little idea how to pronounce the last one. Being non-competitive does not mean that I do not enjoy intrinsic triumphs. I am a fan of crosswords, golf and trivia. All of these can have an externalized competitive setting but primarily these are the player versus the game itself. Nevertheless, words and word games are a fascination to me.

Occasionally working my way through these in the morning sparks other thoughts. An arbitrary word guess – because i am stuck and I have pecked in five letters to discover what my brain thinks about it – will turn into a valid word, often wrong, but valid. Campo was one of those. I am one of those who has several dictionaries and a couple bibles. I tend to look up bible citations and previously unknown words. “Campo” is a grassland plain in South America. (The Spanish and Portuguese got there first so they got to name things, I guess.)

In Octordle the object is to find all eight words in as few guesses as possible. My first two guesses are generally wasted while I hunt for vowels first. Once one of my vowel words showed all green but that was not my lowest score (low scores are best). Another internal fight I have with myself is to focus (or not) on a single word. Sometimes guesses are answers elsewhere. Those are just strategies. Today in one group all five letters where there after my third word entry (first guess). These were “r,a,t,e,h” sort of clumped in a corner grouping. EARTH or HEART are both good guesses here. I picked heart and I was incorrect. An anagram of both words is HATER which was the correct guess.

My brain whorled off into the ether. Heart versus hater. Light versus dark. Without a heart, one cannot live. Without hate not only can one live but life itself is brighter. An anagram is a simple rearrangement of the same letters. Perhaps we need more anagrams in our lives.

Carpe Diem or maybe Carpe Lucem!

In This New Year

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Be it Resolved:

That I will be the best husband that I can Be but not better than I Am.

That I will be the best father that I can Be but not better than I Am.

That I will be the best grandfather that I can Be but not better than I Am.

That is all I resolve to do in this new year of 2024. For those of you math nerds it is the day after 123123 (12/31/23) and one year after the Fibonacci year 01123 (1/1/23). Those dates may be significant to others who look for significance where there is mere coincidence but for me those dates only mark passage of time. After all the calendar is arbitrary. In the sixteenth century our calendar was adjusted by the Pope. It was adjusted again in the eighteenth century that is why George Washington and a couple other founding fathers have two birthdays. The Chinese standardized theirs in 2017 but in some places it is still 4721 or 4722 depending. There is much that is arbitrary and little that is significant with calendars.

Cheryl was the keeper of our home calendar but lately it was me that pasted birthday labels and marked other appointments and social events on it. In the week between Christmas and January 1st, I would layout the new wall calendar on the dining table and mark birthdays and other carry over appointments on it and then hang it for the last few days behind the current calendar. Lately she was unsure of which part to look at. To Cheryl it is Easter time. I have not purchased a new home calendar. Perhaps I should do that soon.

I have found and am wearing my father’s watch given to him to mark the anniversary of his 25th year where he had worked his entire life except for the bad times in the early 1940’s.

Time passes. Tempus Fugit.

Cheryl is comfortable, settled and safe in the Harbor memory care section of Bridgeway Pointe. Last week we met with a hospice care induction nurse to find the best course of care for her in this new year. I believe that she is getting the best that I can do for her in the new year.

No one can be better than they are. My hope is that I can be the best of what I am.

Carpe diem, tempus fugit.

Not Too Negative About It

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As we move down the road of Cheryl in a special place that can take care of her all day long every day, it gets easier for me to leave her. I am assured that she is getting the best care for her at this time.

The past few weeks when she was still home and it was all me, I started feeling anxious and upset with her lack of motivation to help with her own well being. I knew that her disease was getting in the way more. I was frustrated with her lack of cooperation with me with caring for her.

I was perhaps stepping on the last little bit of control that she had over events in our life. My whole waking day was consumed with her. I did not mind that but looking back, from her perspective, I was overwhelming, helicoptery and just plan annoying. There is a difference between accepting help from someone and having unwanted help thrust upon you. I was drifting into the thrusting arena.

This current situation is different. I can step back and let the aides do it – whatever it may be.

I am a husband again. Making sure has has all she needs to do for herself – whatever it may be.

Carpe (deep sigh) Diem.