TRANSITION

I follow a site called “Begin with Yes”…today the following posting showed up.  “The transition to evening reminds us that life is about transitions too. When we understand that this is just part of the natural unfolding, we resist less and become less fearful. Everything will be OK”

How many times have I written about my own personal transition from wife to widow to single and the challenges it has presented, yet feeling lucky to understand and accept the idea that everything will be OK.  That does not make the pain go away.  I know I sometimes have to wear a mask of “everything is ok” just to get through the day, and so do many other widows I meet and talk with.  

When I talk about my reactions to leaving a wonderful event with family or friends and sometimes find myself breaking into tears heading home alone in the car…they nod and understand…for them too, they tell me.  There is always that moment that you leave the group, get into your car and as I have said before when you close that door that sound of the door slams you into a reality of your aloneness. 

I gave a talk a while back and was in conversation with someone who said, “I pretend to be okay because everyone expects me to be.”  She went on to say, “In pretending, I can often get through the day, but it is not real.”  

How that struck me.  We all wear masks of sorts.  Most of us present to others that which we think they want to see and too often it leaves us wanting inside and nowhere to share the voice we really want to be heard.  

Yet, I know it is up to me at this stage to find my own way, to create a new life.  I often feel like I have each foot in a different world.  One where I want to run and explore and start over…even sometimes thinking it would be wonderful to run away and begin life over.  The other foot stays planted in a need to be around the family.  But I am experiencing more that the family is so busy, and their need for me, is gone, and due to time, distance and busy lives getting together is harder.  And it is not unique to me, it is a common theme.  In the community in which I live, the last census taken by the Homeowners Association showed 52% of the people living here are single-home dwellers.  The quiet that permeates this place sometimes kills the soul!

I remember when I first moved here the first thing I missed was the sound of kids playing on the street.  Halloween doorbells ringing with “trick or treat” sounds.  Noise.  Now don’t get me wrong…quiet is good.  But too much quiet is deafening to the spirit.  I need people.  I need life.  I need to move and dance and play and sing.  So I am preparing for a new transition.  I have decided to sell my home and with my daughter-in-law and son’s invitation am moving into a mother-in-law suite they are building into their home.  Privacy when I want it, yet family when I need it.  

This will allow me to have the funds I need to travel.  This will put me in a place where life is still being lived robustly, yet when I need to step in and be in quiet…it will be there (we are soundproofing the place!)  For the first time in a long while I am looking forward with joy in my heart.  This feels good.  I am lucky.  At 69 I am healthy, mobile, still have my wits about me, and have a few years to get in as much as I can before my time comes to leave this place and by damn I am going to give it all I got and see where it goes.  

The next challenge? Thinning out the “stuff”.

KEEP ON MOVING ON

I write to process life as it presents itself to me.  Plain and simple.  The other day I wrote about the loneliness found in the aging population.  You only need to look around you and you can find it if you want to.  For me, writing about this loneliness helps me to understand that it is a normal passage of life.  Lucky are those who are the first to die in the partnership.  The first to die still has a family intact, an advocate when you cannot think or act on your own, and most important that someone close who knows when you need the family nearby.  You are never alone.

But once you lose that partner, you stand alone in the world facing most all these moments by yourself.  I remember after Pat died, thinking on more than one occasion, how long would it be before someone found me if I should collapse in the house?  And when I talk to those who live in my community who find themselves in the same position as myself, this conversation comes with lots of I-know-what-you-mean head nods.  Yes…yes…yes….me too is the common idiom.  

And the truth is, there have been occasions here in the community where people have died and it was a few days before they were found.  It happens.  We do not want it to be us…but it could happen. The most common assumption is that having children is a safety net for these things to not take place.  Not so.  Our children are busy living their own lives.  A full schedule makes time pass quickly between calls or visits.  

There is a level of fear that some express when it comes to these vulnerable moments.  I don’t know how you make those moments go away.  I try to fight them by staying busy, but the truth is this does not always satisfy either.

In the beginning of my journey of learning how to live alone, I wrote a poem titled, “Keep Moving”.

Keep moving.

No time to think

No time to miss

the things that gave me joy

So I just keep moving.

Keep moving.

To stop is to feel

I don’t want that now

the pain is too real.

Just keep moving.

Keep moving.

If I stop

I know the pain will take me

to places, I don’t want to be.

I just keep moving.

Keep moving.

A wife, a mother I used to be,

It feels so long ago

What am I now?

I really don’t know

so I just keep moving.

If I keep moving

the pain won’t be real.

If I keep moving

it will be hard to feel

the dark that fills my insides.

I just keep moving.

Oh, what do I do?

A wife, a mother I used to be.

What am I now

in this club, I did not want to join?

A child?

My parents both gone

a child no moe.

A wife?

My husband passed on

a lover no more.

A mother?

Children grown and gone

with lives of their own,

a mother no more.

A grandmother, yes.

So sweet when they are young

but as they grow

I am an old person they know.

So what am I these days?

I float—keep moving along

afraid to stop because

I know the pain will overtake me.

I keep moving.

No desire to stand still

Oh God

please tell me your will.

So many steps ahead.

What could each one bring?

If I keep moving will I

know when it is okay to stop?

Just breath—be quiet, listen, feel it.

A new day will dawn.

New things will come.

Stop moving long enough and

just take it slow.

Who am I now?

I just want to know.

Existing is not enough

purpose has to be the stuff.

Keep opening doors,

who knows what I will find.

Keep moving.

This will buy me time.

I hope the day will come

when I no longer feel the need to run

to fill my time and space.

With some luck

I will find my place.

STOP

Breath—Listen—Feel it

Everything will be OKAY.

There are times this still is my cry in the night.  I am better today than when I first wrote this.  But living alone can still be a struggle for me from time to time.  Loneliness is still that dark hole I feel occasionally.  Not sure of my place in the lives around me can still fill me with emotion and uncertainty.  But filling my time with things to do is all I can do and like that river of pain that flows beneath my soul, sometimes it rears its ugly head and I just have to let it pass through me until I get up and move forward again.  

I also recognize that I am in an emotional place…50 years ago this month I said yes to a marriage proposal that changed my life forever.  50 years ago.  How can time pass by so fast?  How can it be that long?  50 years ago I was starting a new life.  And now 50 years later I am starting a new phase again.  Life.  Passages.  Normal.  And all I can do is remember what I wrote back in the beginning of this new journey…to stop—breath—listen—feel it…and know that everything will be okay.

WHAT’S NEXT, con’t

Back in June, I had indicated that I was thinking about what remains in life, where do I go, how do I get there and what do I do to make it happen.  Traveling is high on my list.  How to afford that when traveling alone has a surcharge…imagine.  A penalty for having no one in your life.  An odd thought really.  

Anyway, a friend shared a website called “TrustedHousesitters.com”.  Travel anywhere in the world and your lodging only costs your attention to the house and animals left by the owners.  Not a bad tradeoff.  

The other list of things to check was where to go to downsize both physically and financially.  This has been what has taken up a lot of my time…getting an education about what is next.  I am glad that I looked into this now while I am of sound mind and body.  To deal with this later in the game means the kids would have to step up and take over and the issues that can arise for them can leave lifetime amounts of guilt…something I don’t want to create for them.

So I went searching for independent apartment living.  Pennsylvania is a wonderful state to live in for seniors.  The county has a Department of Aging that provides information that at first can overwhelm you.  Here is what I have learned in this journey as a senior living alone.

First, there are two kinds of institutions out there….for profit and not-for-profit.  When considering entering one of these, know that they look at your financial status and in most cases won’t accept you if you do not possess enough money to carry you through their statistical time period of needing assisted living.  So if you live and die suddenly…this is good.  If you live and go from living to nursing home care, this too is doable.  But if your life finds you needing long term assisted living, well, let’s just say this is the part that will drain your bank faster than water over a damn.  And although these senior institutions don’t want to kick you out due to lack of funds, they will.  

Now some have a benevolent society within the institution, but if your needs go beyond what they want to carry, you will be asked to leave the facility.  Good luck family!  In some instances, an application for financial need can be exercised but in these cases, the senior needs to be destitute. 

Let me share a story of a women I met and talked with regarding an incident with her father.  Her mother had died when she was a young women.  Her father never remarried.  Living a bare bones life his senior years found him barely making ends meet.  No pension…no savings…just social security and even that did not keep up with inflation over the years making it impossible to live on his $900 a month.  She and her husband built an in-law suite in their home and for over 15 years they lived compatibly together.  The father had put the daughter’s name on his checking account…just in case.  Over the years the son-in-law would do odd jobs for his neighbors or friends and would stick some of the money into his father-in-law's account to allow for those needs of the father without him having to ask for help.

So it went until Dad had a stroke.  With the daughter and son-in-law both working, they were forced to place Dad into an assisted living facility where they immediately applied for financial aid.  Accepting him based on what they showed as Dad’s income, and sure he would qualify for help, they waited to hear that everything would be okay.  Protocol for the financial aid is to do an audit of the financial status of the senior requiring help.  The shock came back to the daughter when the facility phoned her to say their Dad did not qualify because the audit showed that he had $75,000 more than they indicated during the time period prior to entering the facility.  The daughter tried to explain it was their money in the Dad’s account and the reason they put the money into the checking account was to allow Dad the freedom to care for his needs without having to ask for it from her.  

The facility said this money had to be counted as the Dad’s unless they could prove it was their money.  Now forced to hire a lawyer the facility said those items that were deposited as checks showing the son’s name could be subtracted from the amount on the table, but those monies placed into the account as cash would remain on the table as Dad’s, so now they had to pay the facility $32,000 and again Dad was not eligible for aid.  They were forced to withdraw their father from the facility, take out a line of credit against their home and repay the facility the amount owed for Dad’s care.

Stories like this remind us what hardships can occur when we linger our senior years in a disabled condition needing assistance but not nursing care.  

Talking with this young women helped me solidify my own decision on where to go next.  

More to follow…..

WHAT'S NEXT?

One would think as we age, life would be easier to navigate.  Life experience does bring wisdom, but aging can bring events into our life that we have not experienced, proving that living life at any stage can bring new challenges.

As I look around the neighborhood (a 55 plus community or active adult community as they like to be called) I can see the future.  Like a train coming at me in a tunnel, there is no escape…at some point, I will be slammed just like others before me.

The one thing I am determined to do is to live and not be a financial burden to my children.  I hear them say to me, “Mom, don’t worry about not spending your money…live and have fun.”  Inside I am thinking right…wait until it is time to change my diaper!  There is a joke circulating that reads:  Does anyone know why baby diapers are called Luvs & Huggies while old people diapers are called Depends?  Cause if a baby craps in their pants, you are still gonna Luv'em & Hug’em. If an old person craps in their pants, will they still be Luv'ed or Hugged? That "Depends" on who's ass is in the Will.”  We old folks may laugh at this one but I have not heard anyone tell this joke without hearing a chorus of “ain’t that the truth” following.

So I am exploring the “what’s next” in my life.  I am proud of the fact that I am living and doing what I am doing at this stage.  My husband was uninsurable since he was 36 due to medical conditions so there was not a large life insurance policy to pad my aging days.  What I am living on is what we together saved during our working years.  With wise advice and prudent spending habits that allowed us to enjoy life and still save I am lucky.  But with my health being good, and money not easy to grow, I must maintain the balance in my life that I have always lived in order to continue my independence.

Like many I am sure, I feel out of sink with the world.  I’m 69 and still full of spunk and a desire to wander around and see a few more things before I can’t.  As I see it, I have about 8 to 10 good years left in me that I can do these things without any physical handicaps.  And because Pat and I were “cheated” out of those opportunities by his illness during those “empty nest” years, my desire is strong.  But few my age are as wanderlust as I am.  They have already traveled….gone places….done things…they are content with a trip nearby and hanging around home.  I get that, but for me, that means traveling alone and a higher cost for a trip.  So that being said, how do I make my money stretch so as not to be a financial burden to my kids and still enjoy my days doing a bit of what I want to do.

 So, I begin the journey of looking to downsize.  These decisions are not easy and cannot be addressed in one writing.  I am discovering it can be very complicated and VERY expensive.  I cannot imagine as the baby boomers fill the senior spaces available how competition for the limited opportunities for seniors will only increase what is already a pricey adventure.  No wonder I see so many around me still working to make their money stretch.  

So my first thought is, do I want to get a part time job to make my money stretch?  But then that really limits my ability to travel and seems to defeat my goal.  So staying here and working does not seem to be the place I want to go to first.  

When I let it be known to my kids what I was thinking I had one son who offered up his place with a willingness to install a mother-in-law apartment in their home.  A possibility.  But I worry that the one that gets me gets me until the end.  I was thinking about the 3 that have settled into homes and their lives.  All of them got a helping hand, even if a small one, in some way when they bought their first home.  I worry about my daughter, who alone in life does not have a working partner like the others have had…and part of me would like to provide that helping hand to her like the others got.  So “moving in” with one has some positive opportunities.  But before I make my final decision, I shall explore other “senior” possibilities.

I’ll let you know what I find!

IT FEELS GOOD!!!

Looking in the mirror as we age can be a challenge.  When I see a photo of myself it is different in my eyes than when I look in the mirror, phenomena that we all experience.  I think of my sweet mother-in-law when she attended her 50th high school reunion at Trainers Restaurant.  She walked in past the ballroom where a crowd had gathered, stopped at the reception desk and asked where the 50th high school reunion was.  Pointing to the ballroom she just passed, he said, “Right in that room Ma’am.”   “Oh no,” she replied, “that can’t be, they are all old people in there.”  

I have a question.  When you run into someone who is your age, do you find yourself thinking, “I wonder if I look that old.”  Me too!

I am discovering that losing weight at this time of my life is different too.  I am not doing this because I want to look “beautiful”.  The mirror tells me that every time I see the lines, the sag, the fact that I can slap you silly with my saggy breasts.  The mirror is not my friend at this stage of my life, but it has made me realize that it is what I am feeling that counts these days more than how I look.  

It also begs the question, if I can feel so good going down in weight, why does that leave us when we are going up.  Is it all in the head?  I am sure some of it is.  But when I can walk up a hill and not drag for breath, it feels good.  When I can stop eating before I hit the bloat stage…it feels good.  My spirit is lighter with each pound I have lost and not because I look young and beautiful but because I feel young and energetic.  

I am now ready for those road trips in life.  Those things I want to do are now possible because I can walk without pain, sleep without pain, be physical with pain…okay that last part may be pushing it, but I am once again realizing that I can do anything I want within reason.  Having a 69-year-old body does have its limitations!

My weight loss journey is still a journey I am embracing…it is working and I feel good.  At this writing I have entered a place I have not experienced in over 20 years.  For those who have inquired…I’ll keep you up to date on my journey…no matter where I end up.  For now, it just feels good and I want to hang on to that!!!

GIVE BACK MY COUNTRY?

Life is messy.  It has always been messy.  But being messy is not bad.  It means we spend a lifetime of accepting the change that occurs…always, hopefully, trying to make it better than it was.  So this begs the question, what does it mean when I hear someone say they want their country back.  I wonder, back from who?  Back from what? 

The phrase, “give me the good ole days”, always sets me off.  For me, these are the good days…not the 40’s, 50’s 60’s….not even for a second.

I remember those days as everyone having a place in society and severe consequences if you broke society rules or was not born the right color or in the right place.  If you are a white man, who had money in his pocket, you do miss those days.  But for everyone else, life was a struggle.  Women who were being beaten in their marriage, kept it quiet and hidden because the choice was to be out on the street without any support system to help them get back on their feet.  

A woman pregnant out of wedlock?  You had hell to pay.  Often sent out of town for the duration of the pregnancy or get married immediately, even while in high school.  Forever branded, few had second chances at life.

Sexual abuse as a child?  Hide it.  Don’t raise a fuss.  After all, if you did tell, it was often the victim who suffered the consequences of the reveal.  Few times did the perpetrator ever get punished.

Women who had a “reputation” were in the end shunned and scorned.  But the men who played this game were treated as heroes in the conquest game.

Married outside of your faith?  You would often be thrown out of the family for such disrespect.

Were you gay?  Who knew?  Gay men and women were buried so deep in the closet they could hardly be found.  Overhearing a conversation a while back, I heard, “I didn’t realize there were so many gays.”  

Marry a person of a different color?  Forget it, you were often driven to live in the big cities where at least you had a chance to live without harm. Have children? They were the ones who suffered the name calling and bullying.  Acceptance in our society was difficult at best!

Life has always provided opportunities to challenge what we believe.  The moral choices that we made today can seem a no-brainer, but at the time, it was painful and a struggle to accept the changes it brought.  

I remember the 60’s and early 70’s when our country was in a state of upheaval and we all wondered where it would all end…would we survive…would there ever be peace again?  Free love and drugs would prove to have consequences…eventually we learned.  We grew up.  

I am glad to have been born in the United States of America where we have struggled since we accepted the Bill of Rights and our Constitution, to honor “where all men are created equal”.  It is not always easy.  Fear makes us do strange things.  Hard choices make us want to retreat into what is familiar.  Strangers can sometimes scare us until we stop and get to know each other… man to man…woman to woman…child to child and recognize in others that which is in ourselves.  

I don’t buy the cry, “Give back my country.”  We have it now.  This moment.  And it is our responsibility to always carry the torch where all men are created equal so we can live in a world where all are treated equal and with respect.

You can have yesterday if you want it…but give me today.  I am happier here in the now!

ALL OF US HAVE A STORY!

I just finished watching the final episode of this season of Finding Your Roots.  I love this show.  It confirms what I have always believed.  It is not enough to know just the names of your ancestor’s.  It is more fun and meaningful to know the story of your ancestors and this is why Memoir writing is important to me.  

When I was a young wife and mother-to-be I began to recognize how the impact of moving to Pennsylvania from Illinois would have on my children and their ability to know me through my own upbringing.  My husband’s family had already demonstrated to me that get-togethers were full of stories of past memories, filled with laughter and lots of love.  I recognized also at the time, that although I was running from my own childhood memories, I did turn out okay and there had to be a reason for that too, so while pregnant with my first child, I decided to collect the stories of my family and so began a life-long journey of learning through stories shared of who my family were.

It was the best gift I could have ever given to myself.  In asking questions of my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins, I learned that all that I perceived through life was not as it was felt and, in the end, it became a healing experience.  For in searching for the stories of who my family were and how they lived I learned that what I was feeling from them had to do more with their own experiences than what I had done to experience a negative moment from them.

I have watched time and again the celebrities express a longing about why their own parents had not shared this or that piece of family history only to discover they may have suppressed the information to hide from their own pain.  Once the story is revealed to them the level of understanding that sweeps over them often fills them with a strong emotional reaction.  

All of us have a story to tell.  Decisions we make can leave a lasting impact on those we love for generations that follow.  When the truth behind those decisions is revealed it can change the impact left on those left to deal with the outcome of those decisions.  

Funny…how we keep things close to the heart on the pretense we don’t want to hurt anyone, but the truth is we are just unable to deal with the pain of some of that reality ourselves leaving the generations that follow to puzzle the why of things.  

As I watched Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow in this last episode all I could think was how the truth can set you free.

MAKING ROOM FOR EVERYONE

What gives us permission to be 

so ugly to our fellow man.

Could you stand face to face

and be as mean as you can

just because you don’t agree

on some political plan?

I want to live in a world that has room for everyone.

I want to live in peace

I want to respect the man

even when he begins to cease

I want to live in a world that has room for everyone

Where I can walk and not feel fear

Is it too much to ask of God while I am here?

Life, like a salad, has fruit and vegetables that can stand on its own

But mix them together we can create a delight. 

An experience of sweet, sour, crunchy and soft

With the right sauce, it can taste just right.

Oh, give me the world that has room for everyone.

This is all I ask

Because I don’t want the day to come that

my child is the one the world does not want to make room for.

A BRUISED APPLE IS STILL GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT!

This summer has found me in a nostalgic mood as I have been sorting and organizing all the family history, photos, and stories that I have gathered these past 49 years.  At my age, I realize time is running short and one day this lifetime of work will be a challenge for any of my kids to deal with if I don’t finish off this project.

To add to this, I received a call from a first cousin of mine that I had not seen since I was about 7 years old.  She and her husband were traveling East to visit Atlantic City and since I lived close wanted to stop by and visit with me.  I was very excited to receive them.  

For those first seven years of our life, we were close as first cousins could be because our families lived in the same area.  One month older than I am, we were constant playmates, along with her older brother and my two younger brothers.  Then her parents separated and divorced and except for a brief meeting at our grandmother’s funeral in 1993, we had not seen each other.  I had not heard a lot about her or her life.  My younger brother had a bit more contact with these cousins after I left home, but I had none.  For me, a life of abuse caused me to be isolated and I kept to myself until the day I left home and started a new life with Pat here in Pennsylvania.  For my cousin, life turns out to not have dealt her a good deal at first, but for both of us, life did eventually bless us with love and the ability to create our own loving families.

My cousin, once she was gone with her mother and the life forged anew, was mostly separated from her father’s side of the family.  We both spent a life separated physically but as it turns out, not emotionally.  For her, memories of a family filled with the craziness made one cautious in wanting to make that initial contact.  Lucky for me, that caution did not stop the curiousness about a long-lost cousin.

When she and her husband planned a trip East they decided to give a visit to me, yet, there was a concern that maybe, I was the continuum of what we both knew at those young tender moments of our life.  So, with a bit of cautiousness, a brief visit was planned.

For the first couple of hours, it was catch up time.  Sharing what life had brought to the both of us, introducing each other to our own families through pictures and stories.  And memories of a childhood surrounded by adults behaving badly.  Not one of us, cousin or sibling, were left untouched by the pain caused by the behavior of those who surrounded us.

We talked non-stop.  My cousin’s husband could only sit and shake his head at the craziness of some of our memories.  “Remember the time we both sat huddled under the table in Grandma’s kitchen with beer bottles flying overhead breaking against the wall?”  “How about the Santa that gave us french kisses…ewe…”  “Remember how badly Donnie was treated?”

The fights…the fear…the drinking that always surrounded every gathering left its mark on our souls.  Photo’s shared of times and places hard to recall, but through them showed us how we were connected.

I invited them to let me show them my home area, and by the end of the evening, over a dinner by the Delaware, we spoke of how much we liked each other and sorry that so much time had passed between us.  Stories and memories left me a bit ruffled, yet at peace with not only the opportunity for each of us to recognize how fortunate we are that we had the courage to make better choices in our own lives.  

“You know what I hate?” I said to my cousin.  “I hate the saying ‘the apple does not fall far from the tree.’  Our apple rolled down hill a ways, a bit battered and bruised from the trip, but still good enough to enjoy!”

As we ended our evening together with a hug and a promise that we would see each other again, I was proud of the fact that some of us survived the family craziness and by the example of our lives, teach our own children that you have choices and the most important one you can make is how you choose to live your life.