A GAME CHANGING TIME

This "tirade"was written in May, after selling gallery.  .....

I am wondering why the heck I always seem to tell too much.  Who really cares anyway.   To read a long email just doesn't work anymore in this busy world.  I used to think it was me just being friendly and keeping people in my loop, so to speak.  I thought I could be amusing and add something to others .  "No fool like an old fool" is starting to be scary truth.  But I can't quite help still being me, wanting to be understood. 

I am back in Lindon a week sooner than planned.  It has been like a nightmare where one's path under the feet just keeps crumbling as fast as one can walk.  Yes, it was terribly emotional selling the gallery.  I remembered so much.  Eric and Suzanne couldn't have been more conscious of my distress and were very kind and helpful, but it seemed I just couldn't do much right.  I felt (or worried) my cognitive ability had slipped.  I felt people saw me as a real "has been" and that old, old age was settling down on me fast.  Things like this "woe" list.---

The ranch furnace wouldn't work.  Cold night when I was there.  repairman treated me as if I didn't matter.

Always misplacing things.

I wrecked the car on the way from ranch first trip up there.  Could have killed me.  Wondered why it didn't,  that my life was pretty well wrapped up and it might have been a good time to go.  Certainly,  the "money" I have could have been used by many of my loved ones.   It was a funny feeling to think maybe an apology was needed that i didn't flip over and get killed. 

(Don't scold.  Dumb, but I'm just telling some of the feelings I've been wrestling with.  And look what deterioration woes I might miss!)

Louis, was unable to be there with me as i figured.  He was needed to help Chairity Ann move.  That is what he should have done.  No blame there.  

I was without a car most of the of time, but was comfortable enough in East bedroom of Grandma Tebbs's old home (where I began 78 years ago.  I had come full circle.) My friend Jorili let me stay there, which was a life saver.  I could heat it and had cable TV, which I binged on watching the History Chanel.  I'm an almost expert on Ancient Aliens and Vikings and Greek and Roman Gods and I got grossed out big time on the holocaust.  That was hard to wade in and deal with the terrible feeling of despair about the depths of the fallen state of the world. 

People I knew looked so old and set in their ways.  My best friend there seems to be 93 year old Marge Davis.  Bless her.  A good example of still drawing value in living.  This was an example I needed---need.

I lost my hearing aide. (later found) and seemed to make many other small mistakes.

skin sprints hit my legs and I had much trouble walking.  Must have looked really old and pitiful.  I stayed in room.

I painted some, sold pictures enough to pay insurance deductible.  (Good, but I sold so cheap and wondered if the gay-looking guys were buying them to resell In Prescott.  Made me just feel rather foolish.  made me think I might like to go to somewhere like Prescott, Az. and try to get better money for my work.  But then the realization of how facts really were and my timidity and vulnerability and such few years left and so I just felt  stuck.

A good was when I went with Brent on a hike near Orderville.  He seemed to be glad to "drag" me up that dry stream bed.  Pretty good place....little known.  But I tired easily and my ankle that had been broken hurt some and made me so extra cautious lest I twist it.  Watching the 10 kids with us just made me realize how I looked.

Now....I don't rehearse this list just for pity.  I want to make a point and bring into focus the big picture.  It is like this..... so a big part of life is over for me, so I could let depression and self pity rule, so I could succumb to the easy road down and let my loved ones take control and tend me from here on out, and maybe that would be wise and even reality.  I haven't quite got that figured out yet.  I'm in the stage of dealing with a new paradigm.  It happens.  It happens in many stages of life.  So here is the big conclusion of my first old age venture alone....

After I finally got my car I wondered now what?  Go to the ranch?  Cold,,no furnace, maybe no people, as I didn't know if Christian would come to tend water or not, rain made it seem unlikely.  Should I just stay put and wait or what?  Universe, tell me,,,  Indecision seemed to loom as perhaps the biggest problem---that breeds anxiety.  Finally, after being in gallery with a busy and involved Eric and Suzanne still being understanding and sweet, but knowing they were anxious to get their own new dreams off and going and remembering how Glen and I were 10 years earlier, I decided in a minute to get in car and go to Gunnison, even if I knew Cindy was in temple and Malinda had stuff going on most the afternoon.  But I went anyway.  No one was available to talk to except Malynda's 11 year-old Sage and Dylan, identical twins in idealistic Mayfield.  For awhile it was just me and Sage.  She told me that just that week the 5th graders had had their maturation class that comes in 5th grade.  For some reason, this 78 year-old and 11 year-old and later her sister talked and talked and talked for about three hours.  She and her sister are much like I used to be, except they are so much smarter.  But the shyness, the imagination and some indescribable way of viewing the world was there to bridge the vast age difference.  Here they were having to face the "yuckiness" of the next phase of life--pre-teen, body changes, wishing they could stay a child, wishing it didn't have to be so complicated and messy, and here was I in another phase, feeling much the same about another phase of life.  And these little girls got it!  I mean they seemed to see the big picture and empathized in a way no one else had been doing.  It made all the heartache I had on my back fall into a different perspective.  Yes, hardly nothing had gone very right all month.  Yes, I felt so awfully vulnerable and had a notion to just go on to my comfortable place in Lindon, shut the door and tell the world I was ready to accept old age and to come take care of me.  But if I hadn't put myself in this vulnerable position of trying to go do something on my own and gather more experience, I never would have had this interaction and would have missed a good and growing experience.  Now i have two new real friends.   I want to follow the things they write.  (I can't believe how really advanced and competent they are in expressing themselves writing stories and essays... and only 11!  Good grief!  I could hardly write a  sentence at that age.

I also read a lot about aging these weeks in Panguitch.  I conclude that it is the young who really matter; and, by giving them our attention and help, it is the only way to help physical immortality be a reality.  For one little cell --the combination of the egg and the sperm--is the only cell that doesn't die.  It can make a new person that contains the ability to make more reproductive cells that might have a chance to create new people who carry the capability to pass on the immortality cells that don't die but can make new people and so on and so on.  The rest of our cells, after a run of being rather independent and selfish within a body, die.  They can't replace themselves after so long.  No amount of nutrition will make for immortality.  The only way is to help make the way clear for a few  reproductive cells in a body to get their chance to divide and divide and create a new person and thus a immortality of sorts. So to put the children first in our own life struggles and forget our own selfish idea of happiness means that in the goal that matters.  After all our other cells die, the nearest thing to immortality we have lives in that "basket" of reproductive cells handed to the future, which carry something of us all forward and forward and forward. .....

Putting our own happiness first now doesn't seem to make much sense in the long run.  We will die.

I know there is a debate here about spirit.  I'm ready.  Bring it on.  But it does seem this is how it is in nature, as far as physical aging and immortality goes.  What if all the ideas of an afterlife are just the ego's attempts to "hang" on?

So what of my used-to be ideas about collecting as much experience in this life as we can?  What really matters?  Just wondering....