Month: May 2016

I ran into a friend downtown recently. He is a loyal reader of “About Aging “and frequently responds to me with his own great stories. I asked how he was doing.

“Getting close to 80,” he reminded me. “And more and more, I am attending funerals.” I made some comment about that being a consequence of aging.

He replied, “Maybe you should write something about death. See what others are thinking.” Later, he wrote, “I’m not afraid of it like I was once but I am still apprehensive about it.” He went on to express the hope that those who survived him would not encounter complications that were a consequence of his passing.

Last year, I did write something about death, tying it in the title to the word “dignity.” I did not assume that my friend’s encouragement to muse about death was an invitation to re-visit past thoughts. I think his comment was directing me to the realities of death and how people think about the end of their earthly days.

Memorial Day is one of the days on the calendar when we think about death. The day honors those who died in service to our country. I doubt that anyone entered the military with the intent of dying, but every one going to war knew that his or her death was a possible outcome. If any feared death, they overcame the fear and served.

The day each of us was born, the sand of our allotted time began its downward journey. All of us started with the instinct to survive. Along the way, some died earlier than others, through illness, accident or, too often, by their own hand, apparently having lost that instinct.

For some, perhaps for you, a Person of a Certain Age who likely has fewer days ahead to live than the number you have lived already, fear of death is real. Think about that: the inevitable outcome of life is the object of fear. No wonder death gets talked about so little.

Some writers declare death preferable to a miserable life of pain or guilt. Inviting “everlasting sweet sleep” to come seems another way to romanticize death. Perhaps there are fates worse than death, but not for those who fear it.

We tell jokes about death, like when Jerry Seinfeld, chatting with Gary Shandling, not long before Shandling’s death, laments the passing of another comedian, David Brenner, for “all the material left unwritten.” Or we laugh at witty last words, like those attributed to Bob Hope who, when asked by his wife where he wished to have his ashes scattered, is reported to have responded “surprise me.”

Persons of faith believe in an afterlife that is more desirable than earthly existence. I remember wondering as a child why, if such a place existed, folks didn’t want to die sooner to get there faster. I wonder, as an adult, how many persons of faith still fear death since no one can confirm what happens on the other side of death; one must believe.

I count my mother as a person of strong faith. She says about death that she does not fear it. But, she is always a bit apprehensive about starting a journey to a place she has never been before.

Some without faith seem okay with the idea of oblivion. Becoming dust, in this way of thinking, is just what happens, and there is no sense in fretting about it. It’s part of the natural cycle of things.

In my life, I have seen death come as a blessing. My father suffered a heart attack and stroke simultaneously but only the heart attack was detected and treated promptly. So he spent his last days trapped in a twisted body, aware of his surroundings, undoubtedly thinking but unable to communicate with us in any way that we could understand. I have felt the unfairness of death taking a person whose life of service to others was cut short well before the time one expects death to come these days.

There are no words that can allay the fear of death because fear is irrational and seldom can logical, rational thought displace the raw emotion of fear.

This is what makes Memorial Day important to me. Some who must have feared death went to war anyway. I thought about that the day Judy and I visited Omaha Beach and the Normandy Cemetery; brave souls faced horrific odds on D-Day. How could one not be afraid?

I have no special words for those who fear death. I don’t even know the extent to which I, in the face of imminent death, might need to overcome fear.

I do know one thing and hope another. I know that we all will walk “that lonesome valley” on our own; “nobody else can walk it for us,” regardless of how many family and friends might want to help. Death is a solitary act.

My hope is that I approach death with the same serenity as sought by those praying the prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous, the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

In the meanwhile, my friend and I will be attending more funerals until that day when he and I are the guests of honor.

Daniel E. White

May 30, 2016

Meaning snuck up on me again recently. It can do that. At a moment you least expect, something happens that makes you think a little more deeply, and you never saw it coming.

In our funny language, meaning has many meanings. In this instance, I do not mean the synonym for purpose. I mean provocative, reflection-inducing, the opposite of trivial.

This time, the vessel was a play, musical theater currently wildly popular. Except in Salt Lake City. But, as you will learn, that’s a metaphor.

“The Book of Mormon” is advertised as one of the funniest Broadway plays ever. It might be. There are lots of laughs. Its reviewers cite the gentleness of the satire, about doctrinal religions in general, and Mormonism in particular. It is gentle. It does poke fun at cultural overlays of religion but not at the idea of faith.

If you were pitching the play as a book, your lead line might read “two teenage Mormon missionaries land in northern Uganda excited to spread the word of Joseph Smith and find unexpected realities.” Every point in the pitch is accurate: Mormon missionaries are believers in their youth; they go to many parts of the world; they always must deal with a host culture.

So far, the plot sounds as flat as the Book of Mormon does itself in describing the battles between the Nephites and Lamanites, as read by Elder Cunnigham in the play.

But wait. There’s so much more.

We laugh as Elder Price and Elder Cunningham lose themselves in the ecstasy of a dance routine that features an African chant. They find out that the words are actually, in the Elders’ eyes, blaspheming God. They learn, however, that the people have been visited by missionaries before who promised much would come from belief in their God, stayed a short while, and left the people no better off than they were.

At a crucial plot point, Elder Price, the star pupil, the one from whom everyone expects greatness, gives up, leaving the perennial screw-up, Elder Cunningham, with the responsibility of completing the mission.

In our years in schools, Judy and I described “90 degree” kids and “45 degree angle thinkers.” The 90 degree kids (and I was a star example of the type in high school) asked their teachers to lay out what it took to earn an A and set out to do that. They (and I) focused on the goal and went for it.

The 45 degree angle thinkers saw the world differently. Sometimes they toed the line, and sometimes they did not. Their questions were the inopportune ones that could steer a lesson off its plan. Their essays sometimes brought in points that regular minds wouldn’t.

In schools, they were always the more interesting kids. In the larger context, they are the ones who change the world. In the play, the 45 degree angle thinker is suddenly in charge. And the world changes.

To psyche himself up for the task, Elder Cunningham challenges himself to “man up,” just like Jesus did when facing crucifixion: a 21^st century version of “not my will but thine be done.”

Elder Cunningham’s teaching features Golden Plates, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and “paradise,” Salt Lake City, staples of the story of the church. But, the specific facts and descriptions are told with vast poetic license.

The teaching works. The core messages of the faith get through, and the purpose of the missionaries is fulfilled. The people of this village in northern Uganda make the stories their own, and accept the deeper meaning.

They present their version to the Elders’ District Superintendent, whose commitment is to the literal, the dogmatic. He is not amused, and castigates Elder Cunningham’s work.

People of a Certain Age, if you are a person of faith, does every bit of your belief derive only from the precise writings you follow? Herein lies a point for deep reflection. How much has the core message of your prophet or savior been affected by the culture, customs, and history of followers? Which is more important, the words or the message?

The first of the villagers to be baptized becomes disillusioned when she hears the judgment of the District Superintendent. She complains: one more round of missionaries bringing false hope. She laments what she sees as the falseness of the stories she and her friends have made their own.

She is turned back to hope and joy, however, when a village woman assures her that everybody else there has known all along that the stories were metaphors, ways to make points about the faith.

That’s a familiar practice.

I laughed out loud, often. I marveled at the creative use of staging, lighting, and language. I applauded the music and the choreography. And I came away energized by how many powerful points worth deep reflection had been slipped into such a short and entertaining show.

If this kind of meaning is important in your life, the kind that makes you think, it is important to pay attention, wherever you are, because it can sneak up on you.

What joy when it does!

Daniel E. White

May 16, 2016

Our family stopped overnight in Lincoln, Nebraska as we relocated from South Charleston, West Virginia to Seattle. My sister and I contented ourselves during the long days of driving with a new toy each day, drawn from red, yellow, and black drawstring bags sewn and filled by Dad’s mom. We got to pet the cat, too, who was amazingly quiet (for a cat riding in a car), resigned to whatever fate his humans had in mind for him.

Cat independence will out, however. We put him in the garage provided by our motel unit (you have to be Person of a Certain Age to remember that amenity) and went off to dinner. We returned after dark to find that someone had opened our garage door, and the cat had left the scene. My five year-old self was crushed.

Cat was independent but not stupid. He hung around so that Dad was able to find him. The next morning, our traveling party intact, we drove off to our new lives in Seattle. Cat lived for quite a little while in his new digs.

Why do some memories last a lifetime? A friend and regular reader of these lines encouraged me to think and write about that question. He noted that he vividly recalls his parents’ angst over Pearl Harbor, what he was doing when JFK was shot and when the planes hit the twin towers. Equally vivid are memories of a chemical plant explosion 50 years ago and the San Francisco earthquake.

“So,” he complained, “why can’t I remember why I walked into the room?”

There is much scholarship about memory. There is understanding that sufferers of dementia often recall memories of long ago more readily than of a minute ago, although my one experience with this observation casts doubt. Judy’s step-dad, deep into Alzheimer’s, told me stories about his youth that included features of modern life in settings from before the features were invented.

Other scholars probe animal memory trying to understand how the brain programs behavior. This is akin to the muscle memory I am encouraged to develop about my golf swing though my frequency of playing leaves me deep in muscle amnesia.

The examples my friend gave involve big events. I have similar recollections about where I was when major stuff happened. So, I expect, do you. I have no explanation for my friend for this shared proclivity to connect a personal relationship to a cataclysmic event, except to say that magnitude probably matters. An assassination or killer earthquake is likely to demand a place in the CPU of my memory.

More puzzling to me are memories like mine of Lincoln, Nebraska in November 1951. I know that some of the things I claim as memory are actually a response to a photo I have seen, giving me a graphic image to record. So, for example, I don’t actually remember crawling out of the dog house in the backyard in South Charleston at age three wearing a snow suit and looking cute, but I can conjure that “memory” even as I write these words because I have seen the photo.

There was no photo of the garage at the motel. There is no picture of the red, yellow, and black drawstring bags sewn by my grandmother. Yet, in the theater of my mind, those pictures are as vivid as that dog house.

There is another powerful image I carry around for which there is no photograph. It is of Mr. Carey’s 11^th grade English classroom in September, 1962. I am sitting in the back of the center row of desks. Directly in front of me is a dark-haired girl I thought I might like even though she was Catholic (we carried odd prejudices in those days). In front and to my left in the 2^nd seat in her row along the windows sat another dark-haired girl wearing a two-toned blue and white horizontally striped sweater.

Mr. Carey offered two free tickets to that week’s home football game to students willing to pass out programs at the game. (It was only later that I realized that the tickets were not, technically speaking, free if I had to work for them but I was date-surfing and therefore distracted). I intended to ask one of those girls and get a “free” date.

I can’t recall all of the reasons why I chose as I did. What I do recall, as clearly as I recall anything, is that scene of Mr. Carey, the two girls, and me.

I chose well. 54 years later, we are still together. That would qualify as a major event for me.

When my brother and I get together, invariably he will say “remember when” and start some memory of his about something we did together many years ago that I cannot recall. I joke that I should interview him to find out about my life. It is obvious that I do not have an extraordinary capacity for memory. (On NPR was the story of a man who remembers everything and the burden that is.)

Maybe one day science will answer my friend’s question. I won’t hurry to know why. Good times, bad times, times of big events, charming little details; all of these comprise my memory for unknown reasons. I’m okay with the mystery.

How about you?

Daniel E. White

May 2, 2016