WEAKENING YET STRENGTHENING

To honor my cousin Elaine, who just passed, I welcome you into a conversation I recently had with her while she was feeling the effects of aging and ill health:

“As we weaken physically, we strengthen spiritually.”

“Does that mean we try harder?

Or do we accept God’s will and understand He has a better plan and now he has our attention?”

“Great question. I believe it’s because we learn intentionality. And we turn our attention and intention toward the spirit to Spirit connection.”

In the face of this transitional aging process, I believe we can better face our new reality by asking ourselves questions around the process:

Is the prism through which we see our families, friends, and strangers changing? We, the aging, and those younger watching, might ask ourselves…

Can we forgive more quickly?

Are we quicker to feel compassion?

Are our ears and eyes alert to injustice and inequity?

Are we steeped in prayer, meditation, and supporting good works?

Do we learn comfort in solitude?

Can we maintain our pride in our ever-more-humble state?

Maya Angelou had some distinct opinions about how we (and those around us) could best help us transition into the last chapters of life:

“When you see me sitting quietly,
Like a sack left on the shelf,
Don’t think I need your chattering.
I’m listening to myself.
Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me!
Hold! Stop your sympathy!
Understanding if you got it,
Otherwise I’ll do without it!
When my bones are stiff and aching,
And my feet won’t climb the stair,
I will only ask one favor:
Don’t bring me no rocking chair.
When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don’t study and get it wrong.
‘Cause tired don’t mean lazy
And every goodbye ain’t gone.
I’m the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind.
But ain’t I lucky I can still breathe in.”

With every sunrise, age continues its march into each of our lives.  Those who look upon older people as “old” rather than “wise” may be writing their own sentence of future isolation.  And those who are that older generation might ask of our loved ones, “Can you see my strengths as well as my weaknesses?  Because I can!”

My cousin Diane, who recently retired from teaching, gave her lucky 7^th graders deep and abiding lessons to be learned, not in her classroom, but around the dining room tables and living room couches of their own families.  The assignment was for each student to gather and curate the oral history of his or her family, then present it to the class families at a pot luck supper.  In those stories were personal encounters with kings and queens, war and peace, wealth and deprivation.  But the lesson which never left each student, each family, was that our personal, intergenerational history cannot be Googled. 

I asked Diane to share some impressions of this work…

“The students displayed their spirally-bond document, often 50+ pages, on tables.  A photo and the name of the interviewee was on the cover.  It was surprising how many long lost friends, old classmates or those with a commonality found each other.

A list of many questions/topics was provided in the assignment that might help the students in their interviews with the older folks, but there were seven mandatory topics.  One was to learn a recipe from the interviewee. The students made the recipe and we had a family pot luck dinner, where the students introduced their guest and told which meal they brought.  As we all ate together, without much prompting, students or their guests would share an aspect of their life.  This would go on for hours.  Some would talk half the night, others would go for a ride in a Model T or A.  I had organized a fleet of locals with antique cars.  That always sparked more stories. 

One story I’ll never forget was from a woman who lived in France during WWII.  She told how every school year each student would be issued a pencil, tied onto a notebook. By the end of the school year, the pencil was little more than a stub that could barely be held and used.  She still has one of her pencil stubs.  She kept it to remind herself of how humble and difficult her life was and how a life of good fortune can turn into one of basic needs for anyone.

Many older folks also spoke about how the most amazing invention they ever saw was an airplane!

The project of researching through oral histories, was not limited to a class presentation.  Friends, old and new developed.”    

Your personal oral history is not public. It is neither in the library, nor in a textbook.  It is a narrative which we must create, through our own personal interviewing… that is, listening… to the elders of our bloodline.  Nothing can replace it, and someday it will be gone.

Pockets of wisdom reside in our family trees.  Let’s seek to find them, and each of us may just find ourselves enriched in the process.