MileStone Moment

Death, Taxes and Social Security

I merrily spent my life glib, naïve and cavalier. I watched the oldsters wishing their lives away counting their days til they were able to get their Social Security…and in need of supplemental income, as meager as it seemed. Why didn’t they plan? No exit strategy?

Enough has transpired to almost convince us they are both real and unavoidable—and just maybe, to be celebrated. One hopes the day will eventually come, given the alternative. Like death, it’s such a shock we can’t believe it applies to us; then we wholeheartedly engage in denial.

What about those people we’ve known whom actually embraced the end? Circumstantial, we think. Must be resignation, regrets or lack of resources (financial, emotional or physical) to continue. Often the person has ‘lived a good enough life’ to concede that since there is no escaping, we might as well acquiesce with Grace. Or, the pain, the conditions make another day purely impossible to continue. Death, they whisper, ‘will be/was a welcome blessing’.

While engaged in mid-series of our favorite TV show, we wonder how there could b a time when it/we do not exist. Jack Bower’s 24 got his final hours on Monday. In 8 seasons, much changed in ‘what feels like’ a very short time (each TV hour was actually a quick ‘real time’ 60 minutes). Jack was our 21st Century superhero trying to save the world from us. Who will help us now?

Notice how Jack aged in those oh-so-short few hours. As did we; sort of sneaking up on cats feet. Where did all that time go? Why am I so old? I’m thrilled to have escaped the Grim Reaper for all this time. I just never really believed I would ever get old enf to b one of ‘those people’ who looked forward, who counted down the days, til they could register for Social Security. Now that was old.

My red-letter day arrived this week. Actually, I joined their ranks a few years back. Counting my pennies, watching my retirement fund evaporate in the financial melee until it was a race to age 62 to see if I would make it b4 my bank account registered zero.

I knew in my head that, given the good fortune to live this long, this incomprehensible day would come. I just didn’t know I’d spend so much time looking forward to it and be so ecstatic about it!

I had a major hint: my personality. In our world, there are future people, past people and present people. I was born a future person…which, like all types, has its plus sides. I wrote lists of tasks to b done, made and accomplished goals and looked forward to the future, which I ‘knew’ would be even better. I felt sorry for the people who existed in the past and envied those who spent time smelling the roses. I, like the happiness experts, strove to find the Power of the NOW, 2 b present ‘in the moment’. I failed.

I misinterpreted a favorite, “Yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is CASH!” My version: “Got cash? Spend it Now!”

There have been other MileStone Moments. For those with excellent memories: the first day of kindergarden. I remember wondering what my 1st romantic kiss would feel like. I was NOT looking forward to that embarrassing moment. Just so happens, it came years after getting my driver’s license MileStone Moment. MSM often do not arrive timely or as imagined.

MileStone Moments often show up out of chronological sequence. I did not have time to conjure up a day without parents. My dad dropped dead suddenly at age 45, never having contemplated collecting SS. I definitely remember wondering how I would feel and look after my first sexual experience. Would I look/act different the next day? Will everyone know? I had plenty of time to wonder, as that uneventful MSM didn’t occur til I was 21 and married.

My first job. Graduating from high school. Getting married. Having a baby. His first day at kindergarden. Buying a house. Getting crows feet. A first grandchild. Thanking my lucky stars for being fortunate enough to experience all the pleasures, and losses, expected and surprising, along the path to retirement, SS and the penultimate Day of Reckoning—taking me full circle.

I am still naïve, but no longer glib and cavalier. I can no longer afford those luxuries. I’m still attempting to live in the present as I drag my feet, digging in my heels to keep me from sliding over the finish line.

Dylan Thomas’s poem begins, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. "

I’m still on the top side of the grass. I can still have MileStone Moments and opportunities to check items off my Bucket List. Even Jack Bower, and those of us who have counted on him to keep our world safe, will have his swan song—a 24 movie is in the works.

I will look forward to that movie. Oopsy! I will enjoy this moment, this bird in the hand. Given the opportunity, I will enjoy both final episodes.

Bloggers in the news this week-May 2-8

Unexpected Gifts...

Thwarted & Realized Dreams

I know that Nashville is under water. I know the Dow Jones dropped 1,000 pts in mere minutes. I know Tiger and Phil, the thrill, almost missed the cut at the Players. I know terrorists are still plotting our demise. Of course I know it’s Mother’s Day weekend. I’ve been working in a florist shop on that holiday for years. I live that weekend like few get to—basking in the joy of picking out, arranging and selling those tributes even b 4 the Mother’s even lay eyes on their gifts. Lucky me.

This missive is not about Mother’s. It is about mother’s and fathers. It’s about those of us who have learned that most our Bucket Lists can still b realized at any age, with ‘conditions’. We’re not surprised, are we? Life has always not only been unfair, but ‘with conditions’. Alas, many of us never learn this lesson. It comes right after auguring thru the years and suffering infinite blows of disilusionment. If we’re still standing and still interested in growing, we get to ‘work on’ that predicament.

This is about those of us who still tilt at windmills and refuse to let the ugliness of life intrude on our consciousness. We still have a chance at a second and third version of our lives. Many of us, by this age, have suffered unknowable tragedies—losing a child, a chance, a parent, a limb, a home, our retirement, our mind or our health. Yes, life is, ultimately, about loss. Even these unfortunate souls can get to the brink of ‘next’—making them luckier than those of us who have not had to surmount the highest mountains and still find a way to face the next day.

I’m also including those of us who make our own mountains out of generally invisible molehills. We have seen the enemy, and we face it in the mirror. It reflects those of us who lament real or manufactured faults to the point of inaction: "I’m too [fill in the blank—fat, stupid, poor, tired…]" or "I don’t have enough […money, love, support, advantage, friends…]." It's just as paralyzing.

Some of us, after experiencing the vicissitudes of life, have, throughout our lives, altered our Bucket List. After several broken ankles, a torn hamstring, an ACL blown, a broken leg, a bad left knee and right hip, I’ve crossed off an item from my list written in my early 20’s: “jump out of a perfectly good airplane’. Thirty-five years ago when RAGBRAI, the bike ride across Iowa, was created, I added it to my list. Life, as it tends to do with our plans, got in the way. This year I’m planning on accomplishing that feat, altered somewhat given my present condition. I’ll do 3 of the 7 days, therefore accomplishing my goal, given current conditions.

If conditionally is a negative word in your vocabulary, GET OVER IT! It’s a matter of one of the themes of my book—the dreaded Change. A perfect illustration? Think of a world class long distant runner who loses his legs in an accident. The one who now competitively competes in marathons in his (wheel) chair. Think about it. Are U tough enf, persistent enf, resourceful enf, flexible enf to pursue your dreams ‘in altered conditions’?

Another theme in my book is that ‘it’s never too late’; but b mindful that although we have arrived at the moment when ‘our toes curl over the edge of our grave’, we are still on the sunny top side of the grass.

And, all together class: 'We still have options!'

Unlike 56 yr old mud engineer, Keith Manuel, who does no longer. Divorced father of 3 grown daughters had plans to be married next month. Unfortunately, he was one of the eleven rig worker souls lost in the explosion in the Gulf of Mexico--uxenexpected and unwanted dreams thwarted.

Yet, the hills are live with music, even for Julie Andrews, who underwent a botched surgery on her voice box in 1997 and was told that she would ‘never sing again’. Not only a loss for her --her livelihood, her gift, her self-image--but also loss for her past and potential audience. Tonight she will mount a stage in Londo and sing again for the first time in 30 years! With a caveat to her listeners to lower their expectations: “Please don’t expect me to sound like before,” she warned.

Did she play potato bug and curl mutely into a fetal position? No way. After processing her grief, she went on to become a writer, an actress with speaking roles and Dame Andrews. And after tonight, she’ll have become the new songster Julie Andrews, having accomplished her goal, conditionally.

Life is a tenuous, evanescent, fragile gift. What are U doing, thinking today?

The Wistfulness of Boomers

This phenomena of wistfulness is mentioned briefly in my book: “Boomers suffer from a pervasive feeling of ‘persistent wistfulness’. Searching. For meaning. A purpose. A reason for living. Longing for an unfulfilled need. A desire for ‘one final fling’. For one last chance to satisfy that craving.”

Wistful can be defined as a pervasive yearning and feeling a prolonged melancholy for something not acquired, not experienced. This ‘label’ may feel sad and too pensive, too pessimistic and the immediate temptation is to pooh-pooh its existence in our lives. Before you disregard this feeling in yourself, consider that it may be the harbinger of change, of positive action.

There is no avoiding wistfulness, as it comes with the territory. My favorite poem, Robert Frost’s, The Road Not Taken expounds on 'there is no reverse in life' with a situation that we've all faced (consciously or not) in our lives, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”As Boomers, we have already gone down that road taken.

We have a very short supply of EVERYTHING: time, hope, options, healthy days.

Frost knows that we can’t go back and take the first road. But we can still feel wistful and regret. Our choice is to either harness its energy or buckle under to its weight.

Of course if you are suffering from nostalgia for something past, there aren’t any antidotes.
If you feel a desire, an unsatisfied longing for something better than the present situation, something not yet lived; there is hope. The key word here is ‘live’. You are in the drivers seat. Whose name is going 2 b on your headstone? Take charge of that person’s life force while it is still possible.

U might remember a T. S. Eliot’s poem from our high school lit class, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock in which he finds himself closer to the end than the beginning: “It was a soft October night”. Is that not where we Boomers find ourselves in the relative scheme of life? Three-quarters through our allotted time on earth has passed. He ponders what he’s done and what he could do. At first he is hopeful, “There will be time, there will be time for you and time for me, and time yet for a hundred indecisions, and for a hundred visions and revisions.”

Then he remembers how he has lived his life so far, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” But then: “And indeed there will be time to wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and Time to turn back and descend the stair.” He questions whether he has it in him and if, indeed, there really is time, “Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.” He wonders if he’ll “Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? (…) I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.”
It’s open to interpretation, but my reading is that he caves into his previous way of life.

It’s easy to say we will do something different, witnessed in the popular poem, When I Am Old I Will Wear Purple. Will she? Some doubt it. It is not easy to change, to buck the Juggernaut tidal wave of wistful. Discontentment with the present situation can be a strong motivator for change if we resist. If we don’t let it drown us in drink or denial or inertia, or hopelessness.
It takes just as much energy to become a champion channel changer, grumbler, or resister.

If U have a hankering or a yearning to get or do something you’ve not yet done, write it on your Bucket List and start figuring out what it takes to get started. If you are SoulMate-less and haven’t looked, Just Do It! If you’ve searched and have not yet succeeded, change something and get off your duff. Those who don’t buy lottery tickets have zero chance to cash in.
What have u got to lose? What is the worse case scenario? Think about how the best case scenario looks, feels? What would U b doing now if U had that special someone?

An 80-year old woman wrote in a recent Ask Amy column that she’d been married twice and never felt giddy ‘in love’ until she recently met her third husband. It’s never too late, she reminds us. Do U have the guts, the courage, or the audaciousness? U have the time. Do U feel entitled to happiness, to round three? There is an expert to answer that question. Consult the Avatar of that engraved name on the marble headstone.

Go as far as you can see. When you get there you will be able to see further. ~Thomas Carlyle