Sunday, March 27, 2016

A little longer walk...

“We can’t help everyone, but
everyone can help someone.”
- Ronald Reagan

Saturday morning at 7:30AM…

“Let’s just take it easy,” Reggie said in a gently calming voice I have come to appreciate in my friend. “We’ll take the short route, and when we get to the park, we can decide whether to do the loop or just turn around and come back.”

With those words, we headed out for a morning walk.

This man is a member of my writer’s workshop and we have been friends since we joined the group a couple of years ago. It turns out we came to Oro Valley around the same time and found ourselves with these writers within a month or so of each other.

I got here, because my mother-in-law passed away, leaving her home. Molly and I came and took up residence. Reg got here because of a stroke. His sister lived in Oro Valley so he moved to be near her. Both of us came from California – we from San Diego and him from the Bay area.

We have a lot in common…curious about life and the people around us. We try to ‘look forward’ and both like to write. The last item, because of the need, I suppose, to record the things we think about...maybe to help us remember when our other capacities have slipped away with the mists of time.

The two of us are not the same age – he has me by a couple of years – but looks younger than me. I tell him he picked his parents well.

Our conversations are easy and usually thoughtful. We laugh about the things we thought were important when we were young and full of energy.

This particular morning began, because I have been sick for the past 10 days or so and have pretty much been going through the ups and downs of I feel great, followed an activity and then thinking, I feel horrible and need to lie down again. Days with alternating short bursts of energy and sleep do weird things to your brain and body.

Brain: Man, if this is the way it is going to end, let’s just get it over with!
Body: Going to a meeting, or short event is all I can tolerate. Let’s just get horizontal!

The thing about Reggie is his thoughtfulness. When I called to see if he wanted to get together I said, “I’ll come by in the morning. If I feel okay we’ll walk, if not, let’s just have a cup of coffee and solve some world problems.”

World problems, we’re good at that. Our conversations generally go something like this.

“Yeah, when we were young Ted, we thought we knew everything, but we didn’t know nothin’,” he might say with a smile. “Now we are old, and the only difference is we know we don’t know nothin’!”

“I was pretty smart when I was younger,” I might say.

“Maybe you was,” he might say with twinkling eyes, “but I doubt it!”

Conversations like this are generally followed by the two of us chuckling… sometimes we just laugh out loud at the idea that anybody, anywhere, could actually figure anything out at anytime.

The thing is that we recognize our frailty and are sensitive to one another in ways that an ebony and ivory twosome might never have achieved at a different time in our lives…a time when events and culture and so many other unimportant forces might have worked to cause us to miss the friendship with which we have now been blessed. It’s not the quantity of time we spend…it is the quality.

Now we are older and when we are together, we focus on the things that have meaning to one another…appreciation for our journeys…gratitude that we are alive and have the time to explore one another’s minds…tolerance that helps us see just how common our humanity, if not specific life events, make us so much more alike than not.

Saturday morning when I showed up, my friend…my gentle friend was there to be supportive for whatever I thought I might be able to do.

Saturday morning at 7:30 we headed out the door together and as usual began a lively conversation, sharing as much positive energy as a couple of older fellas can do.

When we got to the park, I was still feeling pretty good…

We did the loop….

- ted

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Say yes and the unknown cometh...

"Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply
step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you…"
- John Paul II

“Would anyone like to volunteer to role play with me as a demonstration,” the Latina woman said.

For about thirty seconds the room was filled with the mild discomfort as folks hoped someone would raise their hand – you know, so they would not be picked.

“I’ll do it,” I said getting out of my seat in the back of the room. As I navigated the angled tables of five or six people, I thought, I’ll just make up a crisis situation and go with the flow.

What’s the deal?
This was the sixth session of a Victim’s Advocate training program I have been taking through the Tucson Attorney’s office. It teaches a method of helping people through episodes of personal crisis. This evening we were going to begin to learn the framework for interacting with someone in a moment of crisis.

After the first hour and a half of lecture, we broke for ten minutes or so and came back to role-play in small groups. While we had learned…well, actually heard…the techniques for interacting with a victim, we were now going to practice.  Practice? Most of us felt like we had no idea what to do.

The question:
“Would anyone like to volunteer to role play with me as a demonstration,” the Latina woman said…and there we were facing one another in front of 70 or so classmates.  

Yup, I had a fictional scenario ready to go by the time I got into the chair, and then she said, “Hello, my name is Rosanna and I’m with the victim’s advocate program. I’m here to help you in any way you might need. May I ask your name?”

I cannot explain what happened next, but in that very moment, I was transported into a real life situation where a friend tried to take her life. This was completely unexpected and in an instant, the entire room disappeared…there were just the two of us Rosanna and me in an insulated, intimate cocoon…two human beings – one dedicated to helping others and the other finding himself yielding to a scenario of genuine need.  It was like someone had turned on a projector in my mind with the warning, DO NOT stop the film!

As she began to go through the active engagement process, I saw my friend lying in her bed…a glass of white wine on the small table near her head, a plastic bag of pills couched in her partially curled smallish body, like a teddy bear hugged by a young child…she was unconscious and could not be roused.

We called 911, but I felt impotent to do anything to help her. My brain went into cognitive dissonance and it seemed like I couldn’t find a rational thought in my head…a kind of Wait!! What the hell!!??

“It’s not like I haven’t seen or been in traumatic events in my life,” My throat catching as I tried to get the words out.

“Death, birth, things I wouldn’t talk publically about…I’ve seen a lot of things, yet as I stood there looking at her I felt completely impotent to do anything.”

“I can see you feel emotional about this,” Rosanna continued gently as my eyes began to water, and for a few moments, we just sat, saying nothing….waiting…waiting, until I was ready to continue.

I relayed that my friend survived the attempt and how in the subsequent month she and I talked openly about it. She had suffered years with Meniere’s Disease, a balance disorder of the inner ear, accompanied, in her case, by unrelenting pain that had completely robbed her of ‘life quality.' She had fought the good fight and frankly saw no light in the tunnel. Her decision was rational and well thought out.

My friend and I shared that neither of us wanted to find ourselves in old age, victims of a premature darkness that so often steals time by life deflating inches. In the last years of my mother’s life, she knew nothing, sitting, quietly moaning and rocking back and forth in a wheelchair…her days broken only by the meals she was fed and the visits we made to the home where she had come to die, one breath at a time. NO, that was NOT going to happen to me, nor my neighbor.  We talked openly about the taking of our own lives when and if it appeared all  hope was lost.

I brought this out as Rosanna continued to draw thoughts and feelings from my heart and mind. It seemed there were few filters from my side of the interaction. I am uncertain that the entire process lasted more than 15 minutes.

Toward the end, the thought emerged, It’s enough, that task is complete. With that, a rheostat of cognition dialed up and returned me to the classroom filled with onlookers, awkwardly quiet as though they had accidently found themselves exposed to an intimate discussion where maybe they did not belong.

The rest of the evening was spent practicing role-playing scenarios in small groups of three.  I found myself distracted wondering why, or how this had happened. It was certainly not my plan at the start.

The night complete, as we gathered our things to head home, two older women separately stopped to thank me for the exercise. They indicated how grateful they were to hear someone openly talk about thoughts they had been afraid to express. It was, in a sense for them, freeing.

Maybe that’s the reason this happened, I thought. Maybe there were others who needed to see and hear someone completely vulnerable in a live situation.

Then again…maybe it was just for me…for my heart…for my mind.


I suppose, in the end, it simply needed to be….

- ted

Sunday, March 6, 2016

It was a very good meal...


One of the most beautiful qualities
of true friendship is to understand
and to be understood.
- Lucius Seneca

There were five people around the table for dinner. I suppose having a nearly full table for dinner is a regular occurrence in some people's homes – if there are that many bodies occupying space.

It is unusual in our home because to make five at the table it would need to be Molly, the three cats and me. While this is not outside the realm of possibility, an event so described would be highly improbably – on the south side of collective dementia.

This evening, however, there was only one space available.

The fare was a slow ‘crock pot' cooked chicken, potatoes, salad and drinks all around. It might be considered normal, but it was not. In fact, it was the second night in a row the table had held that number.

So what? Big deal! Who cares?

Over the years of work and travel, there has not been much time at home to get to know neighbors or become involved in my community. Most of my friends were in far-flung parts of the world…relationships cultivated through hours of time spent at meetings or through the gracious hospitality of their homes.

When moving to Tucson two years ago in the throes of semi-retirement, I committed to making an effort to get to know my neighbors and become involved in the local community. This has successfully led to joining a YMCA Board, taking some classes on public safety, city planning, victim advocacy and joining a local writer's group.  In the process, relationships have developed here that, to be honest, have been really gratifying. Getting to know my neighbors has also been a real treat.

Then there is Gail, across the street, with whom Molly and I have developed a lovely familial relationship. She is smart and thoughtful, a baseball fan, and during the season – the preseason having now begun – they huddle together with wine, cheese and snacks in hand, watching games. I am, during the season, a ‘baseball widower.' 

Gail also loves cats (animals really) and has captured the hearts of our three felines. She is greatly knowledgeable about cosmology, and Saturday afternoons, we frequently find ourselves watching Neil Degrasse Tyson, the famous American astrophysicist, in a series of entertaining lectures about the universe and our place in it. To be completely fair, we might also pick up an episode of Sherlock.

Yes indeed, being here in Oro Valley has reminded me once again that life really does reward action.

We should, however, get back to dinner and the full table.

Over the past few decades, I have made some wonderful friendships with a number of  people in relatively far-flung places. Not the most retiring flower on the wall, I often shared stories of experiences with them and how I felt if they had the opportunity to meet one another, they too would find each other to be thoughtful and extremely enjoyable.

It's the microcosm folks…

This past week, my friend and colleague, from Denmark, made his way to our home. In addition, a friend and colleague from the East found her way to our little neighborhood in Oro Valley. Since the ‘Great Dane' had come in a day or so earlier, and since we have only one suite available in the Dreisinger B&B, our Eastern friend stayed with Gail across the street. 

The characters at the dinner table for the past couple of nights have been, in addition to the regulars (Molly and me), the neighbor, the Eastern gal and the Dane. The evening meals were filled with delightful food and thoughtfully edifying conversation at the dining room table. 

It was the kind of wonderful event when people you know get together, and just as you had imagined, fit together like custom-made lambskin gloves!

Each of the people at the table had spices of different backgrounds, sauces of varied life experiences and the subtle nuanced mixtures of varying belief systems. All of us had been ‘slow cooked' in our lives and brought a loving respect for one another to the table. The caloric content of the food AND conversation were just right!

By the end of the evening, the anticipation of the meal having been satisfied by the reality of its consumption, and as we said good night, we all knew it had been a special event…a mixture of differences that blended into a singular and ‘satisfying meal' in all respects. 

In the coming days, we will disperse to different places and events, but we will count the time we spent together in a little neighborhood in Oro Valley, Arizona as a satisfying dinner indeed.

- ted