Onward! Through Life and Death
Yesterday Stuart turned 80 years old.
Wow.
I’ve written about him frequently on this blog. He is the star of our romance and of his recovery from cancer story. When he turned 70, I called him the “linebacker of my life.” In almost everything I do or write he is a quiet, consistent presence.
To celebrate turning a corner into this new decade, he has grown out his crew cut and added a goatee.
Our children worked together to create this book of favorite photos of Stuart as a Granddad. The cover shows us in Playa del Carmen where we celebrated our family Christmas this past year.
We threw a birthday party for the birthday boy, a wonderful excuse to invite family and friends to celebrate with us. It was a lovely afternoon full of conversations that renewed connections across miles, interests, and time.
In a few more weeks, my siblings and I will celebrate my mother’s 99th birthday.
We are doing some serious aging around here!
Laughter comes easily these days, but like most of our buoyant feelings, it carries a shadow side. At this advanced stage of life, we are keenly aware of Jane Kenyon’s poem:
Otherwise
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise,” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, graywolfpress.org.
In the last two weeks I have had phone calls with three friends also of “a certain age.” One lives in Florida, one in Illinois, and one in Iowa. All of these conversations eventually focused on two subjects most on our minds: age and death. At the turn into a new year, people are naturally reflective about what the past year has taught and about what they hope to learn or accomplish in the new one. For me, Stuart’s 80th birthday so soon after the New Year, has led to what meteorologists around here like to call a “wintry mix” of thinking about youth and age, life and death.
In many ways, these reflections are not new. If you search on the subject of “death” in this blog, scores of posts appear. Here is one from 2014 that announces the mission statement for my life. I wrote the statement in 2004, after the death of my friend and fellow college president Faith Gabelnick:
“to prepare for the hour of my death one good day at a time . . . and to help others do the same.”
I hope I have been faithful to that mission. I sense a need to intensify my efforts:
- practical check-ups on estate plan. Fill out the information in the aptly titled book I’m Dead. Now What?
- deepen spiritual resources: to continue to read about death and dying
- share stories with friends. I feel fortunate to have friends who want to talk about these issues.
- to walk with friends who are facing health challenges as we “walk each other home” (Ram Dass). When we lived in Virginia, I did this by singing in the Blue Ridge Threshold Choir. I miss singing with that group.
How do you feel about the subject of death? How can we face death with curiosity, hope, and maybe even joy? How can we link this kind of ultimate courage to the kind of courage Jesus (and Gandhi and Martin Luther King . . .) had to speak truth to power in life?
Congratulations to Stuart who turned 80 and to your lovely Mom who will be 99! Those are both big milestones! The year I turned 80 (two years ago), my life companion passed away, three days short of his 86th birthday. Since then my thought about end of life have been different than before—more personal. I think more about the people waiting on the other shore: a premature baby, my parents and now my life partner. I am preparing a sermon on the raising of Lazarus from the dead, a premonition of Jesus’s own death and that has brought more thoughts about the afterlife. For the most part though, I like to live in the present moment, enjoying my daughters, my grandchildren, my church family and my neighbours. Every day I thank God for the beautiful and precious gift of life.
Amen, sister. Life is a precious gift. Your combination of yearning for reunion with loved ones while staying firmly planted in the here and now seems just right. And nothing clarifies the mind like writing a sermon!
You’re still teaching me, dear Shirley! I so appreciate your model of embracing each stage of life you’re in and how thoughtfully you are exploring the shadow side as well as celebrating the good. I hope you and Stuart keep thriving for many more years!
I was expecting to see my Dad into his 80’s but was in shock when cancer struck him down at 79 years of age. However, he taught me as well through his brave approach towards his death which came 6 weeks after his diagnosis. I am watching and gathering as much knowledge and wisdom from the people going before me, and it’s comforting. I hope I live to see 80 and beyond, but 55 was a big enough milestone to reach this past year.!
Dear Melissa, how is it that you are 55? And that my first Goshen students are now retiring?!? Your father’s death, like my father’s death for me, is one of your big life lessons. One of our last acts of love for our children is to show them an example of strength and courage at the end of life so that they can live freely and fully whatever span of life they are given. Blessings on your journey. We teach each other.
💕🙏🏻 Thank you, Shirley 🥲
I read the obituaries and think about death every day. The longer we live, the more funerals we attend as close family members and dear friends pass from this world to the next. I’ve begun to visualize grief and joy in a yin-yang relationship. There’s always a bit of grief in the joy of being together knowing the death of a loved one may come at any time. There is also some joy in the grief for the memories and all that was.
When I turned 60, a friend recommended the book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, which I highly recommend. I’m 62 now, and my husband is 84, so I always feel young by comparison. I have lived a long and prosperous life with no regrets and no particular unfulfilled ambitions other than to be here for our daughter and see for myself what her future holds. I am far more interested in the quality of life than in the quantity (longevity). As long as I am myself—able to read and write and have meaningful conversations with family and friends, I am happy to stick around.
Laurie, you have always been a wise one, and age is only intensifying the depth. Being Mortal is indeed one of many books I have read, and one of the best. I know the feeling of being young by comparison. [I have told friends that as long as my mother is living, I can’t be old. :-)] Someday, it will be otherwise. I appreciate your emphasis on the quality over quantity of life. I so agree, and yet, this is another of many future options that are not entirely in our power. To the extent that walking and working out and playing pickleball influence my healthspan, I’m all in. I’ll bet you are too.
Thank you for these reflections, so close to me as well.
Sending you strength for your own journey, Maren. And I know you will have plenty of imagination. That helps too!
Thank you, Shirley, for these reminders of a life to live. I, too, turned 80 last month and I admit find it difficult. 79 did not seem old but 80 does!
Roveen, it’s funny, isn’t it, how aging sneaks up on little cat’s feet and picks a number that causes our hair to rise . . . It’s nice to have someone else to break the age wave first. With you and Stuart out there ahead of me, i know that it won’t be too scary, someday — if I’m lucky, to say the dreaded sentence: “I’m old!”
Thank you for this post, Shirley, and birthday congratulations to Stuart! I’ve always liked your mission statement, living today with death in mind. I hope you’ll share the continued reading you’re doing on death and dying. — I too have read “Being Mortal.” One book I read some time after Helmut’s death was “With the End in Mind” by Dr Kathryn Mannix; it gave me greater understanding of how a person dies, how the body helps in the readiness; I wish I’d have had it before. Since his death, perhaps strangely, I have less clarity (greater unknowing, that is) about the afterlife than I did before! Perhaps that’s a function of grief, I don’t know.
Thank you for sharing your response, Dora. Like so many of my widowed friends, you teach me. Statistically, most married women will die after their husbands. There is no way to predict whether or when that will happen to any individual woman. Nor is there any way to know in advance the impact of another’s death on oneself or one’s views about death or the afterlife. Have you read Paths to God by Ram Dass? Or Pema Chodron’s How We Live is How We Die? Perhaps another religious tradition will help you view less certainty with soft eyes. Thanks for recommending the Mannix book. I think it helps to share resources like these. The Chodron book talks about stages of shutting down the body before death also.
Shirley, your writings are so well stated and thought provoking. This one does resonate with me as I look over obituaries and see people a few years years younger and think, I’m in that age of life. I attend some gatherings with seniors in my age range who have trouble getting around and think, I don’t want to be like that. I try to turn that around and think, good for them that they don’t let this keep them from getting out to socialize and learn. So, I keep exercising and active, but there will be things beyond on control. I have far do go in preparing for my future. I selected Being Mortal with a birthday gift card but haven’t begun it yet. This motivate me to get started on it.
You are so right about the obits, Sue! We are passing the statistical averages for age of death, and every day in the paper we see smiling faces of those who have already walked “that lonesome valley.” I encourage you to read Being Mortal. I find that the more I learn about death the less daunting the subject looks, though it will never lose its mystery. Our culture tries to protect us with massive distractions. Let’s look at death as directly as we can. “Oh death, where is thy sting?”
I rejoice with you as you celebrate the birthday of your “linebacker,” the star of your romance. And how lovely to have 4 generations to join in the party for the octogenarian.
Cliff, the Carebear, shares a birthday month with Stuart, both in January two days apart. My husband and I are both climbing the ladder of the 80s: he turned 83, I’m 84 until July. We don’t take our lives and health for granted. We know it could be “Otherwise.” And, yes, we do yearly tuneups on our health and estate plans and try to keep active. The metaphor of a “wintry mix” is apt, for sure.
This year there was a lot of table fellowship for the birthday, a party at our house with 4 others in our Sunday School class—3 celebrating January birthdays. One sparkly friend ran around my kitchen island opening and closing a greeting card that shouted the word HALLELUJAH! Of course I recorded it!
Thank you for the reminder that this earth is not our home and for including that precious lyric “We are walking each other home.” For truly we are.
Ha, I love your sparkly friend’s choice for how to celebrate. Thanks for being one of my best models for how to maintain gusto in the octogenarian age. Sounds like you have done some Swedish death cleaning. Brava. Happy Birthday to Cliff! And this will be another milestone for you, Marian, at 85 this July. May 2026 be another year of health and joy. Hallelujah, indeed!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STUART!
How do I feel about the subject of death? I view death as a threshold I’m steadily approaching. One day, I’ll pause there, wipe my feet, and shed the exterior packaging that’s served me so well. Then my interior (soul) will forward into the next grand adventure.
I’ll pass along your good wishes, Laurie. And just let me say that this depiction of death is deeply inspiring to me. In your minimalist way, you have described the maximum joy. The right metaphor can do a lot of good work!
Firstly, a belated happy birthday to Stuart! The hair and goatee suit him!
Thank you for sharing these thoughts, Shirley.
I think my sister and I talk about death more than the average family. My sister is a palliative care nurse who cares for people at the end of their lives, in their own homes.
Our parents died within 18 months of each other, just over 20 years ago, and it is 11 years since my husband died at the age of 45. Just over a year ago, our aunt died.
I think all of these experiences of accompanying people as they move from earthly life through death have emphasised to me the importance of living well, without regrets. I think I’ve also learnt that death itself is not something to be afraid of.
Like one of your other readers, I would really recommend Kathryn Mannix’s book “With the end in mind”. She writes with a beautiful compassion. I have also heard her speak (she’s a Brit and spoke at a Christian arts festival I go to), and we really do need to hear more people talk about death and dying, in a way that is honest and truthful, but is also caring.
I’d also recommend another of her books, simply called “Listen!”, which is about having what she calls “tender conversations”: I think the two things are connected.
It is always good to read your thoughts and the snippets of life across the Pond. Thank you.
Sarah, how good it is to see these words from you and to rejoice, again, at the way the internet allows us to stay connected after having had one lovely fall at the Collegeville Institute together. When you post occasionally about your husband, I always feel a twinge of empathic pain combined with admiration for how you have walked with your grief all these years. I didn’t know of your other losses, but it is good to know that your experiences have reduced your fear of death. I will look for Kathryn Mannix’s books. I love the phrase “tender conversations.” We need more of those!
Shirley … this was beautful and heartfelt .and the poem touched me deeply How lucky you are to have your “linebacker.” I’m sure Carol told you that Kent died last April … unexpected as to the day or week, but not unexpected. I consider myself so lucky to have had him as long as I did.
I read your blogs when they come … and think you are also so lucky to have those lovely grandchildren. Happy New Year, and perhaps our paths will cross again.
So good to see you here, Mary. I did get your sad news from Carol and send you thoughts of consolation I wish I had sent earlier. Thank you for your kind words and, yes, I do hope our paths will cross again!