Loss... The Wounded Heart!

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             Loss...  The Wounded Heart!

It is of course inevitable, if sadly so, damn!  We're not designed for permanence.  We are not rocks or water or earth...   or carbon, perhaps?  Doesn't matter.  In the hazy milieu

of GeezerHood, we experience the loss of those we love and cherish!  It's a rotten business!  We usually don't care to think of it, or dwell on it, or wallow in misery as if figuratively, morosely standing at the "terminal bus stop," pondering the inexorable end of life!    

Most recently, our dear friend, Susie, drifted away after 15 months of illness, much of it in agony and suffering, but through all of it she exhibited extraordinary courage and strength.  In much of that time her attitude was laced with remarkable optimism, even hope, a quality her family and friends shared with prayer and bold attempts at a kind of sanguine bouyancy, a hopeful positivism, even cheerfulness, if a bit naive, knowing in our hearts that nothing could save her.  

The chemo and drugs and therapy did little to mitigate the experience, while it devoured her time and her energy.  She was far too good, loving and generous to have been

That's her with her friend, or
was it her pet...  bald eagle!  Such a good
time, one of many travel adventures!

subjected to an end of life so damned undeserved.  Her family and friends benefitted enormously from her kindness, emotional strength and loving spirit.  She was a treasure among those of us who could never hope to compare!

**************************************

In early August of last year, 2024, my brother, Kris, succumbed to enough cancer to spread among those far less important and valued, far less valuable to the human species.  He was another treasure, with a tremendous degree of talent and skill and loving generosity.  His gifts endure and will long be remembered and cherished by everyone who knew him and were lucky enough to bask in the remarkable force and richness of his personality.

My sister's first-born of three sons died recently, nearly a continent away from his home in California.  Too young!  We weren't close, emotionally or physically.  He was a good man; he looked after his grandfather, my father, during the latter's long hospice care.  My nephew did so with love and generous kindness, temporarily minimizing  his own academic and other more desirable, personal pursuits, the kind that would normally occupy the minds and physical activities of most vital young men.   

That's him with Bride, Jaynie.  
It's an old picture, 1965
probably!  

I guess the point is, loss and death are crap!!  I know, I know...  No one, not one of us escapes.  We're all doomed.  Our only hope is that we can endure long enough to spread some light, benefit our families and our best chums, our colleagues and comrades!  

I'm told there's such a thing as a peaceful passing, one that is not that sort of lethal dagger such as cancer and other horrific diseases, the kind that linger...  I've known a couple, maybe a few, who died peacefully in sleep!  Too bad we can't all book in advance such a ticket to the inevitable grave! 

The eminent psychiatrist / philosopher, Carl Jung once said, or wrote, "Life behaves as if it were going on (forever)..."  We all seem to harbor the illusion of immortality, suggested often in literature, including one of the writings of Jean Paul Sartre.  The protagonist in one of the author's tales "surrenders that illusion..." and, his death sentence delayed, possibly reversed (I can't readily recall...), feels he is or may as well be dead, having given up, surrendered to it, admitting dully that nothing mattered any longer.  

I don't know why the hell those bits of existential musings come to mind...   Perhaps I'm  getting a bit maudlin!  I didn't mean to dwell on that topic, as in, where the hell did that come from...!  Apologies...        

****************************************************************************

It seems a bit strange, maybe a little wrong, to introduce a topic that is perhaps an inappropriate digression...  not nearly as heart wrenching or sad, but loss nonetheless...   The subject is relocation...    Moving!  In summer of last year, we sold our house of something in the neighborhood of 28, approaching, maybe, 30 years, and moved west from our east side Milwaukee home to a large suburb.  We loved living east, near the city's vibrant downtown area, near the big lake.  

It was a difficult move, physically, of course, but emotionally as well, but one we regarded as timely and necessary.  Many can  

The old house!

and will empathize, I'm certain.  Getting rid of years of "stuff" is also a tricky and difficult undertaking.  For some, sentiment presents a major obstacle.  For others a pleasing relief to be rid of the often useless and unwanted clutter accumulated over the space of so many years.  I hoarded several old telephone books, for example, often a subject of ridicule!  (You know...   important numbers circled and saved in case of need!)  

Well, gosh -- realizing I should put an end to this morose business -- everything we value is eventually lost when we finally meet, in the words of the incomparable W.C. Fields, "The Fellow in the Bright Nightgown."  Meantime, for those of us still standing, we are best advised to savor the joys of life and its many adventures, its good, and bad times too, thankful for all we have, particularly for its real and enduring diamonds, namely, our loving family members and our cherished good friends!  

So long Susie, Kris and Keith.  We loved you!  We'll miss all of you terribly.  We hope, if those with religion and spiritualism in their hearts are right, you're in a better place, waiting for the rest of us to arrive, all of us bathed in the bright auras of joyful rebirth!! 

(Humbly Submitted 02-28-2025...  by Joel K.) 

     

Where Are They? Where'd They Go...??!!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:     What Ever Happened to.... ??!!


It's an outrage!  Something must be done!...   Arthritis? Gout? Pustules?  Boils, pimples?  Back spasms!  Knees that sound like a chuck-a-luck game? An

elbow that's constantly being banged into hard, immoveable objects?  Pain?  LOSS!!  I mean, why is it that those of us who have fallen into the pit of advanced age...  I like to term it, "GeezerHood"!...  have to suffer so many agonies and indignities, including the scourge of Ageism itself?  

Most importantly, most significantly, where the hell are all my great and good friends and family members? I mean...  where'd they go??!!  Why!!??  

Steve, Pat, Jim, Boobers, Patty, Karen, John, Bob, Carol, Tommy, Morry, Abi...  so many others.  Where are they?  To what train, bus or duty station do they repair (meaning, report, as if commanded to do so by a kind of tribunal...  a military term I never quite understood! ...sorta like the mystery of Military Time!!)?  Where do they go once they jump off the mortal trampoline and disappear into the ether, a dense fog, mystical smoke...? 

Come back, damn it!  Wherever you've gone, they don't need you.  We need you!  We want you here, with us!  You left far too damn soon, too young!  

I remember a support group to which I once belonged.  We were discussing the existence of a deity and the possibility of an afterlife, the concept of reincarnation...

One member of our group opined that he actually did so, or wanted to believe in reincarnation.  It seemed to the member that additional lives tend to reconcile all of the inequities of human existence.  "Why are some people born rich and privileged, while others are thrust into spheres of poverty, disease, racial caste systems, physical and intellectual infirmities, to languish in sadness, mediocrity and misery?," he asked, sort of rhetorically, to no one in particular, or to the group as a whole, perhaps.

"I mean," the member continued, "why can't we come back, be reborn in circumstances that are different from those of a former life?  Poverty to wealth...  perfect health to lack of it...  Conversely, why don't the rich and privileged, those who never truly suffered, come back into a life of poverty and abuse, even a smattering of abject stupidity...?  Now that would be true equality!"  The rest of us pondered deeply the member's passionately-expressed musings! 

"I'd like to come back as a big fish," one member countered   The rest of us looked at him as if he's been suddenly lobotomized.  No one asks why "a big fish?"  (Why not a pelican...?  Just wondering...  What about a Bonobo!?....) 


I think I'm getting off the track, sort of!  I guess I mean to ask the great, unanswerable question:  "Why does it seem that, too often, the best of us die young, too young?  And why do so many 'great souls' (so to speak) leave us too soon, when their lives had so much meaning, and they had so much more to share and to give to the worlds in which they lived, and to the people and worthy organizations with whom they co-existed, or for which they volunteered?"  

I mean, there was so much more I wanted to say to and discuss with my friends, meaning the "departed ones."  So much more I wanted to do with them...  travels, adventures, and, yes, even educative activities such as reading and talking about good books, voluntarism, intelligent films...  politics, too, of course, dependent upon one's philosophy, attitudes, beliefs, values!  (Politics is tricky stuff, we're often told!)

Steve!  Patsy!  Patrick!  Booby!  Where the hell are you, and why don't you visit anymore??!!  Dreams?...  I talk to my dead loved ones in my dreams!  Sometimes the conversations are a bit silly, sometimes rather poignant!  I talked to Steve, recently, while he and I were seated on an unrecognizable concrete stoop.  "What's Sue really like," Steve asked me.  I told him my thoughts.  He looked at me for a long moment, smiled and appeared to accept my assessment.  We also talked about the haircut of an athlete we both admired.  What the hell was that about?...  I have no idea...  Oh, and Larry?  Steve never knew him, but asked his age.  "Lare the Hair" was my friend from the other side of the continent!  (I wonder if HE's still with us??!)  

I keep pictures, images, of two of my dearest friends on my computer desktop.  One or the other pops up unexpectedly, every so often, when I turn the thing on in the morning.  I talk to the "popped-up" one for a brief time when that happens.  We smile at one another, and then go on with whatever tedium commands our attention at the moment, content, I suppose, to have had a brief encounter!  

Not a real photo, but an artists's depiction of spectres,
or ghosts, rising from tombs, or some such,
preparing to visit the living...  maybe??!!

I miss my dead friends, and family members, too, of course, who are no longer interacting with us in the realm of the living!  Emotions boil to the surface...  anger, resentment, frustration, sadness, longing...  Resurrection of the dead is not in our domain, unfortunately, except in memory or dreams,  or perhaps the mental wanderings that seem to affect us all when a pleasant stare into nowhere and nothing becomes a reverie, a journey into a distant sphere of consciousness.  I wonder...   Maybe I'll dream about P.T. tonight!!  We'll have a fine little chin wag...  that I may or may not remember upon waking!    

(Special Dedication:  To all of our dearest dead friends and family members.  We'd like to hear from you when possible!  Give us a sign or something...  For example, when Patty died, she returned as a butterfly and landed on us, and once on Boober's golf club.  Booby came back, we think, as a house fly.  We enjoy those kinds of signs (sort of like "medium-ship" -- inter-spiritual communication, maybe?) and reappearances of the departed too, of course!!  "Hello?  Hello??...  What was that you said? What?...")  

(Another Thing -- a Definition:   dead... /ded/  Adjective
1.  No longer alive.  "a dead body"...   synonyms:  deceased, expired, departed, gone, no more, passed on, passed away...  (In Botswana, I believe they prefer "Late"!  Kind of a nice euphemism, eh??)  (I find that many people in many different societies and cultures don't care for the word, "dead," but tend to use euphemisms, such as those listed above!  Interesting, what?). Oh, what about "Past Tense," maybe "Former Person"!!  

Learn to pronounce

adjective

1.