Death

The wife of a close friend has MS and has made a personal decision to choose physician-assisted suicide, which is legal in Canada. Her choice and another story about facing death made me think about this issue, and how my generation faces death. 

I read this quote the other day “Death is a storehouse of discontinued dreams, of unanswered questions, of unfulfilled dreams and desires, of unanswered problems of regrets and remorse, self-hate, self-love or unjustified guilt and shame.”

The idea of death is one that my generation has yet to come to grips with, hopefully, this will happen sooner rather than later. When we go to the next celebration of life or remember the last celebration, we may think about ourselves and where we are on the journey. Our life story, we believe, is far from ending. Death, our death, we think will leave our loved ones’ hanging. Does our death leave our life’s story unfinished as if it is a book with a plot that hangs in the air? Did our friend and loved ones know about our unrealized dreams or was are they left as an ever-silenced half-finished dream?

My young friend was telling us about her cousin, who had a brain tumour and he had walked out before the doctors could tell him he had only 2 months to live. His partner stayed and made the decision not to tell him the bad news. Her cousin is getting chemo and believes, wrongly that he has a chance of survival. We are all afraid to face death. When we die, our death reduces everything to nothing, leaving our loved ones with suspended memories. Memories that can heal or break the heart. Our memories are a distortion of our experiences as we distort the truth to justify our actions. Our survivor's do the same to remember us in the best light.

Death and life, we come together to celebrate a life well lived upon a death. Yet when the person who died is alive we may not celebrate their life with them. Why does death mean so much and life mean so little? Death is unwanted, unanticipated yet for some who are severing death is as welcomed as a long-lost friend, or a conquering hero.

For us when we die death is the end but for those who survive us, our death could be the beginning. We avoid talking about our own death, it is something that we avoid in good company, like other topics that can be sensitive such as religion and politics. Why do we use euphemisms for death? Here are a few:

· Passed passed on or passed away

· Resting in peace, eternal rest, asleep

· Deceased

· Departed, gone, lost, slipped away

· Lost her battle, lost her life, succumbed

· Gave up the ghost

· Kicked the bucket

· Didn't make it

· Breathed her last

· Was called home, is in a better place

One of the reasons we use these terms is to protect someone, whether it's the person speaking the words or those hearing them. We feel the need to look for a gentle way to deliver the news of death to someone or as a way to provide comfort, despite the grief of the situation.

Death and dying are natural but many people feel uncomfortable or anxious when discussing death. To ease the pain of death, we invented gods and religions to help us. When we listen to those who preach of life hereafter, or of reincarnation or in other forms of life after death we suspend our critical thinking. All of us will face death, and most of us will not go willingly as we have so much more to do. 

I hope my family and loved ones listen to my wishes as I believe that when I die do not want to be mourned, I want my friends, loved ones, and acquaintances to celebrate my life by being the best they can be. I do not want my death to be a storehouse of discontinued dreams, of unanswered questions, of unfulfilled dreams and desires, of unanswered problems of regrets and remorse, self-hate, self-love or unjustified guilt and shame.

Meditation for a Richer Life

At the workshop on “How to get a good night sleep,” we were discussing how to calm your mind to help you sleep. A number of the participants talked about how they use meditation to help them. Meditation became part of the vernacular of lifestyle choices and a source of a lot of conversation as far back as the 60s when there was a big interest in eastern religions and for us boomers, all things eastern were exotic and new.  But while many of the flash in the pan interests in exotic religions during that time frame faded away, meditation has endured and become a common practice and resource that has benefited us in every decade of our lives.

There is a good reason meditation has endured and even grown in popularity.  Meditation has tremendous benefits for virtually every aspect of life and those who integrate it into their daily lifestyles can experience those benefits virtually as soon as they start.  You don’t have to be a guru at meditation to realize that it may have other benefits than helping a person get a good night’s sleep. Benefits can occur for an individual from the very first time they try. Some of those benefits include:

·       Meditation is calming.  Because the act of meditation calls for you to bring your thoughts into captivity and to still your mind and focus it, that sense of your soul is in turmoil eases and you are able to address the cause of your anxiety and see a solution more clearly because your emotions are not clouding the issue.

·       Meditation helps you focus and concentrate.  The great thing about meditation is that the effects of meditation continue past those few moments when you are meditating.  Those few moments of calm create an atmosphere of focus and clarity of thought that goes on throughout your day helping you focus your mind and more easily concentrate when you need to.

·       Meditation reduces stress and mental anxiety.  So often the stress that comes out of problems and difficulties is dominated by emotional reactions even more than by the problem itself.  Meditation clears away the effects of the stress making it easier for you to solve the problem itself.

·       Meditation helps reduce physical anxiety.  The process of meditation involves extended periods of quiet deep breathing.  This simple action floods the brain with oxygen and energizes blood flow throughout the body which refreshes tired muscles and causes your entire physical system to relax and release pent-up anxiety.

·       Meditation helps you sleep and digest your food.  The refreshed blood flow, rich in oxygen that comes from the session of meditation, takes action immediately on the digestive system often reducing or eliminating digestive problems and even easing the symptoms of ulcers.  Because the mind is relaxed and well supplied with vital oxygen and blood flow, sleep comes more easily and is more recuperative.

Some successful role models in all walks of life that come out of our generation credit meditation to why they are able to accomplish such great things.  In addition to all of these benefits, meditation is easy to integrate into your lifestyle and you can go at your own pace learning to become better at meditation and grow in your ability to use it.

Meditation is easy to do.  The image of a meditation practitioner in painful “lotus position” going into a virtual trance is the extreme of the discipline.  Because meditation has been adapted so that any of us can benefit from the health benefits it brings, you can begin meditating immediately and see the benefits from the very first session.

Small wonder many of us have continued down through the decades to be enthusiastic proponents of meditation.  And there is no reason we cannot continue to enjoy the tremendous benefits as we move into our retirement years.

Looking Young and Feeling Young

We may not have a corner on the market for an urgent desire to stay youthful but we certainly have set a high standard for creating a virtual avalanche of products and services to attend to that need.  The quest to look young in my age group has resulted in an explosion of profits in the cosmetic and plastic surgery markets.  It’s easy to criticize our desire to want to see ourselves as youthful as simple vanity.  But it goes a lot deeper than that.

It doesn’t take a lot of research or analysis to see that my generation rounded our identities in the youth movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  Before we erupted like a generational volcano, there really was no youth movement.  But in the 1960s, when youth culture virtually took over American and indeed world culture, everything changed and that change was never really reversed. 

The culture of that time that now seems very long ago, was one of the adorations of youth.  That desire to put an age on a pedestal and worship everything about being young has permeated the culture even as we moved into middle age and is now creating the largest retirement generation ever. 

Not all of the youth worship that is easy to document in some of my age group it is just about looking sexy and dreading the physical changes of growing older.  Some of us believe the concept of youth has to do with the idealism and the commitment to causes.  The desire to change the world and to be a force to make mankind better was part of what made the new youth culture in the 1960s so unique.  Because those values are laudable, we really can’t completely condemn the desire by some of us to stay youthful and committed to those ideals.

So, the quest to stay young often manifests itself in cosmetic attempts to look young.  You can almost understand the appeal.  We all like to look good.  But the real source of youth is not in tight butts and abs and smooth, wrinkle-free skin.  The phrase “you are as young as you feel” is often scoffed.  For some, this can be used to have an excuse to behave younger than you are and perhaps socialize with younger people in an inappropriate way. However, it can also reflect that an inner youthfulness which is fueled by a youthful outlook on life and a basic policy of good health and exercise will keep anyone spy and vital.

It is when we combine those elements of “inner youthfulness’ with their cosmetic efforts to stay young that we really do retain much of our youth beyond what their years would report.   We all have met an elderly man or woman who is so full of life and fun that they leave you feeling older than they are.  The sparkle in the eye, the curiosity about everything life has to offer and that optimism and idealism that you ordinarily associate with teenagers are truly inspiring when it is being expressed by a boomer.

This is the real youth movement that we are pioneering.  It is more than dying the hair or using Botox and wrinkle creams.  It is about being strong role models to the youth so they don‘t give up on their dreams and that their idealism and excitement in living can thrive no matter what age they are.  And if that is the legacy of our generation, it’s a fine ethic for us to leave behind for future generations to enjoy.

The Amazing Human Body

Here is an amusement for you from Time Goes By. It is called The Amazing Human Body and I have no idea if these facts are true. But just go with it and you'll be rewarded with a good laugh at the end):

It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

One human hair can support 6.6 pounds.

The average man's penis is two times the length of his thumb.

Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

Women blink twice as often as men.

The average person's skin weighs twice as much as their brain.

Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.

If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

Your body is made of about 7 octillion atoms (that’s 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms).

There are 37 trillion cells in your body.

Stomach acid can dissolve metal.

Your skin’s outer layer sheds every 2-4 weeks, amounting to roughly 0.7 kg of dead skin in a year.

Cells in the inner lens of the eye, muscle cells of the heart, and the neurons of the cerebral cortex are the only cells that will be with you your entire life.

If you were to spread out all the wrinkles in your brain, it would be about the size of a pillowcase.

There are a trillion nerves powering your memory. Studies have shown that after viewing 2,500 images for only 3 seconds, participants could recall if they had seen the images with 92 percent accuracy.

You spend 10 percent of the day blinking.

Women will be finished reading this by now.

Men are still busy checking their thumbs.