First of all, to the one or two people who will read this blog, I should have left a warning that this is also an informal personal journal for me, and my experiences and perceptions tend to be outside of standard accepted cultural sensibilities. I can and will be, unintentionally, offensive to those who have not explored life together with me in recent years.
My father first introduced our family to Central Oregon and it’s wonderful outdoor environment in the early 1960’s. Bend had a population of around 4000 people then (81,000 now). There was only the main highway 97, and the Cascade Lakes Hwy, to access a lot of the recreation areas, and we did so several times a year. My father was an avid outdoorsman, and he had us kids hiking, camping, fishing, and golfing everywhere he could think of exploring. Dad had limitless energy, and his enthusiasm for the outdoors easily translated into my personal life, as well. My father made many mistakes in his life, and in his relationship with myself, my sister, and with my mother, but this frequent immersion in the great outdoors that my father gave us was never one of them. The bottom line to all of this is that my father imbued me with a deep connection with the outdoors, and his love of nature and wilderness areas. Being in nature is a healing, nurturing experience, and dad intuitively knew that. I have since figured out that most of society’s problems probably arise from our civilization’s incredible disconnect from, and our collective destruction of, our Mother Earth. Also, our continued dependence on mindless entertainment and technology “toys” that continue to redirect too many people away from our true nature into yet more fragmented understandings of self and other. That being stated, even being in Nature has its limitations as far as healing capacity, depending on the individual’s willingness to face the truth about his/her life, and the willingness to make necessary adjustments to one’s life course.
My father has been under Sharon’s and my care for the last 7 years. He recently turned 89 years of age, and his health has been in decline for many years. He has dementia, which manifests itself in many complicated ways. I have had quite an education in being with the aged in our family, thanks to the encouragement and support of my wife, Sharon White. Together we have provided care and protection for my grandmother while she was in her final months of life, as well as helping me be present for my father’s sister, Aunt Susie, who has only recently become “old”, at the age of 86. My grandmother and my mother, though both severely compromised before death, never became “old” in my view of things, as they continued to embrace life, and they valued all of their relationships all the way to the end. My dad and his sister are a little different, however. They had highly dysfunctional parents, with an abusive and alcoholic father who also almost beat their older brother (Uncle Ed) to death when he was 6 years old. My uncle, fortunately, was placed under the care of his grandparents on a farm in Oregon City, while my father and aunt continued to suffer under the oppressive conditions, ultimately resulting in my father’s threat to kill his dad when he turned 16, if my dad ever saw him beat his wife (dad’s mom) again. Anyway, both of these individuals have the emotional scars that abused children commonly get, only theirs was never diagnosed or treated by professionals. The biggest victim in all of this was their sense of self-esteem, and their very limited ability to be emotionally and spiritually supportive of others. Both people struggled ferociously with their emotional wounds in adulthood, yet managed to live fairly full, complete lives.
Why is this even being written about? I am aging too, darn it. So is Sharon. When we stop moving forward, as human beings, life has a way of pushing back on us. And, on a deteriorating life there can be a lot of pushing around going on. Life is about movement, the decisions we still can make, and the actions we still can take. Both my father and my aunt have lost all of that. They have become old, and the focus of both of their lives, when their memories are functioning, is around all of the losses that they have experienced. They both became isolated from others late in life through either their own unwillingness to reach out to others, or their self-consciousness around their perceived inability to adequately communicate with their worlds. And, much to their individual horrors, they have both been deprived of their treasured independence. Amongst other things, I now exist to support and maintain my father’s failing life in his home setting. Fortunately for Sharon and myself, our aunt’s long-lost daughter showed up late last year to help with her care, which has been a Huge help.
The greatest life lesson that life has given me revolves around my relationship with my father. My grandfather’s alcoholism seemed to have had an Impact on the way dad drank as a young man. He enjoyed drinking, and was quite the social person, as well. But, his memory of his father’s behaviour probably served as a good deterrent to abusive drinking. But dad still wrestled with his own self-esteem (and his sister, too). The legacy that my grandfather tried to leave with his kids tragically revolved around diminishing the value of his children’s lives in his, and in their own, developing minds. My dad was, at times, troubled by his upbringing, though he rarely spoke of it until very late in life. Unconsciously, dad had impressed his own lack of a healthy mental self concept upon his children. To this day, depending on how conscious I can or can’t be, I can be dramatically impacted by the wounds, or I can soar high above it all through maintaining the principles of an open heart and a quiet(er) mind, which negates all of the unhealthy illusions of self that can be so troubling. But my lack of a healthy self-esteem did take me into Hell very early in life. I was not to “recover” from this until I was 31 years of age. And, for me, my only hope was to find the Truth that underlies the whole of life, and attempt to derive a new sense of self through re-connection with this “lost essence”. A new openness to life and all of the possibilities that shared love can create, and a resurgence in the respect that I now give my body through enhanced physical activity, diet, and “placement” in healthier outdoor settings and social situations, helped to guide me in ways my father could not have embraced, nor given me any mentoring with, as he was too unconscious.
Now, I am driving home from Bend. I need to check on dad. He has a wonderful young caregiver named Madison, who I hired to help us out earlier this year. She reports that he is now unable to walk without assistance (he was getting by last week with a cane). My dad still has enough wherewithal to remind me that he was there for me when I needed it most, so my role in his life is a natural payback for the good that he gave to me earlier. Fair enough! So back to “old age” I go, learning more and more we about the infinite possibilities of human expression that we have at our disposal, and the potential limitations that I may experience later on, should I live long enough to see everything go South. Today I choose those options that will keep me engaged with life with my heart open, and my self-judgemental mind in check.
