Perhaps you have been in a similar place…. struggling to make sense of a new existential landscape. If you ever find yourself in that space I wish for you a caring support team like mine…. family, friends, and church who have helped me carry on. Along the way I recently returned to this late-life observation I first posted four years ago. I found it worth reading again. Perhaps you will too.
WE CAN'T DO WITHOUT IT
Happy New Year to all. 2018 is only hours old and already it has me off on a new tangent. Fact is, I did not plan to be writing this. I’m not sure where the notion came from. The inspiration....if I may be bold enough to call it that....seemed to arrive out of the blue.
I’ll bet that’s happened to you. The path you set out to follow, the one that seemed so right, even tempting yesterday seems to have lost its appeal. Instead, something new and different has grabbed your attention. I’m not sure where this detour will take me, but I am willing to follow my intuition and find out.
Thing is, I have spent years weaving ideas, some of them important and some rather trivial, into stories about late life. It has been a satisfying challenge ….telling what I believe are true-to-life tales about today’s seniors….wrapping the lives of friends I have created out of thin air in the October/November values, virtues, and vices that seemed worth depicting.
I will admit, however, there have been times along the way when I was tempted to forego the storytelling part, and instead take time to focus on those values, virtues, and vices in greater depth than a fictional narrative allows.
There are things that happen to you and me every day….things we too often let pass without notice. With that in mind I decided to spend today’s post recalling some of the lessons my fictional friends have learned in their travels, and how blessed I have been to learn a thing or two from their adventures.
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If you are a late-lifer like me, chances are you view the world from the relative quiet of an October/November perch. From there we may occasionally revisit the times and events that have shaped our lives. In our more reflective moments we may even consider which of those efforts were worthy and worthwhile, and which were a waste of time.
That certainly holds true for me, an old guy who claims to tell stories about folks living out their October/November years. As mentioned above, of late I have felt less committed to telling those stories, and more inclined to dwell on the hard-learned realities they were meant to illustrate. Having spent a lifetime learning some of those lessons, perhaps it is not surprising that I want to explore the more important ones, without the distraction of weaving them into a story.
That’s what I hope today’s post will be….an in-depth look at one of those realities we all have dealt with in the course of our lifetime, but have perhaps never given the attention it deserves. Hopefully by the time we are done here you will have spent a few minutes remembering the ways you and your life have been touched by this bit of magic. Whether you consider it a virtue or a vice, it is something that everyone of us has experienced, and been thankful for.
So at this stage of the game I want to focus on what seems to me the heart of the matter….one of the life-lessons that make their way into my thoughts when I leave the door opened a crack. That is exactly what happened a couple nights ago, when a particular notion, or more precisely a particular word….that’s right….one word....caught my attention.
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The word in question was “Healing,” a plain, but powerful word that everyone can relate to. In the course of our lifetime each of us has been healed many times, in many ways. Truth is, we are constantly in the process of being healed, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.
In any case, for reasons I still don’t understand, my midnight thoughts had settled on that seemingly unremarkable word, and a rather remarkable truth I don’t remember having considered before….the simple fact that being healed is one of life’s great blessings.
Some of the best moments of my life, and yours too, have been times of healing, when we were made well and wholeness has been restored. You know the feeling. Having endured a time of infirmity or deprivation, you are finally restored to your allotted degree of health and wholeness.
That welcome reprieve can arrive in many forms….physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual to name a few. But whatever the burden that has been lifted from your shoulders, the resulting wholeness has qualified as healing.
So, as I put my thoughts on paper I hope you will take time to refer to your own moments of healing and restoration. I invite you to consider your personal experience….your insights on the universal reality of healing. After all, healing is an important part of life at any age, but especially old age.
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To begin with, I submit that our word-of-the-day….Healing….describes one of life’s greatest blessings. It is also an incredibly versatile word, that can be used in many different ways, to mean many different things. But in every instance it seems to imply ‘making healthy’ or ‘returning to a higher degree of wholeness.’
We most often think of ‘healing’ in terms of physical health. We sometimes refer to health-care professions as the ‘healing arts.’ And thankfully they are all that and more. Every one of us can cite examples of how healing has restored health and wholeness to ourselves and loved ones.
Still, we understand that ‘being healed’ is not the same as ‘being cured.’ Our October/November world is full of people like me who have had more than one brush with cancer or some other life-threatening condition, and been returned to a satisfying and functional lifestyle…we have been ‘healed’….without being ‘cured.’
Still, whether our search for physical healing leads us to health-care professionals, faith-based spiritual gurus, or sincere gratitude for a fortunate genetic inheritance….at one time or another each of us has sensed the comforting warmth of having been made well again.
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We realize too that those moments of blessed healing may not last forever. The time will come, whether tomorrow or ten years from now, when some form of misfortune will once again have us wishing and praying for a new round of healing. Yet, we must not allow that blunt realization to lessen our gratitude for the welcome healing we have experienced in times past.
We are, after all, a vulnerable species. As long as we live our need for restoration, in one form or another, will never end. Beyond that, we know by now that late-life healing is a relative thing. No matter how well the bones heal or the new knee works I will never again dunk a basketball. (Not that I ever could.)
Moreover, I know by now that October/November ‘wholeness’ is at best a mental judgment, a willingness to accept an age-appropriate level of renewal in keeping with the rest of my late-life existence. Truth is, by this time of life it seems we are constantly healing in one way or another.
For example, Roma’s pacemaker arrived as a mechanical means of coping, not curing. My new round of immunology therapy is simply the next step in an ongoing cancer-coping journey. On the very afternoon I started to create my first notes about healing, our daughter Amy lay in a hospital bed, recovering from the ordeal of donating a kidney….itself the very definition of a blessed healing act.
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Healing, however, can mean more than restoring a broken or infirmed body. Some of our most satisfying healing experiences, the ones that have touched us most deeply, had nothing to do with mended bones or restored organs. The same sense of ‘being made whole’ that we usually associate with physical healing applies just as well to other facets of our being.
There are innumerable non-physical conditions on our October/November plate….vital elements of our daily existence….that may need restoration and wholeness. Truth is, there are some infirmities that the army of medical caregivers who stand ready to serve us with their skills and pills, cannot heal.
By this time of life we may be alone or isolated, perhaps overwhelmed by bad luck or wrong turns taken in the past, or ‘what if’ moments that we managed to misplay. We may be in need of another, more personal, sort of healing….something beyond physical restoration.
Perhaps it is a hard-to-define blend of emotional and/or mental infirmity that has us seeking, in our own way, a more satisfying sort of non-physical healing. Hopefully by this time of life each of us has cultivated our own means of addressing those intangible healing possibilities.
And for some there are more intimate and personal sorts of ‘unwholeness’ begging to be healed. Relational health....getting along with family and friends....is an important part of a ‘whole’ life. If that is a problem for us, perhaps it is time to mend the relational bridges we have burned over the years. At any time of life, but especially in our October/November years, restored and revitalized personal relationships are a most productive sort of healing.
And then, of course, there is perhaps the most vital and satisfying form of restoration....Spiritual Healing....the soul-deep wholeness we all seek, no matter what we call it. There are probably no miracle drugs, space-age cures, or other short cuts to help us accomplish that. A million books have been written on the subject, each claiming to show the way to spiritual health. Yet in the end I believe it is our own personal inner compass, not someone else’s advice, that will guide us on that most personal of healing journeys.
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Finally, as you can certainly see by now, I am not here to tell you anything you didn’t already know. I do hope, however, that a few minutes spent revisiting the notion of ‘healing’ will help each of us shine a light on our own blessings of healing and wholeness....and perhaps renew our sense of awe at how fortunate we have been, in ways we don’t always stop to appreciate.
In the course of our lifetime we have been healed over and over. And we will always need more. But I happen to believe that it is not our passing acknowledgment of the healing we have received that matters most. Instead, it is our expression of gratitude, 'giving thanks,' that best validates the healing which has brought us to where we are today.
❤️
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