Wear the World Lightly

There is a story I heard once about two relatives who were attending the funeral services of a wealthy family member. One of them, with a greedy glint in his eyes, leans over and whispers; “how much did he leave?“. The other looks back and responds…”All of it“. The point of the story was that when our time comes, we don’t take any of our possessions with us.

St. Francis of Assisi, who was born into a wealthy noble family, left his life of possessions and privileges to start a monastery and live a life of simplicity. His advice to those who wanted to join him was to “Wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there but lightly”. 

St Francis Statue

The Alcoholic Anonymous organization adopted this teaching of St Francis and shortened it to the simple phrase: Wear the World Lightly. Their 12-step program for overcoming addiction uses lots of sayings to help people detach and overcome their addictions, phrases like: live and let live, let go and let God, turn it over, easy does it, and one day at a time.

All of these statements of detachment are not intended to send a message that we should be indifferent or dead to the world, or have no feelings at all. Rather their purpose is to teach people to face the world with a kind of mindful disengagement.

It is this “detachment with love” philosophy that can help motivate people to create a peaceful space within themselves, separated from the never-ending incoming arrows of uncertainty, fear, anger, and other painful events that plague our life. Practicing detachment helps people look past the daily shocks that occur, producing a change of attitude in the mind and a physical release in the body.

To wear the world as a loose garment is to acknowledge that the world and our life will always press at us and around us, but that it does not have to touch us but “lightly”. Most things are either outside our control or ultimately unimportant. 

We do not need to grasp, manage, dwell on or react to everything that happens to us. We can choose instead to keep the world at an emotional distance so we can stay focused on doing the next right thing. It is an attitude that can relax the body and relieve the mind of the poisonous emotions that overcome us when we are confronted by the people, places or things that beset us.

To be in the world but not of it, is to live and move through life without being emotionally attached to everything that happens. Life can get hard, but those who wear the world lightly learn how to live in the world with their hardships, neither fighting them nor being crushed by them.

St Francis was essentially encouraging us to not sweat the small stuff. To not get annoyed or depressed when life does not go your way or when you do not get what you want. When you have lived long enough you come to understand that most of the things that bother us are small potatoes. Even death apparently, which the Dalai Lama described as a simple change of clothes.

I’ve heard it said that the secret to happiness as we age “is to care less and less about more and more“. The wise elders I have been fortunate to know in my life carried that attitude with them; they tended to let fewer and fewer things bother them as they got older. It’s not because they didn’t care, most likely it was just that they discovered through their life experience that it is possible to walk away, without anger or agitation, from some things they felt passionate about – and still live.

I happened across an on-line sermon about this same topic of wearing the world lightly by Bishop Robert Barron. From a spiritual point of view, Bishop Barron also believes that St Francis’ famous statement was an attempt to teach his followers about the importance of detachment – especially from the goods and achievements of the world.

Not because the world itself is bad – there are all kinds of good, true and beautiful things in the world – but because the things of the world are not the ultimate good and we are not meant to cling to them as though they were.

There are stories throughout the Bible about the futility of clinging on to earthly power, riches and glory. King Solomon is one of the greatest figures in the history of Israel from a standpoint of wealth and power. He was somebody who had it all; nobody was richer, nobody was more famous, nobody had richer palaces or clothes. But, as an old man, looking at all the possessions he has acquired over his lifetime, he says: “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!“.

The word vanity in Hebrew signifies something that is insubstantial and momentary, like wind or vapor or bubbles; something that is here for a brief time and then it is gone. Solomon has experienced everything: power, sensual pleasure, wisdom, honor and wealth. He has built up a reserve of wealth through his knowledge and skills and yet when he is gone, he must leave all his property to others who have not labored over it and do not deserve it.

It is not uncommon to hear complaints like this from men as they become old and infirm; “I gave my whole life to my business, I worked hard and I made a fortune. Now I’m an old man and I’m surrounded by ungrateful children and grand-children; and I’ve done all this work and yet these people are going to inherit all my wealth. What’s it all been about“?

If you live to be old enough, at some point, you finally come to realize that everything in this world has a quality of evanescence – it disappears and does not last. It is a good thing if you have been successful and built up a fortune – but it’s not going to last. Because you are going to fade away and it’s all going to go to somebody else.

Should we just be depressed then? Father Barron says no, not depressed, instead we should be detached. Our wealth, power, pleasure and the esteem of other people. It’s good. We should take it in and then let it go. We should enjoy it the way you enjoy a firework going off. Learn to live in the present moment, savoring what we can, but then letting it go.

Why? Because we come to realize that the truly good and beautiful things belong to a higher world. We can sense them in the good things of this world but none of our earthly things last and so if we cling to them, what happens is they disappear, they crumble as we try to grasp at them. Rather see them, appreciate them and then let them go.

We can get caught in an addictive pattern when we cling to the goods of the world. You worry about them so you say to yourself, oh no I better get more. Instead, we would be wise to remember the cautionary parable of the rich fool told by Jesus:

“The ground of a certain rich man brought forth abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”‘ “But God said to him, ‘You fool, this very night your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared— whose will they be?’

Luke 12:16-21

St Francis asks us to cultivate an attitude of detachment in our life. To stop clinging and hanging on to the things of the world. The more we cling to them, the more we become imprisoned by them. We’ll become bitter, angry , empty if our only focus is on the acquisition of ephemeral things. But if we practice the proper spiritual attitude of detachment and keep our eyes on the true and beautiful things that do not fade away then we will know how to handle the goods of the world as they come to us.

Fr Barron closes his sermon by emphasizing again that wealth in itself is not the problem. He points out that wealthy people can be saintly when they know how to use their wealth, how to wear it lightly and how to become generous with it. The only thing we take with us into the life to come is the quality of our love and what we’ve given away on earth. So, we should forget about trying to fill up our lives with bigger barns; true joy in life comes through building up our treasure in heaven.

The publication of this particular blog represents a milestone for me and the achievement of a goal I set for myself way back in 2013 when I posted my very first Words to Live By blog entry. I have been publishing this monthly blog for almost 10 years now and and have managed to author 100 different blog entries in that time.

I have attempted in this collection of postings to communicate ideas and philosophies that have helped me along the way and given my life direction and meaning. It has been a wonderful mental exercise for me and a labor of love that has helped me recognize things that make life interesting and wonderful. I hope my readers have discovered some of their own words to live by that will be of specific value to them in their own life.

In the spirit of “wearing the world lightly”, I plan to cut back on my blogging activities moving forward so that I am can devote more time focusing on doing the next right things in my life that will increase the quality of my love. I don’t plan to walk away from blogging completely though, as there are always more words to live by to be discovered and examined.

So, keep an eye out for the occasional future posting from me; and until then, may the blessings abound in your life.

Can Do Attitude in a Can’t Do Body

One of the things my wife and I like to do together is attend performances at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. We consider attending plays one of our better date activities because it provides us with an opportunity to break out of our normal routines and have engaging conversations together about the moments in the performances that stirred our emotions or stimulated our minds.

Recently we attended a two-man play called Best Summer Ever that was written and performed by Kevin Kling – an accomplished playwright, storyteller, and contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. Kling is an ebullient personality and there is something childlike, mischievous, and endearing about him that works to win over his audiences from the start.

One of Kevin’s most admirable qualities is his attitude towards overcoming the physical disabilities that are a part of his life. He was born with a congenital birth defect that shriveled his left arm and left it without a wrist or thumb. Then, at the age of 44, Kevin was in a motorcycle accident that completely paralyzed his right arm and disfigured his face.

Kling is open about his disabilities and tries to explain, with humor, the blessings he has derived from his misfortunes and the benefits that can come from tackling life’s obstacles with faith and a positive attitude. His family and friends stood by him while he recovered from his motorcycle accident and years of rehab.

“It’s hard to deny the power of prayer when you’re on the receiving end of it. I know it helped me heal. At times it was like skiing behind a power boat — all I had to do was hang on… As terrible [as my injuries were] and as scared as I am sometimes, I still feel blessed. And when I get discouraged I just look at my two wiener dogs because they are the best example of a ‘can do’ attitude in a ‘can’t do’ body.

Kevin Kling

Kling separates the disabilities that we are born with from those disabilities we acquire later in life and he points out that being so-called “able-bodied” is always just a temporary condition – sooner or later we are all likely to suffer from life’s frailties. He feels that when you are born with a disability, you grow from it, but when you experience a loss later in life, you have to grow toward it; you need time to grow into the new person you haven’t yet become.

Kevin wrote “The Best Summer Ever” as a way of growing toward the new person he was becoming after his accident. He does this by going back and telling the heartwarming story of his 9 year childhood journey growing up as the son of Norwegian immigrants in rural Minnesota. Exploring his childhood from this perspective became a kind of therapy; helping him to find pieces from his past to fit, not the person he was, but the new person he was becoming.

There were two moments from the play that stood out in my mind as reflections of the kind of positive wisdom Kevin had to share about life with his audience:

We all have a deep desire to feel connected, no matter what age

There is a scene in the play where 9 year old Kevin tries his best to comfort his aging grandfather who is grieving the death of his brother. Kevin is trying to understand why his grandfather is so sad and comes to the realization that his grandfather must feel like an orphan now because his mother, father and all his siblings are now gone. He is the last one of his family left.

How must it feel when the people you had the strongest connection to throughout your life are no longer here? I wonder about my 93 year old mother. After living through the deaths of her mother, father and seven siblings, does she feel like an orphan in some way? Despite her many children and grandchildren, is she happily looking forward to re-establishing connections again with her family on the other side?

Kevin talks fondly about his grandparents and the role they played in his life, saying his relationship with them was one of his strongest connections and one that most shaped who he became:

“I connected with my grandparents. And I think we were in the same light. I mean, I was in the dawn, and they were in the twilight, but we were in the same light. And because of that, they were heading to the creator, and I was coming from the creator. And it seemed, because of that, we spoke a very similar language.“

Live so that your Light outlives you

At the conclusion of the play, Kevin is looking at a nighttime sky full of shining stars and marvels that since the stars are so far away it takes hundreds or thousands of years for their light to reach the earth. This means that those of us left on on earth will continue to receive light from the stars even after they are long dead.

Kevin believes that the light from people can live on after they die too. The good that we do, and the light we share will outlive us if we act to make a positive difference in the lives of the people we love and take meaningful action against the injustice we see in the world.

When Kevin looks up at those stars at night he is happy to feel the presence and memories of his grandparents and parents shining down on him. I hope when you look up at the stars, you too can take comfort and feel gratitude for the connections you had with your loved ones. But more important I hope you are living the kind of life that will continue to shine light long after you are gone. When you think about it, being a light for someone else is one way for us to become immortal.

Dancing Our Sorrow Away

When I was in College, the Jackson Browne album “Late for the Sky” was in heavy rotation on my apartment turntable. The album’s introspective songs had a certain appeal to a young man growing up and just starting to make his way in the world because they asked big questions about the purpose of life and how to think about all the tricky emotions that come with adulthood.

His song “For a Dancer” acknowledges one of the sad truths about life: that one day everyone and everything we love will be gone. Knowing this, Jackson sings that we owe it to those we love to make a joyful sound with our lives while we are here – and to do our best to spread seeds that will blossom long after we are gone.

Listen on Youtube to: Jackson Browne: “For a Dancer”

The final verse of the song reminds us that we all know people who have had a positive impact on our life (a teacher, coach, parent, friend) and who helped us to become who we are. Those people did great things for us, usually without knowing it. We are likewise called, Jackson sings, to have a positive impact on the lives we touch – even though we may never live to see the fruit of our labors.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
That you’ll never know

Jackson Browne “For a Dancer“

The song was written as a moving meditation on the death of Browne’s friend; who died in a fire at a young age. Browne explained that his friend was an interesting guy; a great dancer; a great tailor who would make his friend’s clothes; an ice skater who skated for the Ice Follies. “He was a Renaissance man and when I wrote him the song – I was trying to express the idea that your life is a dance”.

I like that image of our life as a dance and that we never know when it will be our last time on the stage. When I think of dancing, I think of being uninhibited, of letting my body react to the beat of the music, and of sharing a joyful personal moment with my dance partner.

When you are busy dancing, you are not worrying about your troubles, or the problems that that you will face tomorrow. Dancing is one of life’s rare human rituals; a moment of pure expression when you are able to forget about your ultimate fate and just focus on making a joyful noise.

A recent Youtube video created by the School of Life Company echoed a similar philosophy about the benefit of living life in the moment. The video was a commentary on the cultural expression “…rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic“, that is often used by people when they want to convey the futility or meaninglessness of a task.

Those familiar with the fate of the Titanic know that the hull was damaged and that the ship was destined to sink; so for the passengers on that ship to concern themselves with the position of the deck chairs is a failure on their part to recognize the true hopelessness of their situation.

Our life situation can become a little like passengers on a doomed liner. Our larger hopes in life have not come to fruition. We have come to see that our career won’t ever flourish; our relationships will always be less than ideal; we’ve passed our peak in terms of looks; our bodies begin to fall prey to ever more humiliating illnesses; society is becoming more dysfunctional than ever and political progress looks highly improbable.

It can start to feel like our ship is going down and that it would be silly trying to improve our condition, let alone find pleasure and distraction in our daily life. It would be to live in denial of the facts. Our instinct instead is to become pessimistic and gloomy about our ultimate end.

However, there is a crucial element which makes our predicament different from that of the passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic. Those passengers only had a few hours to contemplate their fate before the ship broke apart and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Our ship is going down too, but much more slowly. It’s as if the captain has let it be known that our ship is sinking and we can’t be rescued… but it will likely be a decade or more before we meet our final fate.

So, though we can’t be saved, though the end will be grim, we still have options as how to use our remaining time. We are involved in a catastrophe, but there are better and worse ways of passing the time and filling our days. Under those different circumstances, expending thought and effort on ‘rearranging the deck chairs‘ is no longer ridiculous at all, it becomes a logical step; one that can be turned into a higher calling.

When the larger hopes for our lives become impossible, we can learn to grow inventive around lesser, but still real, options for the time that remains. Keeping cheerful and engaged, in spite of everything, can bring some light through the dark storm clouds that you know are ahead.

Consider, for example, that you are on a very gradually sinking luxury liner in the early 20th century, you might every evening strive to put on a dinner jacket, dance the Foxtrot to the music of a string quartet, sing a cheerful song or settle into the ship’s library to read a good book – even as the water begins to pool at your ankles.

Or you might try to engage in a friendly game of shuffleboard on the slightly tilting deck; or decide to drop-in on a wild party in Steerage; help to comfort some despairing fellow travelers; or just try to have a deep and comforting conversation with a new friend – even though you can hear the sound of dishes smashing somewhere in a galley down below.

Of course your life would – from the big picture perspective – still remain a thorough disaster; but you might find that you were at least starting to enjoy yourself.

This kind of attitude and inventiveness is precisely what is need to help us cope with our state. Can we invest the days we have left with meaning even though everything is, overall, entirely dark? Our culture teaches us to focus on our big hopes, on how we can aim for everything going right. We crave a loving marriage, deeply satisfying and richly rewarding work, a stellar reputation, an ideal body and positive social change. What remains when those things are not attainable – when love will always be tricky, politics compromised, or the crowd hostile?

What is our equivalent to seeking the best spot for a deckchair on a sinking Ocean Liner? If marriage is far less blissful than we’d imagined, perhaps we can turn to friendship; if society won’t accord us the dignity we deserve, perhaps we can find a group of fellow outcasts; if our careers have irretrievably faltered, perhaps we can turn to new interests or hobbies; if political progress turns out to be perennially blocked and the news is always sour, we might absorb ourselves in nature or history.

In doing this, we would be turning to what our society might dismiss as Plan-B’s (what you do when you can’t do the things you really want to do). But there’s nothing wrong with that! It just may turn out that the secondary, lesser, lighter, reasons for living are, in fact, more substantial and enjoyable than we imagined.

And after a while we might come to think that they are what we should have been focused on all along – only it has taken a seeming disaster to get us to realize how central they should always have been.

My mother has always been a model to me of this kind of inventive thinking and an example of someone who has always been able to discover new things to do when she can no longer do the things she loves doing.

Now in her 94th year, she has good reasons to be gloomy about her present condition. Her ship has been slowly sinking over the last two decades. She is the last surviving member of her large, close knit, family; she lost her beloved husband after 66 years of marriage; she reads about the passing of friends and acquaintances almost every day in the obituaries; she has lived through several strokes and cardiac operations to place stents in her arteries; she struggles with gradual loss of hearing, eyesight, teeth and memory as well as the humiliating indignities of incontinence and lack of mobility that come with aging.

Despite these life difficulties, it is not in my mother’s nature to be gloomy. She laments what she has lost, yet she finds a reason to be optimistic about her situation and to be happy with the things that she can do. Here are some of the ways my mother has learned to stay cheerful, smiling and engaged in her diminished old age:

• She has learned to navigate an iPad so she can keep track of the Facebook lives of her eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• She has become a late-in life sports fan, following with anticipation the exploits of her favorite New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox teams.
• She volunteers for her Church prayer line ministry, spending time each day praying for those in her parish who are in most need.
• She visits her husband’s grave regularly to sit in contemplation and tend to the flowers and plants.
• She tries to include some form of bodily exercise every day. Short walks with her walker outside on nice days, elderly chair exercises, rubber band stretching exercises.
• She communicates with her smart speaker to listen to music or hear the news (even though she worries about Alexa eavesdropping on her conversations).
• She stays engaged by reading books and bingeing her favorite TV shows.
• She visits French Youtube language web sites so she can enjoy hearing and practicing the French language that she grew up speaking.
• She has become the project manager of her house, assigning her children work to do around the house that she has historically done in the past and overseeing it to make sure it is done to her standards.
• She takes short field trips with her children to places from her past and shares happy memories of the people and events that shaped her life.

I co-share caretaker duties with my siblings and I feel blessed to spend one or two days every week with my mother. It has been a privilege for me to watch how she accommodates the frailties of old age without sacrificing her spirit. She knows the end is near, but she is not afraid; and until the end comes she is determined to wake up with a reason for living – and make sure the deck chairs are properly arranged on the deck.

May we too always find a way to dance our sorrows away.

The Life of the Dead is Placed in the Heart of the Living

My uncle Rheo served in the Navy during World War II, but he died prior to the creation of the National Veteran Cemeteries which are funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs to honor the men and women who have honorably served the United States during the nations wars. He ended up being buried in a single plot at his local town cemetery.

Three of his brothers (Roger, Romeo and Andrew) also served in the military, but because they died at a later date they were provided a full military funeral and no-charge burial at a Massachusetts Veterans Cemetery. This never seemed fair to our extended family, so this summer we initiated a process to have my Uncle Rheo disinterred from his burial location and moved to the Veteran’s Cemetery – where he could be laid to rest in the presence of his brothers and among his fellow servicemen.

Having written before about the important role my Uncle Rheo had in my life, the family asked me if I would speak at his memorial ceremony. I have included a copy of my eulogy for this much loved man below – I hope all my readers were blessed to grow up with a similar loving presence in their lives.

A Celebration of Life: Rheo Gilbert Meunier (1923 – 1984)

Rheo Gilbert Meunier (1923 – 1984)

I’m honored to stand up here today to speak about my beloved Uncle Rheo. I was only 24 years old when he died in 1984 but I can honestly say that not a week has gone by in the 37 years since he passed away when I haven’t thought about him.

He was a giant of a man in so many ways – someone who was bigger than life, blessed with an infectious smile and that big Meunier heart. I can just picture him now, beaming down at us, happy to see everyone gathered here today and happy to be resting with his brothers.

It was my good fortune that my mother chose her big brother Rheo to be my Godfather. Rheo was one of those rare Godparents who took his role seriously. His relationship with me did not end after the baptism ceremony – it was only starting. He became an important part of my life and a model to me of Christian living, showing me by his words, actions and friendship what it meant to be a good man.

He packed a lot of living into his shortened life, growing up on a small family farm with his 5 brothers and two sisters during the hard days of the Great Depression. His formal education ended when he was 12, cut short so he could stay home to help his father run the farm. He grew into a strong, handsome and strapping young man from all his strenuous labor.

He was part of the Greatest Generation, enlisting in the Navy in 1942 when he was just 19 years old and serving four years fighting for his country during World War II; seeing action in the North Atlantic and doing tours patrolling the Suez Canal and the Russian coast.

When he returned from the war, he was able to land a good job working as an electrical lineman. He ended up working at the Municipal Light Company in Templeton for 36 years – rising through the ranks to the position of Foreman.

He was a victim of a freak accident while working on the job early in his career. He was strapped high on a telephone pole trying to repair a downed wire when the pole snapped in half crashing to the ground with Rheo still attached.

It was a testament to his strength and determination that he managed to survive that tragic event. He slowly recovered his strength and regained much of his athleticism – however he did suffer some permanent internal damage to his body that would bother him throughout his life.

But it was not in his nature to complain about his bad luck or to let unfortunate circumstances dampen his spirits. He was a glass half-full kind of guy; someone who always saw the sunny side of life. Despite his situation we always saw him smiling, laughing, energetic and full of life.

He was a man of action with plenty of money to buy toys like convertible sport cars, motorcycles, cabin cruiser boats and snowmobiles; and to take skiing vacations in the Swiss Alps, scuba diving excursions in Hawaii, fishing expeditions to Cape Cod and river rafting & hiking adventures in Colorado.

Despite his James Bond lifestyle that we envied so much he always had time to spend with his extended family. He made it a point to visit with each of his seven siblings every few weeks just to stay in touch with their lives and to show interest in the activities of his 34 nephews and nieces.

I always thought it was a shame he didn’t have a family of his own, but as I look back on it now, I realize he actually had the biggest family of us all. He often said that he loved his nephews and nieces so much, he didn’t feel the need to have children of his own.

And his nephews and nieces adored him too. Looking forward to his visits when he would tell them interesting stories about his exotic travels, share with them his talent for yodeling or take them on exciting adventures and outings.

He would also generously volunteer to lend a hand whenever friends or family needed help. I remember him coming to our house one day when I was a young boy to help install electrical wiring at our house.

I shadowed him while he went about his work and while he patiently explained to me what he was doing and showing me all the tools he was using and how they worked. I was fascinated and think the experience kindled in me my interest in electricity and electronics which later led to my career as an engineer.

When his father passed away, Rheo became the primary caretaker of his mother. Rheo agreed to live with her, support her and take care of her so that she could continue to stay in the home she so loved.

In his 60th year he suffered a tragic series of events that contributed to his death from a sudden and massive heart attack. The first event occurred near Christmas in 1983. While he was out working late at night helping to restore power outages in the town, his Mother accidentally started a fire while trying to cook a ham for the family holiday dinner. His mother perished while trying to put out the fire and Rheo lost his mother, his home and most of his earthly possessions that night.

Then, in the space of two months’ time, Rheo’s brother-in-law passed away, his best friend lost his business to a fire and the Camp he owned was destroyed. The stress and grief were too much for his heart to take and led to his fatal heart attack in March of 1984.

The packed Church and military honors bestowed on him at his funeral showed how he was loved and respected by his community and family. I was honored to be one of the pallbearers selected to carry his casket; along with seven of his other beloved nephews.

Although he was a religious man and regularly attended Sunday Services at his local church, he never lectured me about religion or preached to me about God. I did learn, however, so much about morality from what I saw him do.

Whenever he saw me, he would make it a point to sit with me, look into my eyes and take a genuine interest in learning about what was happening in my life. On my birthdays he would give me a card and some money or a cool gift; on Easter he would give me my own chocolate bunny to enjoy; for my 1^st Communion he gave me a Savings Bond.

Beyond that, he would go out of his way to spend time with me during the year. Rides in his convertible car with the top down to get ice cream, snowmobile rides through his snowy woods and ocean fishing trips in his cabin cruiser boat. He was a perfect role model for a young boy growing up and learning about the world

And not just me! The funny thing is that, at the time, I thought I was special, but listening to everybody’s remembrances of Rheo after he was gone made me realize that he did these kinds of things for everybody – he had that quality that made everyone feel special!

Even in death, his generous spirit was still being revealed as he left money in his will for all of his brothers and sisters. My parents were grateful that they were able to invest the inheritance they received from him to help them in their later years.

One of the most precious gifts I ever received was Rheo’s gold Swiss watch – which my mother was able to obtain and give to me after he passed away. I treasured that watch for many years and would always wear it on special occasions and think of him.

I decided to give this watch as a gift to my sister Linda’s son Rheo (who was named after his Great Uncle) when he celebrated his sacrament of Confirmation because I could see in him a glimmer of the same spirit that drove his namesake great uncle.

Emily Dickinson, the writer, once wrote the words: “Of our greatest acts we are ignorant” to a friend of hers who was unaware that his interest and encouragement in her work had saved her life.  I don’t think my Uncle Rheo ever thought he was doing any great acts for me and he was probably unaware of the positive impact he had on my life.

I regret that because of his sudden death I never got the opportunity to tell him about the great acts he did for me, how important he was in my life and how grateful I was for all that I had learned from him.

I guess it is a lesson for us all to take the time while we still can to tell the people we love how much they mean to us and; like Rheo, to be a similar loving presence touching the lives of the people in our life in a positive way.

There is a saying that the life of the dead is placed in the heart of the living and I like to think that Rheo is still with us in a way. I see glimpses of him in the wide Meunier clan. A little bit of him lives on in each one of us who knew him; and through us, I think a little bit of him has also been passed on to the next generation too.

So, let’s celebrate the memory of Rheo Meunier, for his well lived life, for the loving spirit he brought to the world and for all the good deeds he did. Today we remember and honor his legacy as we welcome him to his final resting place.

A Prayer of Benediction for Rheo Meunier

Eternal God and Father, we praise you that you have made people to share life together and to reflect your glory in the world. We thank you especially now for our beloved brother, uncle and friend; Rheo Meunier whom we come here to remember today, for all that we saw in him of your goodness and love during his life and for all that he has meant to us.

Grant, O Lord that Rheo may sleep in eternal peace here in his new resting place. May it be a place of solace, of peaceful rest and glorious light. May he see your face and know the splendor of God and may his soul live in unending fellowship with you.

We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen

I feel Alive when I’m Doing it

When the American poet and essayist Louise Glück was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal“; I was intrigued to learn more about her.

I was not familiar with Glück or her work even though she had published 13 books of well-received poetry over a 52 year span, served as Poet Laureate of the United States in 2003 and was the recipient of numerous literary awards – including the the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Bollingen Prize.

While looking into Glück’s background, I learned that she was born in New York City in 1943 and raised on Long Island. Glück’s mother was of Russian Jewish descent and her father’s parents were Hungarian Jews who emigrated to the United States and ran a grocery store in New York.

Glück’s father had an ambition to become a writer, but went into business with his brother-in-law and achieved success when they invented the X-Acto knife. Glück’s mother was a graduate of Wellesley College. In her childhood, her parents taught Louise Greek Mythology and classic stories such as the life of Joan of Arc – themes of which she would mine in many of her later poems.

She began to write poetry at an early age, but as a teenager and young adult Glück struggled with anorexia. She described the illness as the result of an effort to assert her independence from her mother and as a way for her to come to terms with the illness and death of an of an elder sister. 

During the fall of her senior year she was taken out of high school to focus on her rehabilitation. She spent the next seven years in psychoanalytic therapy which she credited with helping her learn how to think and overcome her anorexia. During this time period she attended classes at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University and worked part time as a secretary – which she said did not suit her temperamentally.

Glück has been married twice, both marriages ending in divorce, and has one son. She currently lives in Cambridge Massachusetts and is an adjunct professor at Yale University.

While the subjects of Glück’s poems are wide and varied, scholars have identified the most common themes in her work as trauma, death, loss, suffering, failed relationships, and attempts at healing and renewal.

The scholar Daniel Morris observed that even a Glück poem that uses traditionally happy imagery still “suggests the author’s awareness of mortality, of the loss of innocence“. The writer Linda Rodriguez noted that “Her poetry explores the intimate drama of family tragedies resonating through the generations and the relationship between human beings and their creator.”

Glück utilizes her focus on trauma as a gateway to a greater appreciation of life says Carol Malone, writing for the Best American Poetry 2020 book, and uses her acceptance of mortality as a way to become a more fully realized human being.

I listened to a 2012 Academy of Achievement interview with Louise Glück that I found very thoughtful. When asked why she still writes, Gluck responded:

“Because I feel alive when I’m doing it and much less alive when I’m not doing it. I write to discover meaning… It’s much less about who I am than the idea that nothing should be wasted. Also, writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too. Bad luck, loss, pain; if you make something out of it then you are no longer bested by the events.”

It’s that kind of thinking, I believe, that allows Glück to be brutally honest in her poetry. She is not writing for her audience per se, but for herself. To make herself feel more alive, to make sense of her experiences and to wrestle even the negative circumstances of her life into something positive.

Later in the interview, when she is asked how she feels about the accolades and awards she has received for her work, she responds:

“They are nice and make life more comfortable. But what I want is not capable of being had in my lifetime. I want to live after I die, in that ancient way, and there will be no knowing until that happens – no matter how many blue ribbons I have attached to my corpse.”

There is a maturity and wisdom in her recognition of the vanity of earthly awards, and of their ultimate meaningless in the face of eternity. It will remain a mystery what the afterlife has in store for Louise Glück, but, I like to think that it is certain she will continue to live on through the striking poems she leaves behind.

One such striking poem I came across while browsing through her Collected Works 1962-2012 is titled New World:

New World Poem by Elizabeth Gluck

This poem made me think about my general reluctance to wander far from home – and how my preference to focus more on the interior life than the exterior life may have contributed to “holding down” my more exuberant life companions.

Because my engineering and marketing career necessitated frequent travel, I came to realize early on that travel is overrated. It seemed to me the best part of most journeys is that moment when you finally return to the comforts of home.

I am not alone in this sentiment. It was Blaise Pascal’s opinion that all human evil comes from man’s inability to sit still in his room; and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his book Self-Reliance: “Travelling is a fool’s paradise, our first journey’s discover to us the indifference of places… Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home”.

Reading this poem reminded me that it is important for me to temper my preference for the quiet and contemplative life with a spirit of adventure as well – because I don’t want to be the lead strapped to the ankles of my beloved family or the wet blanket that prevents them from experiencing adventures that contribute to making life memorable and interesting.

Life is a balance and being a recluse can blind you to all that the world has to offer. Also, what good does it do to be floating free if there is no one to share it with?

Today, Louise Gluck lives in Cambridge MA but she has spoken in the past about falling in love with the state of Vermont when she first moved there in 1971 to begin teaching at Goddard College. She credits the move as being instrumental in helping her get past her writer’s block.

Tragically, a fire destroyed her Vermont house in 1980 resulting in the loss of all her possessions. After the fire, Louise reluctantly moved from the state where she felt so much at home.

When the reporters asked her what she intended to do with the $1.1 million dollar award money that came with winning the Nobel Prize, it made me smile when she said she was thinking of buying a house in Vermont.

Enjoy Vermont Ms Gluck – I hope you feel very alive there and maybe I will be lucky enough to bump into you someday during my New World travels to that magical Green Mountain state to visit with my beloved family connections.

No Gain without some Pain

When the Coronavirus epidemic first began to shut down the economy and close the schools, the audio book company Audible announced that they would offer free access to a collection of classic audio books – “so that kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories… that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being kids“.

I took advantage of Audible’s generosity by listening to several classic novels, one of which was Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray“. The 1890 novel tells the story of of a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man named Dorian Gray.

Dorian’s artist friend Basil, is so taken by Dorian’s appearance and noble bearing that he badgers him into sitting for a portrait. While putting the finishing touches on the portrait, which elegantly depicts the young Dorian as a handsome mythological figure, Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton.

Lord Henry is an upper-class intellectual who is popular in social circles for his amusing wit and charms, and for his selfish pursuit of pleasure. Upon observing Dorian’s portrait, Lord Henry praises it as a masterpiece and proceeds to give a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth.

The speech worries the impressionable young Dorian because he begins to realize that over time his most impressive youthful characteristics will inevitably begin to fade. This leads Dorian to curse his portrait, because he sees it will only come to remind him of the lost beauty he once had. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting would take on the burden of his age while he remained forever young.

His wish is granted. Throughout the years, Dorian’s friends age while he stays the same. His picture, however, gradually changes over time to reflect his increasingly evil and corrupt lifestyle.

Lord Henry corrupts Dorian’s mind and soul by encouraging him to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He gives Dorian a book describing the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman which becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption.

He lives a selfish lifestyle devoted to garnering new experiences and pleasures, with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions.

Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful. Meanwhile, the figure in the painting that is locked away in Dorian’s attic grows increasingly hideous. 

Near the end of the novel, Lord Henry asks Dorian how it is that he has managed to remain so young after all these years. He wants to know the secret behind what he believes is Dorian’s “exquisite” life.  

“Tell me Dorian how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. But you are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Quote from “Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

While listening to this novel, it struck me how strong the human longing is for eternal youth and how many schemes have been promoted over the years promising quick and painless ways to achieve it.

Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been searching for a Fountain of Youth. Tales of a mythical spring that can restore the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters show up in many historical writings – some dating as far back as the 5th century BC.

Based on these many legends, early explorers and adventurers looked for the elusive fountain, or some other remedy generally associated with magic waters, that when drunk or bathed in would reverse the aging process and cure sickness.

Even today, society’s unending pursuit to find some type of easy ‘medicine’ that will keep us forever young continues strong. One of the songs from 79 year old Bob Dylan’s latest album wistfully praises Key West as the place where the rejuvenating virtues of the sun and wind can be found:

Key West is the place to be
If you’re looking for immortality
Stay on the road, follow the highway sign
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you will find it there
Key West is on the horizon line

Lyrics from “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” by Bob Dylan

Fortunately for those of us living today, modern medicine and the discovery of life-saving vaccines have delivered on the promise of extending the human lifespan.

According to the organization Our World in Data, the average global life expectancy for the human species when Oscar Wilde was writing his book was 29 years old. By 1950, the average life expectancy had increased to 46 years – and by 2015 it had grown to 71 years. So, in the course of approximately 200 years mankind has successfully managed to more than double the average human lifespan.

Despite the incredible advances made by the medical and scientific communities to increase our longevity, science teaches us that nobody can live forever – everyone has an expiration date.

There is a ceiling on human lifespan. The longest living person as verified by the Gerontology Research Group was a French woman named Jeanne Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

Theoretical studies suggest that the maximum lifespan a human can achieve under circumstances that are optimal to longevity is approximately 125 years. The process of aging itself constrains our lifespan, which means that until mankind figures out a way to stop aging, not just treat or prevent specific diseases, there isn’t much chance humans will be able to increase their maximum lifespan beyond that age.

Though we accept there is no fountain of youth or chance at immortality, we also know that certain lifestyle habits can help us stay healthy and younger looking as we grow older. Scientists have provided overwhelming evidence that the following lifestyle habits positively contribute to human health and longevity:

• Maintain Healthy Body Weight – Maintaining a healthy body weight lowers the risk of developing diseases and conditions associated with aging such as diabetes, clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. People who limit their calorie intake have healthier heart muscle elasticity, blood pressure and inflammatory markers.
• Eat Smart – A healthful diet includes a variety of fruits and vegetables of many colors, whole grains and starches, good fats, and lean proteins. Eating healthfully also means avoiding processed foods with high amounts of added salt and sugar. A 2015 study showed that eating a healthy diet slows cognitive decline, improves bone strength and enhances gastro-intestinal health.
• Exercise – Working out helps combat the loss of bone density and muscle mass that naturally occurs in our skeletons as we get older. A study, published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that 70-year-olds who regularly lift weights had as much muscle as 28-year-olds. Consistent mobilizing and stretching of our bodies also helps to reduce the effects of aging on joints and muscles.
• Sleep – Sleep acts as a true fountain of youth for our bodies by providing a pathway for our bodies to repair and rejuvenate itself. People who get a good night’s sleep report feeling more alert, energetic, happier, and better able to function. Research shows that sleep plays a critical role in our immune system, metabolism, muscle growth, tissue repair, memory, learning, and growth hormones. It clears away all of the harmful by-products of the cells’ activities that are produced while we are awake. Sleep is so important to our functioning, that animals who are entirely deprived of it lose all immune function and die in just a matter of weeks.
• Form Connections – Positive social connections with other people and a belief in a higher power have been shown to improve physical health and mental and emotional well-being. One landmark study published by Science Magazine showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Strong social connections were shown to strengthen our immune systems, help us to recover faster from disease and increase our longevity. People who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and greater empathy for others.
• Minimize Environmental Toxins – Prolonged exposure to harsh environmental toxins like smoke, pollution, direct sunlight and loud noise can damage and prematurely age our bodies. Without protection from the sun’s rays, daily exposure can cause noticeable changes and damage to the skin and facial wrinkles start forming on the faces of smokers as young as 20.

We have all been given a map that shows us how to maximize our longevity and stay feeling young and healthy for as long as possible. So why is it that so many of us, myself included, have such a hard time changing our lifestyles to adopt these healthy lifestyle habits?

We know what we should do to maintain our health but our human nature gets in the way, making it difficult for us to sacrifice those momentary un-healthy pleasures that tempt us every day for the promise of benefits that we hope to see sometime in the future.

Most people tend to choose the path of least resistance. It is difficult for many people to limit calories and maintain a healthy body weight; it is unpleasant to eliminate unhealthy foods that you love and replace them with healthy foods you do not enjoy; it is painful to motivate yourself to exercise when you feel tired; it takes discipline to shut off today’s 24/7 news and entertainment options so that we do not shortchange our sleep cycles; it takes commitment to cultivate and nourish our social networks; and it is almost humanly impossible to overcome chemical addictions that become rooted in us.

All of those things are hard so it is no wonder that many of us are like Lord Henry Wotten, who strongly desires the youthful qualities he sees in Dorian, but is also unwilling to suffer any pains to his lifestyle habits or pleasures in order to achieve the gains he covets.

The challenge for all of us is to develop the strength to reject our instant gratification tendencies and to keep in mind the eventual long term rewards that we hope to accrue from today’s short term pains. It helps to think of the struggle we are in today as developing the strength we need to have a better tomorrow. As Coco Chanel once remarked, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; but it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.”

I do not fear death because I see both birth and death as good things. Death frees up the planet’s limited resources to make room for the next generation and drives us to live purpose-driven lives. But I am apprehensive of a future in which I gradually deteriorate as I age because of sickness, feebleness, pain and cognitive decline. I imagine that living life with those age-related conditions would cause my life to lose much of its flavor.

My goal is to stay healthy and active up until the day I die. I know that is probably unrealistic but at least it is a goal that keeps me motivated to put up with the pains that come with pursuing healthy lifestyle habits.

Even though I often fail by making unhealthy lifestyle choices, I do not give up trying to achieve my goal. Because doing something is better than doing nothing and winning some of the time is better than giving up altogether.

The surprising thing I have found is that the more I try, the easier it gets. I actually feel better when I eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and connect with friends and family. The effort to live healthy doesn’t have to make us miserable – it can pay dividends that make us happy both in the short and the long term.

So, unlike Dorian Gray, I hope the picture of your journey shows a full life that is well-lived; and may you be healthy and happy until the day you die.

‘Tis a Fearful Thing to Love

I recently facilitated a memorial service for my mother’s sister who lived to the goodly age of 100. My Aunt Jeannette Marie was a loving daughter, mother to 6 children, a grandmother, great grandmother and wife to two husbands.

The Last Photo of my Mother with her Sister

She was one of those people who would light up and make you feel good whenever you were in her presence. She always had a good word for everybody and even though she suffered tragedy in her life – her first dying in a train accident when he was just 24 – it was not in her nature to complain, choosing instead to focus on her many blessings.

With her sister’s passing, my mother, at 91 years old, became the last surviving person of that close 10 member family clan she grew up with. My mother was close to her sister and loved her dearly so it is natural that she is experiencing feelings of sadness, loss and grief. Especially because she no longer has anyone in her life who she can talk to about the “old days” and all the good and bad times they went through together as a family.

To begin the memorial service, I asked my wife to recite the poem ‘Tis a Fearful Thing’ that is believed to have been written by a Jewish Rabbi sometime in the 11th century. It is a moving poem about the intersection of grief and faith and love and it is often shared by Hospice teams with the families of those who are grieving a loved one who is nearing death.

‘Tis a Fearful Thing

‘Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.
A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.
For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

One of the Five Remembrances that Buddhists contemplate during their meditation practices is this one:

I will be separated and parted from everyone and
everything that is dear to me

Anyone who lives long enough knows the pangs of sadness that come with loss. From the moment we are born and bond with our parents, grandparents and siblings; fall in love; marry; have children of our own—we are destined to endure the pain of losing someone we love—over and over again. My mother, at this point in her life, has had to say painful goodbyes to her husband, parents and 7 of her siblings, not to mention many close friends.

It’s enough to make you think that life is just an elaborate setup for suffering. But somehow we still manage to choose life. We choose to make friends, marry, bring new life into the world. We lose a spouse or partner and we decide to give our hearts to a new companion, opening ourselves up to more eventual sorrow. Are we in denial to think that death will not touch this new love too?

Why do conscious and highly intelligent beings make themselves vulnerable to the eventual pain and sorrow that comes with losing the one you love. Is love really something for fools? Is it not insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result?

What is it that makes us choose to invest in love and life? The poem teaches us that it all comes down to love – because it is ‘a holy thing to love.’ Love, life, death and love again is what it means to be human.

The poem’s closing words reflect a profound truth that speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the best character traits of the human species:

It is a human thing, love
a holy thing, to love what death has touched.

Love survives death. Death destroys the body but it does not touch love—or erase love. The body is impermanent but Love is eternal. We somehow know at the deepest level that life is about love. It may be that our divine purpose is to love, no matter how painful the loss of a loved one will be, and to send that love out into the heavens.

We choose to deeply love someone because we believe and trust that it will always keep us connected. Love becomes the unbreakable tether between those of us “here” and those who have passed on. It is knowing this that enables us to overcome our fear of the certainty of death and separation.

To love deeply is holy. Holy. Love keeps us connected to the Creator of all Beings, to all of those we have loved and all those to come.  Even though my mother is sad when she thinks about all the loved ones in her life who death has touched, she still feels a holy connection with them which helps season her grief with painful joy and a spiritual component of hope that leads her to believe she will be reunited with them someday in the afterlife.

Let us embrace that love which is not severed by death. Painful, fearful, a thing for fools? Perhaps. Perhaps for some, at first. But it is also a holy thing… A holy thing to love.

“Why can’t I find my words?”

An ailing 93 year old man struggling with terminal health issues was recently talking with my wife about his care preferences and how he would like to spend his remaining days.

The man was a highly-respected member of his community as well as the dignified face of a successful family business whose duties often required him to interact with people during times of great stress in their life. He seemed to have a gift for knowing what to say to people when they needed a kind word or affirmation.

While struggling to explain his wishes for his end of life care, he paused in frustration and said “Why can’t I find my words?“; then in resignation he simply acknowledged “I can feel death coming for me“.

It is sad to see a man who always knew just what to say to suddenly find himself bereft of the one gift he felt he could always count on. Here he was, a lover of language, eloquent no more and unable to transform the thoughts in his mind to words on his lips.

It is only natural that he would become discouraged by his loss of language skills, but his simple statement questioning why he can no longer find his words was profound in itself and carries a lesson that we should all consider.

For me it is a reminder of the importance of having meaningful conversations with the ones we love while we still have our full faculties and can still find the words that express what we want to say. I hope that man did not die with regrets because of words he left unsaid.

As far back as I can remember I have been a lover of language, books and reading. That is probably the reason why I have such a deep connection to the poetic nature of Bob Dylan’s music and why the blog I have been writing since 2013 is called “Words to Live By“.

It has been gratifying for me to see that my two intelligent daughters have also inherited a joyful connection to language and history and to watch them as they pursue rewarding careers that benefit from the skillful way they use their words.

Those skills were on display in these heartwarming excerpts from a sixtieth birthday letter they wrote to me.

I inherited a lot of what makes me myself from you . My cowlick, my reflective manner, my intelligence; with language, ability to think critically, tendency to reflect on what’s important in life, love of music and even the disappointed face I show my children when they’ve misbehaved. I am so grateful.

After Mom’s death, we both did a great deal of growing on our own and figuring out our new places in the world. I am so lucky you gave me the space to explore the world on my own and yet you were still there to catch me every time I made a not so great decision. You supported me every step of the way even if you didn’t understand where I was coming from, and you still do to this day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ultimately, it was language that always connected us. It’s no surprise to me that your blog posts are prompted by quotes and phrases that inspire you, but it’s ironic because your own words have always been the ones I’ve lived by. From the time I was old enough to read, you’ve written in my birthday cards, “remember who you are”. Little did you know how important the concepts of memory and identity would become in my life, or that my career would be centered on them.

I can’t tell you how many times throughout our relationship I was terrified to tell you about a new life development or decision I made — thinking, surely, THIS will be the thing that pushes my peace-loving and tolerant father over the edge — only to be met by a sweet and reassuring phrase like, “You don’t have to live your life the way that I did — live your life for you.” Or a well timed reference like, “Bob Dylan says this is America. You can be whoever you want to be”.

Letter excerpts from my daughters

It means the world to me that they took time out of their busy lives to “find their words” and communicate them to me so tenderly. So often we look back over our life with regret, second-guessing our actions and wondering if we should have done some things differently. To hear directly from the people we love that overall they think we did a good job is a priceless gift.

The lesson I take from this dying man is that while I still have power over my words, I should use them to nourish all the important relationships in my life – before it is too late. Finding the right words to say about someone who was, or is, meaningful in your life is like a superpower that you can use to enrich somebody else’s life for the better.

A powerful example of the great power and joy words can bring to life can be found between the covers of John Bartlett’s famous book of Familiar Quotations. My daughter gifted me a used copy of this reference book which I have found to be quite mind expanding.

I liken it to drinking from a fire hose of the world’s collected wisdom from the beginning of mankind’s recorded memory. Imagine the curated and condensed wisdom of the world’s best minds (including Solomon, Homer, Confucius, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo, Dickens, Melville, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Dickinson, Twain, Kipling, Yeats, Proust, Frost and too many other to mention) – all packaged in a single 1100 page volume!

As much as this blog entry advocates for speaking out in a positive way, it was a quote by Publius in 35AD that I read in Familiar Quotations that reminded me that sometimes wisdom is best born in silence – especially when speaking out could hurt people:

“I have often regretted my speech, but never my silence“.

May you always know when it is time for you to speak up and when it is best to keep silent.

It’s Not Dark Yet, But it’s Getting There

I recently celebrated my 60th birthday – a moment of reckoning in one’s life when it seems appropriate to reflect on the bygone days of youth while also wondering what form life will take during the inevitable transition to old age.

The 60th birthday is considered a major milestone in many cultures. In China, someone who has reached the age of 60 is considered to have completed a full life cycle. The 60th birthday is commemorated with great extravagance because it is considered by them to be the beginning of a second life. 

When I think about it, it does seem to me as if I have lived a full life cycle. After all, what more can a man ask out of 60 years of life than to be born into a loving family; be bestowed with good health and a good education; be fulfilled with a satisfying job and rewarding career; be fortunate to find and share in the love of two beautiful women – who made me a proud father, step-father and grandfather to children who are now on their way to living out their own successful life cycles.

It’s funny to think back now of memories I have of playing the old Milton Bradley Board Game of Life in my College apartment with my future fiance and our friends. The game simulates a person’s travels through his or her life, from college to retirement, with jobs, marriage and possible children along the way. The overall goal is to retire as the wealthiest player at the end of the game.

Milton Bradley’s Game of Life

The decisions players make along the way – which include purchasing insurance policies, bank mortgages and stock investments – determine who wins the game of life and who spends their retirement days in Millionaire Estates, Countryside Acres, or the Poorhouse Farm.

Seems like only yesterday I was playing that game, but it was 40 years ago, and I realize I am now at a point where I have completed most of my personal life decisions and ought to be thankful for getting to the end with a winning hand.

I may not have retired the wealthiest man, or live in a Millionaire Estate, but I do live in a comfortable home in a bucolic setting which could easily pass for Countryside Acres. No matter what happens now, I can’t really lose at the game of life because I’ve already won – I’m playing with house money!

One glaring omission in the Life board game that I didn’t notice at the time (because no one who is young ever thinks about getting old) was that it stops at retirement – the end of our 1st life cycle.

The game does not ask the players to consider Medicare or Social Security benefits, Long Term Care insurance, Health Care Proxies, Wills and Trusts, Durable Power of Attorneys, Assisted Living and Nursing Homes, Disability, Hospice, Death, Funerals and burial decisions. All of those elements make up the domain of the second life cycle.

The unrecognizable face of the old man staring back at me from the mirror reminds me that I’m running out of time; as do these song lyrics that I find shuffling more often now in the soundtrack in my mind:

“I don’t look like I used to, I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t love like I used to. Oh… I can’t do the things I used to because I feel old”

“I feel Old” by the Heartless Bastards

“Ain’t gonna need this body much longer, ain’t gonna need this body much more. I put in 10 million hours. Washed up and worn out for sure”

“Don’t Need this Body” by John Mellencamp

“I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will. I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standin’ still… Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer, It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there”

“Not Dark Yet” by Bob Dylan

I am beginning my journey into the realm of the second life. From what I have observed, people who first enter this realm can become bewildered and embarrassed by the onset of old age and all of the infirmities that begin to come with it.

I was struck by this paragraph from the Grace Paley short story “Friends“, because it captures the awkward unsaid sentiments aging friends can experience when they haven’t seen each other in a while:

People do want to be remembered as young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they’re getting older they look at each other’s face a little ashamed. It’s clear they want to say, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn’t want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life’. To which, most of the time, the friend’s eyes will courteously reply, ‘My dear, it’s nothing at all. I hardly noticed’.

“Friends” by Grace Paley

My wife’s work at a hospice agency reminds me every week that the end comes before we know it and when it does it is usually painful and undignified. To focus only on this inevitability, however, is a distraction that diminishes all the possibilities for living a rewarding second life.

Instead it is better, I think, to focus on encouraging past research that shows people tend to grow steadily happier as they age. As the moodiness and demands of youth subsides, maturity seems to bring more contentment.

In a Pew Research Center survey, seven-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older said they were enjoying more time with their family, more financial security and more time for volunteer work, travel and hobbies. Sixty percent said they feel more respected and have less stress than when they were younger.

But there is some conflicting research on the subject of aging and happiness and some experts say contentment, no matter what the age, boils down to one thing: Attitude. They say attitude is everything and that the qualities that most contribute to feelings of contentment as we age include:

• Optimism – Older people seem to display a more positive outlook on life than their younger, stressed-out counterparts. As a person’s life expectancy decreases, they tend to focus on what makes them feel good today; rather than mulling over past regrets or future worries. They live in the moment focusing on what is good in their life rather than what has not been achieved.
• Less Want – Jackie Coller wrote: “There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.” The Buddhists believe that it is the human mind’s craving for things that is the source of suffering. As we age, we tend to become more comfortable and accepting of our lot in life and our role in society – thus reducing the conflicts and anxieties that come with constantly wanting to change our situation.
• Humor – Mark Twain said that “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” Being funny is possibly one of the best things you can do for your health. You can almost think of a sense of humor as your mind’s immune system.

Even though humor improves people’s overall quality of life, it is a hard habit for some people to adopt and practice. They take life too seriously and find it difficult to laugh at themselves or the frequent absurdities that make up our daily life.

In the novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes about an encounter an overly serious young girl has with her wise old Chinese friend:

“Do you think it’s funny to be so serious when I’m not even out of high school?” she asked. “I don’t see how it could be any other way, ” said Lee. “Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.”

“East of Eden” by John Steinbeck

With all this in mind, my simple goals for pursuing a second life filled with contentment are:

• to stay optimistic (60 may be old, but it is the youth of old age!)
• to want less (have few desires, be satisfied with what you have!)
• to cultivate my sense of humor (like George Carlin who joked when he turned 60 years of age that he was only 16 Celsius!)

If I am able to a accomplish those goals then maybe I will be lucky enough to feel like Ben Franklin who, at the goodly age of 84, wrote these words as he was preparing for the end of his remarkable second life…

“Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. I look upon death to be as necessary to to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

Taken from “The First American – The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” by H.W. Brands

Tombstone vs Ashes, I can’t decide…

Several years ago I attended an outdoor concert with my wife Kate. The main performers on that beautiful summer evening were an indie-rock band named Carbon Leaf.

One of the songs they played, “Tombstone vs Ashes“, stuck in my mind because it usually makes us uncomfortable to think about death – even though it is on the horizon for all of us.

Tombstone versus ashes
I can’t decide
Cast my spirit heaven-bound?
Seal my bones up tight?
Tombstone versus ashes
Ain’t it all the same?
Cast my spirit heaven-high
Let the ashes drift away

Ain’t we just like hay?
Cut and dried and baled
Our bodies grown to harvest souls
And used in some new way
Yeah, ain’t we just like hay?
We’re born to drift away
Til it’s lesson time, when we’re cut and dried
For the reasons why we’re made

All this time, like firelight
A glimpse of what’s in reach
Flickers out into night
All this time, like firelight
A glimpse of what’s in reach
A box of watches and sweet memories
Are all that’s left behind

Tombstone versus ashes
I can’t decide
Cast my spirit heaven-bound?
Seal my bones up tight?
Tombstone versus ashes
Ain’t it all the same?
Cast my spirit heaven-high
Let the ashes drift away

Song Lyrics: Tombstone vs Ashes by Carbon Leaf

When I was a boy, one of my friends happened to live next to a large cemetery and a group of us spent fun days riding our bikes and playing games in and around that warren of interconnected cemetery pathways. We even pitched a tent and had sleepovers on the cemetery grounds – although we didn’t manage to do much sleeping.

It just so happened that when I was in college, I landed a summer job as a member of a maintenance crew that was responsible for mowing and landscaping that same boyhood cemetery – along with 3 other public cemeteries in the city of Gardner. I used to joke that it was a great job because I had a lot of people under me.

During that time I learned how grave sites are prepared for upcoming funerals and I gained first hand knowledge about the equipment used in a typical American burial.

It was death on a more personal level that I came to experience in the subsequent 40 years since that cemetery job, having to witness the death and burial of my grandparents, uncles, father, wife and friends.

Maybe it is this background of mine that has contributed towards my tendency to sometimes stop at unfamiliar cemeteries every now and then and stroll around the grounds thinking about the inevitability of death and contemplating how I would like to see my body disposed of when my time comes.

So, when I happened to notice the book Grave Matters: A Journey through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial by Mark Harris sitting on the shelves at my local library it is no surprise that it found its way into my book bag.

The book paints a vivid picture of what actually happens to the body after it dies and makes it clear that the way our remains are handled in the hours and days after our death depends primarily on the burial choices we make before we die or, absent that, the choices our loved ones make for us after we are gone.

Cringe-worthy details on the process of embalming are provided, along with burial regulations that are imposed by cemeteries and local governments. Different chapters describe alternatives to the traditional American burial such as cremation, burial at sea, transformation to coral sea reefs, backyard burials or interment in nature cemeteries.

Like most people, I hadn’t given too much thought about the end of my life and I just assumed that my death and burial would take the same form as those I witnessed when I was a young man. That is to say, my dead body would be preserved, a wake would be scheduled for family and friends to gather and reminisce, a funeral Mass would be conducted in accordance with the rites of the Catholic Church and a final commendation would be spoken at the graveside – at which point my casketed body would be lowered into a concrete vault and sealed.

This has been the typical form of burial in the United States for over 150 years now, but Harris describes in his book how this “modern” form of burial only became popular during the second half of the 19th century.

Prior to that, most burials were considered family affairs and it was the members of the deceased person’s family who carefully attended to the dead body, laid it out in their home parlor for neighbors to pay their respects, saw to the building of a coffin and dug the grave site at the town cemetery or on their property burial plot. Preserving the body through embalming techniques was not practiced at that time and the funeral industry was not yet established.

The Civil War was the catalyst that led to the transformation of how burials were conducted. The bloody five year war raged across battlefields of the rural South. Military tradition of the time called for the dead to be buried where they fell, sometimes covered in nothing more than blankets or the uniforms on their backs.

For Union families, such an ignominious burial on enemy soil only served to multiply their sorrows and deny them the comfort of a traditional funeral and burial in the family plot. To avoid this fate, Northerners began dispatching friends and relatives to battleground grave sites or hospital morgues in an effort to locate and ship the remains of their loved ones back home.

During the long journey North in train railcars the battle torn remains of the slain Union soldiers would begin to actively decompose – in the sweltering summer months, they would putrefy badly. Even when the remains were placed inside airtight containers, the gases from the decaying corpse would sometimes build up to such a high degree that the container would explode.

This led Northerners to begin exploring an ancient strategy of preserving their dead that they called embalming. Embalming undertakers set up operations outside Civil War battlefields working to preserve the many thousands of slain soldiers using a variety of chemicals – primary among them arsenic and mercury.

Those first embalmers delivered well preserved and natural looking corpses that comforted bereft families and impressed onlookers. Stories of successful embalmings of military Generals circulated widely in the newspapers of the time which helped to advertise and sell the new technology to the public.

The final embrace of embalming by the public came with the death of President Lincoln. The body of the slain President was embalmed, displayed at the White House and loaded onto a funeral train bound for Springfield Illinois. The trip took two weeks. The train stopped at each major city and more than a million mourners filed past the open casket to view the peaceful and natural looking embalmed face of the 16th American President. Lincoln’s well preserved corpse proved the viability of embalming to the public and they began to request the technique for their loved ones.

Embalming came to become a standard element of the modern American funeral – despite the ending of the war and the advent of refrigeration which became available as another means to slow the decaying process. This change helped to turn the American funeral from an intimate family event into an expensive, resource-intensive, and sterile act.

It is easy to understand why families came to prefer embalming for their dead. Embalming transforms an ashen lifeless corpse into a lifelike body at rest – a “memory picture” and gives mourners the pleasing illusion that their loved one has simply slipped off to sleep.

But I wonder how many people would still wish embalming for their loved ones if they knew of the indignities that are visited upon the dead body in order to achieve that pleasing “memory picture”. The steps in the embalming process, as described in graphic detail by Mark Harris, are as follows:

• Wads of cotton or plastic plugs are placed in all the orifices of the body to prevent “leaking” of bodily fluids.
• The breasts of women are sutured together to make them “stand up”.
• Plastic eyecaps are glued to the underside of the eyelids and placed over the eyeballs.
• Mastic putty is placed inside the mouth to keep the cheeks from hollowing.
• A staple gun attached to wire is fired into the roof of the mouth and lower jaw bone and the wire is tightened to force the mouth to stay closed.
• A 2 inch gash is made in the carotid artery into which a tube connected to a pumping machine pushes out 3 quarters of a gallon of blood from the body, replacing it with pink formaldehyde based embalming fluid.
• To eliminate bacteria from growing and thriving around the internal organs, a hole is punched into the abdomen using a long hollow needle called a trocar. The trocar is maneuvered around the abdomen to siphon out the heart, lungs, stomach, colon, intestines, liver and bladder. The emptied abdomen is then flooded with formaldehyde and phenol.
• Any visible external wounds on the body are closed using superglue
• The final step is to shave and wash the body, style the hair and apply makeup.

At the completion of this process the embalmed body can be safely kept at room temperature for a week without refrigeration.

It’s hard for me to imagine anyone who would want their dead bodies to be prepared for burial in such a violent and toxic way. That is why there is a growing interest in what have been labeled green funerals.

Green (or natural) burial emphasizes simplicity and environmental sustainability. The body is neither cremated nor prepared with embalming chemicals. It is simply placed in a biodegradable coffin or shroud and interred without a concrete burial vault. The grave site is allowed to return to nature. The goal is complete decomposition of the body and its natural return to the soil.

We sometimes refer to our cemeteries as parks or greens, yet the typical American graveyard hardly qualifies as a natural environment. Our cemeteries function more as landfills for the materials that are used to preserve and encase us than they do as nature sanctuaries.

A typical 10 acre cemetery contains enough coffin wood to construct more than 40 houses, over nine hundred tons of casket steel and over twenty thousand tons of vault concrete. These wasteful and lavish burial ceremonies have served to extend our large carbon footprint even past the moment of our death.

Like the contents of any landfill, the embalmed body’s toxic cache of chemicals eventually escapes its host and leaches into the environment, tainting surrounding soil and groundwaters. In older cemeteries arsenic may be the longest enduring contaminant. In newer cemeteries, researchers have found elevated concentrations of copper, lead, zinc, and iron (metals used in casket construction) as well as the human carcinogen formaldehyde, one million gallons of which is buried into cemetery grounds each year.

And what purpose does the casket and vault serve? Some feel that they offer a comfortable resting place for the deceased and it protects the corpse from ever touching the ground or fully rejoining the elements. These reasons again focus primarily on lessening the squeamish feelings of those that are living rather than on what would benefit the dead best.

Cemeteries require casks and vaults not because it is best for the dead but because it avoids exposing the dead to the mourners and it prevents the cemetery grounds from collapsing around the decaying caskets.

In a natural burial remains are returned directly to the earth. Vaults are banned, embalmed remains prohibited. The idea is to allow physical bodies to degrade naturally and become incorporated into other living things like the trees and flowers – to be caught up in life’s continuing cycles of growth and death, decomposition and rebirth. It is a comfort to the dying to know that their death will contribute to the growth of new life and the preservation of nature.

For thousands of years, orthodox Jews have honored the Old Testament admonition to let dust return to dust by interring unembalmed remains wrapped in nothing but shrouds or in plain wood coffins with holes bored into the bottom which invite the earth elements into the casket.

Having now thought about it and considering all the options for my burial, my preference in an ideal world would also be to have a green funeral – buried shortly after my death in a forest or field overlooking one of my favorite fishing spots, wrapped only in a shroud.

However, I am bound by some constraints that prevent me from pursuing that ideal. My choices are constrained because I want to be buried next to my first wife Elaine who is in a cemetery that does not allow natural burials (the cemetery requires dead bodies to be placed in a casket and sealed in a vault). I also want to be buried in the same plot with my second wife Kate (if she agrees).

Since cemetery rules do not allow two bodies to be buried in the same plot, Kate and I would have to choose to be cremated so that our urns could be buried together and share the same grave plot. I am not thrilled with the wasted energy involved in cremating a body (which requires as much energy as driving a car 4700 miles), but cremation is the option that allows me to be buried together with my loved ones while also bypassing the need for embalming and eliminating the requirements for burial of a casket and vault.

Instead of selecting Tombstone or Ashes, these burial choices of mine would lead me to have a combination of both in this way.

• Cremation of my body soon after my death.
• A Catholic funeral Mass and final commendation at the graveside.
• An urn of my complete ashes to be buried at St Louis De Gonzague cemetery in the plot next to my first wife Elaine.

I will be reduced to the dust from whence I came and returned back to the earth, but I will also have a tombstone marking my final resting place for other pilgrims to walk amongst while contemplating their own journeys.

One final thought/prayer for Leslie, wherever you are…

When I checked out the Grave Matters book from my local library and began to read it, I came across an appointment card that was left in the book for a woman named Leslie.

It was for a July 3rd, 2007 appointment at the Regional Cancer Center. Finding that card gave me pause and it made me wonder what became of Leslie. It may be that Leslie and I passed each other in the medical center hallways as my wife Elaine was in the midst of her own struggles with cancer.

I pray that Leslie is still among us, but if not I hope she arranged to set in place the plans for a fitting and dignified burial and that her death is even now contributing to the growth of new life.

“And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths”

An essay written by Susanna Schrobsdorff  and published in the January 22, 2018 edition of Time Magazine tells the story of two widows who found solace with one another despite the grief and sadness they felt over the loss of their spouses.

The two widows were Lucy Kalanithi, wife of Paul Kalanithi, and John Duberstein, husband of Nina Riggs. Both Paul and Nina published memoirs in 2016 (titled When Breath Becomes Air and The Bright Hour) – about the emotions they were experiencing while struggling to cope with their terminal illnesses.

The essayist described how the ache of loss runs concurrently with gratitude in the two complementary memoirs. The author of each book expresses a thankfulness for the love they have accumulated but at the same time describe the acute pain they feel at the thought of leaving it all behind. One emotion enables the other.

Edel Rodriguez for TIME

Susanna wondered how the two widows, Lucy and John, who became acquaintances and close friends throughout the process of publishing and promoting their partner’s memoirs after they passed away – and who are now planning for a future together, must feel as they tour together reading the words written by the two people they loved so profoundly.

“Perhaps their old lives seem woven into their new life, one love spilling into the next, families merging, past and present overlapping. All of it can exist almost simultaneously. The laws of time are so easily warped.”

A lot of people attempt to make a clean start when beginning a new relationship, trying to leave old baggage behind. They worry that holding on to the past will prevent them from living fully in the present or that it will hinder them from strengthening the emotional bonds of a new relationship.

I have learned from experience that leaving your bags behind is not really an option nor should we want it to be. My perspective is informed by the parallels my life has had with the story of this surviving couple.

My first wife suffered from Breast Cancer and passed away at the age of 45 leaving me and my two young daughters to mourn her loss. By good fortune and divine grace another woman came into my life, kind and loving, with three young children who was recovering from a different and maybe more traumatic kind of loss, the painful divorce and breakup of her family.

We met at a time when we were both hurting and vulnerable but we began to heal our emotional wounds gradually by consoling one another, by being generous and understanding, and by concentrating on things our partner needed instead of focusing on our own sorrows.

Rather than trying to erase the baggage from our past – and the more than two decades of loving memories spent raising our families that went along with it – we embraced it, weaving the lessons of our past lives into our new love and using our past experiences to form a stronger bond together.

Walt Whitman recognized that we are the product of everything that came before us when he wrote “And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths“. I am the person I am because of the people that came before me. They struggled and they prospered and they transferred their life’s lessons and blessings to the next generations so that we could benefit.

They are no longer here but a part of them lives in me and in you. “Death” is merely another word for former life—or, more precisely, another word for forms of life that have now sprung into endlessly transforming other forms of life.

What a shame it would be if we failed to propagate the beauty and sadness we have experienced during our past lives into our daily life. Doing so would make us less alive. Life is richer when we share the joy that we experienced from the past and we become more grateful for our blessings when we think back to the aches of sorrow we experienced in our past life.

While talking about mourning for her mother, my daughter once said to me that “Learning how to accept endings is an essential part of living“. There is much wisdom in that sentiment I think. We must accept endings as they are inevitable – death and life are an endless process, inseparable from each other. By taking the essence of those we have lost and making it an essential component of our daily living we honor best the lives of those who have passed on.

So if you are wise, you will take the accumulated baggage from your past, weave it seamlessly into the fabric of your present life and share it with others – so that when it comes time for you to leave, you will know that you contributed to growing new life.

In the spirit of the upcoming Holiday Season, I will close with a passage written by Paul Kalanithi, the dying father, who knowing that his eight month daughter would not remember him, wrote her this touching note to read someday in the future:

“When you come to one of the many moments in your life where you must give account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that doesn’t hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied.”

May your presence too always bring joy to the world and may those you love carry it forward with them to fertilize new life.