Aging

What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

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What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.
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What’s something you would attempt if you were guaranteed not to fail.

Well, I remember when Arthur Lydiard was coaching Peter Snell, this was back in the early sixties. He ‘allegedly’ said – and I write from a decaying memory – that anyone could be trained to run a mile in under four minutes, using his methods. Next day, it is rumored that a fifty year old man, overweight, smoking a cigar, turned up at training and asked Lydiard to fulfill his promise.

Well, maybe it was Percy Cerruti training Herb Elliott. Same time frame. Different memories. Great coaches and great athletes. So here am I, at eighty (well, nearly), and I have always wanted to run a mile in under four minutes. My fastest time was 4:07 – downhill, with a following wind, during the Bristol University Rag Run (1966 – Bristol – Stamford Bridge – Hastings – Bristol). So, I am guaranteed not to fail, eh? I also hope you will guarantee that I do not fall, eh? And can I use both my canes, or only one, eh?

Okay, so this is how we’ll do it. You load me on the back of a flat bed truck. It has one of those walkways on it, with handrails on both sides, like they use in the rehabilitation centers. I won’t need my canes then. The truck drives a measured mile, in 3 minutes and 59 seconds exactly, and I “run aka speed walk aka speed lurch” all the way, hanging on to the handrails, thus covering a measured mile, in under four minutes, and achieving a life-time goal, attempting which I am guaranteed not to fail.

What was that line from Man of La Mancha aka DQ (and I don’t mean Dairy Queen) – “to dream the impossible dream.” And now, tired from my exertions, I will take a brief siesta and see if, in my impossible dreams, I can bring that time down a little bit lower. New world record, anyone?

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?
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What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

When I look at the growing number of refugees across the world, I wonder what would happen if such a disaster fell upon me. Then I look at the forest fires, out in Western Canada, in BC and Alberta, and wonder what we would do, what we would we pack, how would we manage, if the order to evacuate our home came suddenly upon us. When the Bocabec fires burned in New Brunswick, I felt the stress and distress of several of our close friends who were forced to evacuate. Then I thought that, really, it’s not a question of if, but of when. And this was my dream.

            … with my angel … face to face … the one I have carried within me since the day I was born … the black-one … winged like a crow … the one that hovers over me as I lie asleep … the one who wraps me in his feathered wings when I am alone and chilled by the world around me … the one who flaps with me on his back when I can walk no further and who creates the single set of footprints that plod their path through the badlands when I can walk no more …
            … ‘the truth’ my black angel says to me … I say ‘he’ but he is a powerful spirit, not sexed in any way I know it … and yet I think of him as ‘he’ …awesome in the tiny reflection he sometimes allows me to glimpse of his power and glory … for, like Rilke, I could not bear meeting his whole angelic being face to face … as I cannot bear the sun, not by day, and not in eclipse … not even with smoked glass … when earthly values turn upside down and earth takes on a new reality … wild birds and bank swallows roosting at three in the afternoon … and that fierce heat draining from the summer sky … I remember it well … and the dog whimpering as a portion of the angel’s wing erased the sun until an umber midnight ruled … a simple phenomenon, the papers said … the moon coming between the earth and the sun …but magic … pure magic … to we who stood on the shore at Skinner’s Pond and sensed the majesty of the universe … more powerful than anything we could imagine … and the dog … taking no comfort from its human gods … whimpering at our feet …
            … I saw a single feather floating down and knew my angel had placed himself between me and all that glory … to protect me … to save me from myself … and I saw that snowflake of an angel feather bleached from black to white by some small trick of the sunlight … and knowledge filled me … and for a moment I felt the glory … the magnificence … and there are no words for that slow filling up with want and desire as light filters from the sky and the body fills with darkness … and I was so afraid … afraid of myself … of where I had been … of where I was … of what I might return to … of my lost shadow … snipped from my heels …
            … I don’t know how I heard my angel’s words … ‘the time of truth is upon you’ … ‘all you have ever been is behind you now’ … ‘naked you stand here on this shore … like the grains of sand on this beach … your days are numbered by the only one who counts’ … I heard the sound of roosting wings … but I heard and saw nothing more … I felt only midnight’s cold when the chill enters the body and the soul is sore afraid …
            … ‘it is the law’ my angel said … I saw a second feather fall … ‘and the law says man must fail … his spirit must leave its mortal shell and fly back to the light’ … ‘blood will cease to flow … the heart will no longer beat … the spirit must accept and go’ … ‘do not assume… nobody knows what lies in wait’ … ‘blind acceptance … the only way … now …  in this twilight hour …  now when you are blind … only the blind shall receive the gift of sight’ … ‘all you have … your wife … your house … your car … your child … everything you think of as yours I own … and on that day … I will claim it from you and take it for my own … now I can say no more’ …
            … the sea-wind rose with a sigh and one by one night’s shadows fled … the moon’s brief circle sped from the sun … light returned, a drop at a time, sunshine flowing from a heavenly clepsydra filled with light …
            … birds ceased to circle … a stray dog saw a sea-gull and chased it back to sea … and the sun … source of all goodness … was once again a golden coin floating in the sky …
            … on my shoulder a feather perched … a whisper of warmth wrapped its protective cloak around my shoulders … for a moment, just a moment, I knew I was the apple of my angel’s eye … and I hoped and still hope that one day I might meet him again and understand …

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
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What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

I will be eighty next birthday. Sadly, I am aware that my life is moving slowly towards its endgame. The major pieces have left the chessboard and I, the King, shuffle forward, a step at a time, then one to the side, and sometimes one back, as my two faithful pawns age with me. The end is never far away at this stage of the game. One slip, one misjudgment, and it’s checkmate, mate. So – how to respond to today’s prompt?

Quite simply, I am now paying more attention to my death than to my life. I have already updated my will, and I have given power of attorney to a person I trust. I have spoken with my financial adviser, and he has given me a Will Companion. It contains a whole series of details to fill in – bank accounts, passwords, online contacts, clubs, societies, social media, precious objects, and, last of all, a page of funeral instructions. That was an eye-opener – everything from funeral home, instructions for service, cremation of burial, plot number or scattering, church, financial arrangements – well, I didn’t panic, but wow, it made me feel very uncomfortable.

In the first 24 hours after my death, someone will have to make between 40 and 70 decisions, all impacting the manner of my departure. If I want things done the way I want, versus the way they might happen, and if I want to choose burial vs cremation, order of service, hymns, obituary, family friends, acknowledgements, then – according to those who know – I should be doing it now. So, big decision, I went online and studied the recommendations of my local funeral home.

I have already filled in several online pages of forms and I have asked them to contact me, which they will do soon. Then we will talk over all those details that I so desperately want to avoid. But death is inevitable. To face it and accept it and to prepare for it while I am still alive is the bravest and the best and the most sensible thing I can do. So, here I go, paying attention, while still alive, to the little details that will surround my death.

The inevitable? Yes. Above, in the opening photo, you can see a Mexican Death Mask. The small pearl at the centre is the seed from which the baby will grow. The seed is the round spot beneath youthful beauty’s nose. then comes wrinkled old age, and wrapped around is the white skull, the final beauty, which I will never see, but others may. Writing these words, I do not feel sad or gloomy. I have lived in Oaxaca, Mexico, and know the powerful, loving emotions that surround the Day of the Dead. I feel grateful that I have good friends to advise me and to stand by me and my family. And when, not if, the inevitable happens, I will have done my best to be prepared. Pax amorque.

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

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What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?
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What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

This dragon is not a dragon, well, it’s not a Welsh Dragon anyway. So, let us change the question – What aspects of your cultural heritage are you least proud of? Now that changes the perspective totally. I guess that I am least proud of the fact that, although born in Wales, I was never allowed to speak Welsh as a child. I speak with an English accent because I was sent to school in England so I wouldn’t even speak English like a person born in Wales. I am not proud of that aspect of my cultural heritage.

But I am proud of one little thing that stems from that Welsh cultural heritage – learning how to speak Welsh in my old age. It’s not easy to do that, here in Canada, but the internet carries many blessings, one of which is the learning of ‘foreign’ languages. Strange that Welsh should be considered a foreign language for somebody born in Wales. Something else not to be proud of, I suppose. Here’s my story.

Here I sit, an old man now, in front of my computer, learning at last my mother tongue, Welsh. I have discovered the beauty of simple words, not so much their meaning as their sound, the way they flow, the poetry of remembered rhythms: Cwmrhydyceirw, the Valley of the Leaping Stag, though legend has it that ceirw was really cwrw, and cwrw is beer, and its real name was the Valley of the Brown Stream Frothing like Beer.

Words have their own music, even if you cannot pronounce them properly: Mae hi’n bwrw glaw nawr yn Abertawe / it’s raining now in Swansea. Mae’r tywydd yn waeth heddiw / the weather’s worse today. Bydd hi’n dwym ddydd Llun / it will be warm on Monday. Place names also have their own magic: Llantrisant, Llandaff, Dinas Powis, Gelligaer, Abertawe, Cas Newydd, Pen-y-bont … Meaning changes when you switch from one language to another:  gwyraig ty / a housewife, gwr ty / a househusband, a concept of equality that has ruled Welsh lives since long before Julius Caesar invaded Albion, coming from Gaul with his legions in 55 BC.

The photographer asks me to smile. He wants me to say ‘cheese’ so I say it in French [fromage], then Spanish [queso], then Italian [formaggio]. “No, no, no,” he shakes his head. “I want to catch the real you. Try again.” So I say it in Welsh [caws]. He checks the memory card in his camera and looks puzzled.

“Your facial expression changes each time you speak a different language,” he tells me. “Please, won’t you just say ‘cheese’ in English? I want the real you.”

French, Spanish, Italian, then Welsh: all different and he wants the real me. Each language carves a new a map into my face.  Am I a clown, then, a comedian, a chameleon to wear so many masks and to slip so easily from one to another? And who am I, this stranded immigrant, marooned on a foreign shore that has finally become my home? Who or what is the real me?

“Cheese!” I say in desperation. “Got it,” he grins. “At last, I have captured the real you.”

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
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What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

I have a couple of priorities, of course. I am not sure which is #1. Maybe I’ll ask the readers to tell me which one my top priority should be.

I guess my first priority is to wake up. That is very important at my age. A couple of my friends went to bed and never woke up. So, I guess an important priority, perhaps #1, is to actually wake up.

Having woken up, my next priority is to roll over, sit up, pull back the blankets, and actually attempt to get out of bed. This isn’t always easy. My back sometimes stiffens up overnight. Or else my hips don’t want to function. Then there’s the gammy knee I hurt playing rugby all those years ago. Then there’s the quality of the light – do I need a light on? If I do, I must reach for it without cramping up. Early morning cramp is not a good thing and really complicates the next step.

If I am in the high bed, then lowering legs, touching the floor with toes, and using arms to push up the rest of the way is relatively easy. But if I am in the low bed, I must turn sideways towards my bad knee, place my feet at an angle, and do a one handed pushup in order to find the right balance to get to my feet. That means watching out for slippery carpets. I do not want to fall. Sometimes I call on the aid of my faithful teddy bear and, by half throttling him, I manage to get that extra leverage.

Oh dear, I forgot another priority – condition of ageing bladder. All of the above activities are dependent upon the state of the union. If that is a problem, then I must call for assistance – and I hate doing that.

Next priority – the trip to the bathroom. I wish I hadn’t said ‘trip’, because sometimes I do. The effects of that can be a sudden grasp at something solid, a stubbed toe, a twisted something or other, or, worst of all, another fall. We certainly don’t want that to happen, especially if we are suffering from what Max Boyce [remember him?] once called ‘twisted legs and tails’.

Other priorities follow when we have reached the bathroom. I won’t go into those. Nor will I mention the perils of the return journey, the difficulties of getting dressed, the embarrassment when I fail with the patented sock-pull machine and have to wiggle my socks off, one by one, and then put them on again.

So, here I am, fully dressed, standing at the top of the stairs… one hand on the hand-rail, one hand on my trusty walking-stick, and down I go, hopefully one step at a time.

So: What’s my #1 priority tomorrow? You tell me. Which would you choose? And before you answer, just remember Dylan Thomas’s words ‘for whether we last the night or no, is surely only touch and go’. Touch and go, tip and run – I remember them well. And luckily I remember waking up this morning. I would hate to face the alternative – not waking up.

What brands do you associate with?

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What brands do you associate with?
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What brands do you associate with?

I have been thinking about my parents a great deal recently. Earlier this week it was my my mother’s birthday. She would have been 110 years old. Funny how, as we age, our own minds turn back to the past. So, today’s prompt – What brands do you associate with? – gets an instant answer – none really.

And yet, and yet, there is one. A long, long time ago, my father let me into a big secret: all the shops in our little sea-side town had signs that announced – Jones and Son, or Roberts and Son, or Edwards and Son. “Well, son,” he said, “I have a son, and it’s you. It is time I showed you my little secret.” He took out his pen, unscrewed the cap, and carefully drew an M. Then he drew a W beneath it, taking care that the ends joined neatly. Finally he drew the letter J. It bisected the letters so that the drawing in my painting above was produced: blue-black ink on white paper. “What is it dad?” I asked. “It’s my brand,” he proudly said. “Those are my initials. “I would love to establish something, use this as a brand name, and have ‘and Son‘ written beneath it.”

I didn’t understand. I can’t remember how old I was, but it was in the days when Shorty the Deputy [I pronounced it De-Putty, much to the amusement of my elders] Sherriff ruled the range in my colored comic books. “A brand? Why do you want a brand? Are you going to own a ranch and brand your cattle?” That ended the conversation. The brand was never mentioned again, until, now, but I have never forgotten it.

So, there is one brand with which I associate myself, my father’s brand. I entitled the painting remeMBEr in honour of my father, of his failed dreams, and of the dreams he achieved, including the initials MBE [Member of the British Empire]. The medal itself, together with the letter from King George VI is included among my family treasures. So, there we go – that’s the brand I associate with, my father’s brand.

Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

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Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.
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Share a lesson you wish you had learned earlier in life.

I wish I had learned earlier how hard it is to grow old and how difficult it is to prepare for it. My first serious rugby injury, age 16, torn cartilage in left knee. Doctor’s advice: give the game up now. Later, you’ll regret it if you don’t. My response: I’m tough. 60+ years later, my left knee still creaks and I rub ointment in every morning. My second serious rugby injury, age 20, damaged lower back. Doctor’s advice: give the game up now. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. My response: I’m tough. 60 years later, my back really hurts. I rub ointment in every morning, take pain killers, and stretch. Same with hips, from kicking! One of my rugby friends, about the same age as me, has two knee replacements, one shoulder replacement, and one hip replacement. If he’s not the $6,000,000 man, he must be pretty close.

But there is a story beyond that story. I was sent to a series of boarding schools and no, I didn’t go there willingly. In the summers, I travelled abroad to learn foreign languages that were foreign to others but became familiar to me. I never saw my grandparents as they aged. Often, when they died, I was in school, or away on the continent. I never understood the ageing process. I never witnessed the natural decay of those whom I loved. I never learned that lesson. When I left university, I emigrated, and the same sequence happened with my parents. I was never there when it mattered. I was always somewhere else. And when I was there, I heard the usual litanies: “This never happens when you are not here. It’s your fault.” Or else, “this wouldn’t have happened if you had been here.” Told to me by a close relation at my mother’s funeral. I flew back home, though it was never really my home, to be present for that.

But what is the lesson that I wish I had learned earlier? Alas, there is not just one lesson, but a series of lessons. How to deal with the ageing process. How to face sickness and ill health in age. How to face diminishment with grace and humor. How to accept the natural process that occurs whether we want it to or not. How to face the gradual decline in someone, close to you, your life companion whom you really love. How to face the fear of passing (FOGO to some) and how to pass that lesson on to our own young ones. How to face my own end and how to die with as much dignity as possible.

How often do you walk or run?

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How often do you walk or run?
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How often do you walk or run?

The painting above tells the whole story (thank you, Moo). On the left, the deer head (or is it a sheep’s head? Moo didn’t tell me) represents my hip and knee joints. On the right, the wolf’s head (or is it a bear’s head, look at those teeth) represents the osteo-arthritis that is sinking its own teeth into me and removing much of my movement. So, how often do I walk or run?

Walking, every day. I use two sticks in the outside world, or one stick and the furniture at home. The sticks are fun. I use them like chop-sticks to pick up fallen objects. And I have discovered that if I drop one of the sticks, I can stand on its rubber tip and raise the handle enough either to grasp it, or to secure it with the other stick. Wow!

Some days it is a positive circus act. Yesterday, the very thoughtful grocery store had placed the 1% milk on the top shelf, where I couldn’t reach it. I held on to my trusty shopping cart with one hand, reversed my stick and, with the handle, pulled a carton of milk to the edge of the shelf. I let go of the cart, flicked the stick, and sent the milk carton tumbling into my other hand. It took some concentration and I was surprised by the applause that came from several watchers, none of whom offered to help me. I do the same with out of reach beer cans, too. Bags of sugar on the lower shelf are much more difficult. my chopsticks aren’t designed to pick up a 3lb bulky bag of sugar.

As for running, well, my nose runs, my eyes water and run, my tummy rumbles and runs, and I move at a slowly increasing four-legged plod to the bath room, hoping against hope to get there in time. I usually do. My premonitions have become very accurate over the last few months. However, do nose, eyes, and tummy runs count? If not, well then, running rarely happens nowadays.

With the walking, though, in spite of everything, I aim for 2000 steps a day. I usually make it to 3,000, especially when I go shopping, and occasionally make it to 4,000. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best I can do.

What’s your all-time favorite album?

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What’s your all-time favorite album?
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What’s your all-time favorite album?

My stamp album, of course. I am old enough to remember the joy of receiving letters from friends and pen-pals in far-away places with strange sounding names and oh, the joy of those colored squares of paper stuck in the top, right hand corner of the envelopes.

Then there were stamp dates, and stamp parties, where we gathered and swapped stamps, each trying to improve his or her collection. Not that I remember many young ladies saving stamps in those days, it seemed to be a boys only sport, like Conkers. I guess that was because those games were all dependent on one-up-man-ship. And yes, we have boycotts (some of them even open the batting for England), but I have never heard of girlcotts or one-up-woman-ship. I guess there are flaws in the language, all languages. Ceilings as well, probably – the height of linguistic folly.

Then there were stamp competitions when we could take our collections, more or less specialist, and show them off to our friends, admirers, and bitter rivals, hoping to gain fame and fortune. I for one never did. But I learned so much about the world, the rapidly changing world, as maps changed, borders changed, kings and queens changed, countries changed their names, divided their borders and morphed into something else.

Don’t forget those FDCs – First Day Covers – with their postal histories, not to mention the little booklets with the tear-out pages telling us all about Peter Rabbit, Flopsy Bunny, Mrs. Tiggy Winkle. and a dozen other tales. And then there were the special stamps – the penny blacks with their multiple Maltese Crosses, the Queen Victoria 9d green (mint), the Sea Horses, the French Painting Series, the Spanish Civil War stamps, issued on, and by, both sides of the conflict, and you mustn’t forget my own face as it appears on a Mexican do-it-yourself stamp, photo taken in Oaxaca, and the stamp sent back to Fredericton, NB, Canada, just for the fun of it.

My own stamp collection now sits in a cupboard, all covered in dust. I guess it is worthless. Nobody sends or receives letters anymore. Nobody collects stamps. Used stamps are now so much rarer. And those pristine new issues, so bright and cheerful, have never felt the lick of a lover’s tongue. And those envelopes have never borne the imprint of our secret messages – SWALK – PHTR – ICWTSY – and so many other little joys of a life that is long past, but never forgotten.

Are you holding a grudge? About?

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Are you holding a grudge? About?
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Are you holding a grudge? About?

I have reached the stage in life when grudges belong to a distant past. Some of that past I still regret, but I have come to accept most of it as the normal rites of passage through which human beings must pass, if they are to grow and develop. This acceptance also comes from the understanding that the steps that led me to my current life and situation, were beneficial, even when I didn’t think they were at the time.

Garcilaso de la Vega once wrote: Cuando me paro a contemplar mi estado / y a ver los pasos por do me ha traído, hallo, según por do anduve perdido, que a mayor mal pudiera haber llegado. The Wikipedia translation offers us this – When I stop to contemplate my state and see the steps through which they have brought me, I find, according to where I was lost, that it could have come to a greater evil.

That said, I have learned to see the lesser evil in things that actually happened and the greater evils into which I might have fallen. I remember bearing grudges, but I feel that I have now set them aside. Reading John O’Donohue’s book Anam Cara, for the fourth or fifth time, has helped me to achieve that state of mind.

Some things do annoy me though. Speed reading is one of them. Well, not speed reading but the application of speed reading to any and all situations. In today’s Guardian, for example, I read that – “A lot of people, myself included, complain that they don’t have time to read but everyone has time to read a poem. You can read Ozymandias, for example, in just 17 seconds.”

One of the first things that I did in Grad School at U of T was to take a speed reading course. I found it absolutely essential in order to read and process the quantity of new material that was thrown at me by my profs. In my undergraduate education (Bristol University) I was told that “It is better to read one poem a hundred times than to read a hundred poems once.” As a poet, and a student of poetry, I prefer to dwell on a poem, to absorb its essence, its meaning, its subtleties, its associative fields, rather than to gulp it down in 17 seconds, for example, and then move on to something else. The poet and dreamer who live within me need that time to re-create, poeticize, and dream.

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare, no time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep or cows,” wrote W. H. Davies, author of Autobiography of a Super Tramp.

I realize just how much our lives have speeded up, how we are inundated by information, how we drown in sound-bytes, memes, and mini-clips. I also know that, however fast we read, we will never take it all in, not in one lifetime. Sometimes, less is more, slower is faster, we need to take time, to make time, to stand and stare. Seamus Heaney expresses it well – “Some time, take the time…” I don’t hold a grudge against those who can’t, or won’t, make and take that time. But I truly believe that many, many people would benefit by doing so. I also believe that a benevolent society would allow many more people to do just that.

Meanwhile, I will agree with the Guardian columnist that reading a poem in 17 seconds is much better than reading no poetry at all. So, some time, take the time….