My spouse, Carlin, will inform you that one of many predominant causes we have now had a profitable 44-year marriage is as a result of I’ve been in a males’s group for 45 years. There have been seven members within the group after we started. Three have died and 4 of us are nonetheless collectively. an early picture of the group, we marvel at what a younger midlife bunch of men we had been after we first met in 1979. Now I’m 80, Tom is 78, Tony is 77, and Denis is 75.
When the group started all of us lived inside driving distance of one another within the San Franciso Bay space. Tony later moved to Seattle. The remainder of us nonetheless reside in northern California. As we’ve gotten older, well being points have made it harder to fulfill in individual, however we nonetheless handle to make it work. In recent times the California members of the group have flown north to fulfill Tony. This time, Tony flew south and we met at Denis’s dwelling in Calistoga. We began the New 12 months with a heart-felt retreat January 10-13, 2024.
I’m an solely baby by delivery, however since becoming a member of the lads’s group, I’ve been gifted with brothers that I really like and who love me. We have now diversified abilities and backgrounds. I’m the author within the group. In my most up-to-date ebook, Lengthy Stay Males, revealed in 2023, I described “The Seven Levels of Our Males’s Group” and what we have now gone by way of to this point. Listed here are our levels:
- Studying to Belief and Open Up.
- Revealing Our True Selves, Fears, and Insecurities.
- Baring Our Our bodies and Souls.
- Studying to Have Enjoyable Collectively.
- Revitalizing the Group.
- Making a Lifetime Dedication.
- Coping with Disabilities, Loss of life, and Dying.
In recent times, together with within the final assembly, we speak overtly about problems with life and demise. My spouse, Carlin, is 85 and all our wives are getting older with us. We’re open about points surrounding our personal end-of-life points in addition to these of our partner’s. Carlin and I’ve been studying an attention-grabbing ebook by Sallie Tisdale, a tremendous creator and skilled nurse, who has spent ten years with individuals going by way of the ultimate levels of life.
The ebook, Recommendation for Future Corpses: A Sensible Perspective on Loss of life and Dying, is witty, compassionate, and useful. She says on the outset,
“I by no means died, so this whole ebook is a idiot’s recommendation. Start and demise are the one human acts we can’t observe.”
She addresses points that we’ve all discovered to be scary to debate however are more and more essential in our lives as we age together with:
- What does it imply to die “a great demise?”
- Can there be a couple of type of good demise?
- What can I do to make my demise, or the deaths of my family members, good?
- What to say and to not say, what to ask, and when—from the dying, family members, and docs.
As I wrote in my very own ebook, Lengthy Stay Males,
“Since we determined to remain collectively for the remainder of our lives and to not add any new members to our group, we’re increasingly conscious that there’ll come a time when the group itself will die.”
As we’ve gotten older, my spouse, Carlin and I speak in regards to the nice reward and privilege of serving to one another put together for this final section of our lives.
Ram Dass presents extra steering in his writings. In his ebook, Strolling Every Different Dwelling: Conversations on Loving and Dying written with Marabai Bush, he says, “All of us sit on the sting of a thriller. We have now solely identified this life, so dying scares us—and we’re all dying. What wouldn’t it seem like when you might method dying with curiosity and love, in service of different beings? What if dying had been the last word religious observe?”
He goes on to say,
“Dying is a very powerful factor you do in your life. It’s the nice frontier for each considered one of us. And loving is the artwork of dwelling as a preparation for dying. Permitting ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of affection is not only about leaving this physique; it’s also the path to Oneness and unity with our personal internal being, the soul, whereas we’re nonetheless right here.”
For many of my life, I’ve been afraid of demise, my very own in addition to these closest to me. It has solely been in recent times since Carlin has handled breast most cancers, heart-valve substitute surgical procedure, and two minor strokes (when you can name any stroke minor) that we have now been compelled to confront our fears and in addition to the blessings of our help for one another as we discover what it means to arrange for and have “a great demise.”
Ram Dass’s easy phrases have been comforting:
“If you understand how to reside and to like, you understand how to die.”
Carlin and I’ve been working towards how you can reside and to like for 44 years. The boys’s group has been working towards for 45 years. It’s clearly a eternally observe.
One other one who has supplied useful steering is psychologist James Hillman. In his ebook, The Pressure of Character and The Lasting Life, he says,
“Every of us is born with an innate character, the ‘daimon,’ or ‘spirit’ that calls us to what we are supposed to be.”
In reflecting on the later years of our lives, Hillman goes on to say,
“Growing older isn’t any accident. It’s essential to the human situation, supposed by the soul.”
Relatively than the well-known levels of life—childhood, maturity, and previous age—Hillman expands upon the modifications character undergoes in later life.
“First, the need to final so long as one can; then the modifications in physique and soul because the capability to final leaves and character turns into increasingly uncovered and confirmed till a 3rd piece of the puzzle emerges: what’s left when you have got left. Lasting, Leaving, Left.”
In our fashionable world we put numerous emphasis on productiveness and after we are unable to provide many people really feel that we’re ineffective. However after we concentrate on being, on character, slightly than merely on doing and producing, our longer life takes on extra that means. In fascinated about my 85-year-old spouse, this reflection by Hillman presents a extra expanded side of our goal as we age:
“Productiveness is just too slim a measure of usefulness, incapacity too cramping a notion of helplessness. An older lady could also be useful merely as a determine valued for her character. Like a stone on the backside of a riverbed, she might do nothing however keep nonetheless and maintain her floor, however the river has to take account and alter its circulation due to her.”
When Carlin questions her worth in life now that she is retired and never working, I inform her that her job now could be to easily stroll round city (which she likes to do) and convey her being to the individuals she encounters. I discover, too, as I stroll round city, I’ve a brand new job in life as I proceed in my 80s. It’s merely to be variety and loving to these whose paths I cross—buddies, neighbors, strangers, canine, cats, birds, bushes, clouds—the entire neighborhood of life in our little neighborhood of Willits.
In our fast-paced world the place we’re all the time so pushed, it’s comforting to know that we are able to age and nonetheless have one thing essential to supply. Our infirmities aren’t simply indicators of a failing physique, however a chance to deepen our character and put together for our final departure.
“Suppose you trade the phrase ‘leaving’ for ‘dying’ and substitute ‘getting ready’ for ‘getting older,’” says Hillman. “Then what we undergo in our final years in preparation for departure.”
Hillman presents a special, extra hopeful, and fewer fearful means of transferring from leaving to left.
“We decelerate and go over issues in our minds as a result of there may be a lot to arrange. Because the soul comes into the world slowly, taking all of the years of childhood to regulate, so it leaves the world slowly, requiring years of previous age to pack up and take off.”
Carlin and I are getting ready for this final thriller of life. So, too, is our males’s group, as every man take his flip getting ready to depart. When the final member of the group, Dick, was near demise, we talked about what remained after we go away. We each felt there was a spirit that continued after our our bodies had gone.
I advised him if he might talk with me from the spirit world, I used to be open to listening to from him. Every week after he died, I used to be doing my early morning stroll and I noticed lights shining on the high of a gaggle of tall bushes. “Is that you just, Dick?” I requested. I had the sensation it was. Ever since, I image the three males who’ve left the group, John, Ken, and Dick being on the highest branches and the 4 of us which are nonetheless alive on the subsequent highest branches awaiting our flip to affix the others on the spirit degree.
Love abides. And perhaps demise is just not the tip, however the starting of affection manifesting in different kinds. We will see. The group is scheduled to fulfill once more in April. Keep tuned.
