July 2019
Last year Kathleen,
a friend I knew over 30 years ago, emailed me out of the blue and we started
conversing. I wondered why she wanted to talk with me, given we’d parted ways
such a long time ago. I kept asking her if she was well, but she was evasive
and never responded to that question. I noticed over time that her messages
were getting shorter and shorter and her words increasingly precise, and I felt
more strongly that something was going on healthwise. She wanted to talk about
theology, which 30 years ago I was very interested in, but now not particularly.
I tried, somewhat lacklusterly, but really I didn’t have sufficient time to
shape my ideas, given that my work is now psychotherapeutic. She began sharing
her published theological writings where her ideas were practically inscribed
in stone and she really wasn’t open to other considerations. What had been once
a much more fluid mind, had become quite conservative. Last month, Kathleen’s
daughter told me she’d died. I was not surprised. Her frailty was there in her
syntax.
I emailed David,
a friend from years ago who I knew had been in contact with Kathleen to tell
him of her death. They were both in their mid-80s, and quite a bit older than
me. He then asked if I would like the missives he’d been sending her. I, being
polite and a bit curious, said yes. Big mistake. The thrice daily missives were
pure paranoia: on the hoards of foreign invasion, on the Chinese spying in our
bedrooms, on the evils of this and that, etc etc. No mention of the health of
the earth or other things that interest me, so I requested he send no more
articles. There really are other things to think about, or not, and to enjoy.
I got to wondering
why David and Kathleen had felt it necessary to send me material at all. Did
they fear I needed saving, was this some kind of end of life mission to set me
on the “right” path, or something else.
My own
parents were not disposed to convert me to anything at the last pip. My mother,
in her 90s, was not inclined to lead me to the “right” way; she herself had
lost interest even in the things that motivated her in previous years: meditation,
yoga, and the wisdom of the East. Her concerns were immediate, in the delight
of birds, dew on brightly coloured leaves, sunshine and clouds, oh, and iced
coffee. My father, who died one month short of 101, in his way, had become a
sweet lovely old man who’d left his politics of ethics and strict architectural
laws behind. All he wanted to do in his extreme old age was have Walt Whitman
poems (Leaves of Grass) read to him and
to listen to sublime music.
A dear
friend and colleague is currently grappling with the effects of chemotherapy on
a cancer he is treating and we both have decided that what matters to each of
us is exquisite music and the transparency of the heart in connection with
others and the lively earth. Connection is the thing that makes meaning and
gives sense to life itself. It’s certainly the thing that drives me in my
psychotherapeutic work, and life in general.
A
Reconnection is why my elderly friends reached out to me. It wasn’t to convert
me to anything; they sought to connect with me. Without connection there is
loneliness and depression, an implosion of emptiness, and the elderly, among
others, too often lack enough real connection. Some people become polite and circumspect, so as not to
disturb the elderly, forgetting that realness is what connection is all about.
I’m not sure I was particularly accommodating in reaching out to Kathleen. I
did try, but I got caught up with the content of her writing and not enough for
the fundament of connection. I think at least now I understand how to connect
with David. Not through his missives, but just in listening to his drive
towards reconnection.
