My spouse, Carlin, will let you know that one of many essential causes we’ve 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 photograph of the group, we marvel at what a younger midlife bunch of men we have 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 dwell in northern California. As we’ve gotten older, well being points have made it tougher to satisfy in particular person, however we nonetheless handle to make it work. Lately the California members of the group have flown north to satisfy Tony. This time, Tony flew south and we met at Denis’s house in Calistoga. We began the New 12 months with a heart-felt retreat January 10-13, 2024.
I’m an solely youngster by delivery, however since becoming a member of the boys’s group, I’ve been gifted with brothers that I like and who love me. We now have diversified expertise and backgrounds. I’m the author within the group. In my most up-to-date e book, Lengthy Dwell Males, revealed in 2023, I described “The Seven Phases of Our Males’s Group” and what we’ve gone via up to now. 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, Dying, and Dying.
Lately, together with within the final assembly, we speak brazenly about problems with life and loss of life. 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 e book by Sallie Tisdale, a positive creator and skilled nurse, who has spent ten years with individuals going via the ultimate levels of life.
The e book, Recommendation for Future Corpses: A Sensible Perspective on Dying and Dying, is witty, compassionate, and useful. She says on the outset,
“I by no means died, so this complete e book is a idiot’s recommendation. Delivery and loss of life are the one human acts we can’t follow.”
She addresses points that we’ve all discovered to be horrifying to debate however are more and more necessary in our lives as we age together with:
- What does it imply to die “a great loss of life?”
- Can there be a couple of sort of good loss of life?
- What can I do to make my loss of life, 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 e book, Lengthy Dwell 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 present and privilege of serving to one another put together for this final part of our lives.
Ram Dass provides further steering in his writings. In his e book, Strolling Every Different House: Conversations on Loving and Dying written with Marabai Bush, he says, “All of us sit on the sting of a thriller. We now have solely recognized this life, so dying scares us—and we’re all dying. What wouldn’t it appear to be in case you might method dying with curiosity and love, in service of different beings? What if dying have been the last word religious follow?”
He goes on to say,
“Dying is an important factor you do in your life. It’s the good frontier for each certainly one of us. And loving is the artwork of residing as a preparation for dying. Permitting ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of affection isn’t just about leaving this physique; additionally it is the path to Oneness and unity with our personal inside being, the soul, whereas we’re nonetheless right here.”
For many of my life, I’ve been fearful of loss of life, 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 alternative surgical procedure, and two minor strokes (in case you can name any stroke minor) that we’ve 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 organize for and have “a great loss of life.”
Ram Dass’s easy phrases have been comforting:
“If you understand how to dwell and to like, you understand how to die.”
Carlin and I’ve been practising the right way to dwell and to like for 44 years. The boys’s group has been practising for 45 years. It’s clearly a ceaselessly follow.
One other one that has provided useful steering is psychologist James Hillman. In his e book, The Drive 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 old is not any accident. It’s essential to the human situation, supposed by the soul.”
Relatively than the well-known levels of life—childhood, maturity, and outdated age—Hillman expands upon the modifications character undergoes in later life.
“First, the will 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’ve got left. Lasting, Leaving, Left.”
In our fashionable world we put plenty of 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 which means. In enthusiastic about my 85-year-old spouse, this reflection by Hillman provides a extra expanded facet of our function as we age:
“Productiveness is simply too slender a measure of usefulness, incapacity too cramping a notion of helplessness. An older girl 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 movement 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’s 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 type and loving to these whose paths I cross—buddies, neighbors, strangers, canines, cats, birds, timber, clouds—the entire group of life in our little group of Willits.
In our fast-paced world the place we’re at all times so pushed, it’s comforting to know that we will age and nonetheless have one thing necessary to supply. Our infirmities are usually not simply indicators of a failing physique, however a possibility 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 provides a distinct, extra hopeful, and fewer fearful method of shifting from leaving to left.
“We decelerate and go over issues in our minds as a result of there may be a lot to organize. 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 outdated 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 loss of life, we talked about what remained after we depart. We each felt there was a spirit that continued after our our bodies had gone.
I instructed him if he might talk with me from the spirit world, I used to be open to listening to from him. Per week after he died, I used to be doing my early morning stroll and I noticed lights shining on the prime of a gaggle of tall timber. “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 might be nonetheless alive on the subsequent highest branches awaiting our flip to hitch the others on the spirit stage.
Love abides. And possibly loss of life will not be the top, however the starting of affection manifesting in different types. We will see. The group is scheduled to satisfy once more in April. Keep tuned.
