And i can hardly believe that it's been over a week since I last posted here. No excuses, really; just a "normal" week where I got a little carried away with outside activities, and never really got around to things like this. I did have a nice visit frow some freinds from Nantucket over the weekend, and I also preached on Sunday, a sermon titled "Naughty or Nice" {LINK} which did take up a little of my time and attention. I know a lot of people get a little worried when I don't post, but this time it's actually GOOD news -- I'm feeling a lot better, rather than worse.
I'm also struck from time to time by how closely my living experience here at the Senior Assisted/Independent Living Center resembles that of living in a college dormitory. I've certainly had plenty of experience of the latter, where the days also tended to revolve around meals, the mail, afternoon naps and staying up WAY beyond my bedtime. But here, in place of classes, we have medical appointments instead, and apart from that there just isn't that much time left over. Plenty of activities scheduled though, from daily Bingo and a variety of exercise classes to old movies in the theater and shopping trips out to the Mall or Wal-Mart. We often get school or scout groups coming through the building this time of year as well, here to perform community service, or sometimes simply to perform. And it's certainly been an interesting experience for me so far.
We all take our meals each day at our assigned tables: my three "messmates" include two retired postal workers (both now in their nineties), who grew up here in Portland, have been retired longer than I've been in the workforce, and (in one instance at least) still have fairly large extended families in the area. My third companion (isn't that what the word literally means? - someone with whom we share bread) is another man about my own age (early fifties), who also has some sort of disability, but continues to hold down a job (as a dishwasher in a nearby reastaurant).
That's another interesting thing about living here, which is that median age is probably somewhere in the eighties, and the women tend to outnumber the men by a ratio of almost 3:1. Yet for the most part we sit at "same-sex" tables. Part of the reason for that I suspect is just that there aren't enough men to go around, but I'm also beginning to wonder whether or not we all just prefer it that way. Not that the conversation around our table tends to be that lively; mostly (when we talk at all) we talk about the food, the weather, what the doctor had to say, democratic politics (the two retired postal workers are both very loyal Democrats), or the latest program on the History Channel. If we're lucky one of the postal workers will sometimes share anecdotes from his service in the Second World War delivering the mail in France. They're all about cultural interaction; nothing "shoot 'em up" at all. But still they changed his life in a life-defining kind of way.
These guys are an inspiration to me. They wake up every morning in pain, limp through their daily activities, eat their meals, read follow the political scene, visit with their families, all the time knowing that most of their life is now behind them, But even so, each new day is also a gift from the universe, to be savored in all its intensity and brightness for as long as god continues to give them.
1 comment:
Funny how the banal eases into metaphysic significance. HM in M-D 'sez it best in one majestic paragraph detailing the facile grind of cleaning-up the perpetual whale slaughter;
But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line,--they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works; when, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves to cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the time the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks, are startled by the cry of "There she blows!" and away they fly to fight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world's vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when--THERE SHE BLOWS!--the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life's old routine again.
--Chapter 98, Stowing Down and Cleaning Up
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