Too old to die young

Not original --- I heard that title in a song about it last night. But it did make me think.  See, whenever I think about dying young, I remember Marilyn Monroe. Now plenty of people die young, but that's the first one that really hit me. We were living in Bremerhaven, Germany in August of 1962. We'd been there a year, I was just about to turn 12 and would be starting 7th grade. I showed up for Bible School at the base chapel and somebody told me that Marilyn Monroe had killed herself. I was in immediate shock.

I loved Marilyn. I wanted to be Marilyn. Even though 36 did seem pretty old to me (she was born in the same year as my father, 1926) anybody who could look that good in a swim suit, sound that amazing with her voice, and be so famous, couldn't be actually OLD. I was appalled and fascinated that a woman who had everything, would take her own life. Actually, the whole idea of suicide blew me away. It was my first real encounter with it.

So Marilyn Monroe was imprinted on my brain as the ultimate in early, tragic deaths. Not too long after that, when I got to be 13 or 14, quit Sunday School and Girl Scouts, started drooling over boys and listening to "Surfer Girl" over and over on my little record player, and sneaking smokes in the dugout and beer at the pizza joint (no drinking age in Germany) --- I came to the inescapable conclusion that I was destined to die young. Not suicide, no sir. Even with all my hyper-dramatic tendencies, I didn't fancy doing myself in. No, it just seemed to me that Fate had my number and it was 23. I announced it to the world, repeatedly. Whether it was jokingly when I was being outrageous with my friends in the cemetery, or morosely when I was drunk and depressed, I clung to the script. I would be dead at 23. Might as well enjoy life now, cause it just wouldn't last.

It colored much of my behavior during my teens. I used to justify, at least to myself, all sorts of misdeeds and scrapes. If I got punished for something, I could console myself with fantasies of how  awful they would feel after I was dead. I cut a tragic figure, in my own mind, or embraced the derring-do of a character in a novel, willing to take risks for principles or fun, either one, as long as the adrenaline was there.

Needless to say, I didn't die. If I had lived a century earlier, I might well have, since my first pregnancy, at 23, resulted in a birth that could have killed me without medical intervention. But I was actually just past 24 when he was born. No, I didn't die. If there were true justice in the world, I should have. I put myself in ridiculous, dangerous situations so many times, treated drinking and driving like a competitive sport, and generally acted like a ninny until I was 30 years old.

So now I'm in my 60s and all settled down. Been sober much longer than I drank. Don't much like driving at night, let alone under the influence of so much as allergy pills. And not looking to check out any time soon.

The saying goes that you should die young and leave a good-looking corpse. I'm afraid my corpse will show my age --- extra pounds, wrinkles, gray hair and all. But it'll be well used. I'm happy that I thwarted my adolescent penchant for high drama and stayed alive long enough to believe in myself and be grateful. Marilyn Monroe, for all her beauty and fame, didn't seem to have what I have now. My little life here in Raleigh, with my spoils-me-rotten wife, my poor demented Mommy, and an assortment of domestic critters, is neither dramatic nor glamorous. But it's intensely satisfying and I'm glad I'm too old to die young.

Is that who I am?

It's amazing how many blogs I write in the middle of the night ---- in my mind. By morning, they're gone. But that's the way life is, these days. Living with a dementia "loved one" as they're called in the books, brings everything abruptly into the here and now. Gone are those delicious mornings of waking up slowly, chasing thoughts and images around before opening my eyes. I hear her bedroom door and launch out of bed to see what surprises await, usually forgetting to even put on my glasses. Tip for the uninitiated: don't try to put hearing aid batteries in without your glasses ---- they're slippery little devils.

Since I have a long established pattern of resisting and avoiding anything that is good for me, Sunday mornings have lately meant slogging through a cloud of fatigue, petulance, crabbiness and "I don' wanna". Fortunately, Jill is high on Unitarians these days, so she pays no attention, whistles and sings as she fixes a revoltingly protein-laden breakfast, and whisks my grumpy self off to UUFR without the least sympathy for my position. And I'm always glad, afterward. Matter of fact, it's hard to get me out of there, what with so many people to talk to.

Yesterday, like usual, I heard a message I needed to hear, the reminder that I don't have a lock on the answers and it's unattractive to act like I do. That's what I heard, anyway. I remember settling into the fellowship in 1998, shortly after I came out of the closet and my second marriage disintegrated. I had flirted with the Unitarian-Universalists off and on for years, but this time I landed square in the middle, right where I needed to be. For most of the first year, I cried in every service because the message, the music, the community touched me so deeply. I got involved with the newcomer classes. I completed the feminist-theology curriculum, "Cakes for the Queen of Heaven". I joined a discussion group that met once a month and delved into topics that fed a hunger I'd forgotten I had. UUFR was a lifesaver for me in a time of great need.

Now it's many years later. I still cry sometimes and my favorite sermons are the ones that call my beliefs and ideas into question, that make me examine my integrity ---- how well do my insides and my outsides match? The circumstances of my life are very different now, which means that there is a new set of challenges. I am called to be of service in new ways, without getting lost in the process. I'm naturally inclined toward high drama, so keeping that in check, keeping myself right-sized, is a big focus. I'm shooting for Goldilocks: not too extravagent, not too mousy, j..u..s..t right! Never been good at that one!

How DO you make it not all about you, when you're the only one you know from the inside out?

I often watch people when I'm out in public. Now that I'm like the invisible woman, I can even stare at people with impunity ---- though I usually don't. My mama brought me up better than that. But I look at people and wonder what it feels like to be them --- who is that in there? How do they see the world? How do they see themselves? I guess that's one reason I love writing, to try to create characters with different perspectives, but I sometimes fear that all my characters are actually just me, in costume. That's another story, though.

Jill and I have an ongoing discussion about how to be in the world without "letting the bastards get you down". I've spent years and years of intention, attention, meditation, education ---- all the tions -----to develop the ability to let things slide off, not take things personally. I can't do it all the time, but to the degree that I am able to detach and remember that almost nothing is directed at ME, Kathy Bundy, I am able to dismiss most angers and upsets. That doesn't mean I love, love, love everybody and everything ---- that's not even the goal. I'm just trying to not live in constant stress and discord, with cortisol coursing through my system from morning till night.

Alanon has a saying ----- How important is it?
I would add in parentheses (to me and my peace of mind)

This applies to everything from the folks who are trying to defend marriage from me and my kind, to when my mother, in her confusion and dementia, lashes out at me because I suggest that wearing her bra on the outside of her shirt might not be a good idea. How important is it?

Right here, right now, I usually just need to take a breath and remember who I am.

Farmhouse lessons

On a day when I actually have time and opportunity to get some writing done ---- and I'm so close to being finished with the current novel ---- I find myself whiling away the time on facebook, playing with the dog, staring out the window.  It's hard to organize my thoughts. This has been a week of high emotion and loud drama. For whatever it's worth, I've thrust myself into depths where I don't really want to go.

When I was a kid and we lived for awhile in Livermore, Iowa, we were in an old, two-story farmhouse with a cellar. The barn still stood nearby, though we were forbidden to go in.  Around the barn was a junkyard of rusting machines, piles of wood planks, a couple of sheds and a threatening ground well. The house well was out back, with a working pump handle, and we played in that water frequently. But the barn well was mysterious and foreboding, the place that would swallow unsuspecting children who didn't watch where they were going. Down the cellar, a dirt-floored shivery hole, the coal furnace glowed orange and hot like a monster with many arms and one glittering eye.

We had several acres of life at that place, and I was 8-10 years old, quite impressionable, quite adventurous. I did all the things I was told not to do because they were dangerous --- going into the barn and jumping from the hayloft, climbing on the old machinery and up to the roof of the shed, crawling through the culvert at the end of our lane in order to get to the postage-stamp sized park on the other side of the road. My best friend Chrissy and I built and furnished a hut out of the junkyard near the barn, and camped out there. We ran through the cornfield behind the house, all the way to the railroad tracks to feel the vibration of an oncoming train and jump back, huddled together and screeching, as the engine blew by, followed by deafening, clacking cars that made the tracks move back and forth as they passed.

I learned that going to the scary places could be all right, as long as Mom was in the house fixing dinner. I learned that I could get away with pushing my boundaries and not get caught, but I also learned that when I got caught, I got sent up to my room to stew about the unfairness of it all.

I'm grateful that I had the freedom to test myself, to call on courage, to use my judgment, to experience fear, but not terror. I always had a safe place to land.

This week, I've jumped off the shed and crawled through the culvert, psychically at least. I've spoken my truth, even when I knew it was not being heard or understood. I've rebelled, I've shouted, I've looked my own fears about my mother and myself, directly in the face. It's been exhausting and I felt quite precarious, but once again, I find I have a safe place to land.

No matter how tangled up we get, how much we holler across a divide that seems unbridgeable, Jill and I keep finding our way back, giving each other the succor and shelter we need. Living life, getting older, facing decline and loss, take courage. But hand in hand, we can also jump out of the hayloft laughing, and be awed by the locomotive roaring by.