This Thing Called Aging

Learning About and Living Life To The End

In the after math of the Hurricane Helene, I resorted to Facebook and Social Media feeling compelled to offer updates. I’m not going to do that any longer. I learned again this morning to just not go there. I posted a quote by Thomas Merton that someone had a hissy fit about—saying “This is not Christian.” I just do not belong in that space. I wonder why I keep returning?  It was then and there that I decided to turn to you and stay with you.  Thank you for letting me be myself; get some things out where we can look at what I am trying to say and help each other along to get home before it gets so dark.

Let me post here a NON-Profit I have vetted here in Brevard, NC that I am recommending you consider donating to in many ways. The need is great. The reality of what has happened is slowly dawning on people here. The numbness and shock is wearing off, exposing the gut punch, utter devastation and loss of so, so, so much here.

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Urgent Needs for Hurricane Relief for Sharing House (Donation Opportunities)

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Photo by Ricardas Brogys on Unsplash

There is just so much here in this poem called, “This Thing Called Aging.”  Perhaps it is a poem that needs no set up or narrative to explain it at all.  But, I doubt anyone who is younger than me could possibly understand it.  That is, unless they had a friend named, Mike (not his real name) to teach them how to age and how to not age.

It is my practice to go and visit Mike once or twice a week. That my life has come down to this is no small thing for me to admit to you.  But, it feels so immensely important for me to go be with him in his new “home”. It’s the third place Tom has lived in a year. Only two years ago, Mike’s life mirrored mine. We both had written books; both had traveled the world; both had been to seminary; both had pastored churches; both shared so much affinity that has proved to be the rich soil of friendship between two men: one who is 70 and Mike who is 80. Mike’s wife died this past year and his health has been racked with loss as well. 

I’m drawn to him because he knows the depths of the river I need to swim in these days. He knows the currents; the dark sides and the eddys of sharing oysters together from time to time. I'm drawn to him because in him and in his aging body, I see Christ and I am drawn to what I see in some deep way that I know I cannot fully understand.

He is my mentor in aging.  We live in a culture obsessed with youthfulness, not wisdom.  As I sit with Mike, we feast more in mystery than social media. We traffic in the big questions than the minutia of the price of eggs.  We often speak of our mutual need to have a “good talk” where there is no limit to the time or the subject we can explore.

This thing called aging seems like a Category 5 Hurricane that promises destruction on many fronts in it’s path headed my way.  Having Hurricane Helene blow through these mountains reminds me visually of the rising floodwaters that are ahead.

This inevitable journey towards inertia offers many invitations to learn if we care to study it at all. I care to learn. I care to have a mentor and friend. I care to have a hand reach back to me, saying “Come this way, not that way.”

Sometimes, I hesitate to actually post what I am actually thinking and feeling.  But thus far, my Substack friends, you are allowing me to sit in this space as a safe space to be myself. This poem is myself today; not every day; but a growing number of days. Some of you will understand.

Now, here’s my poem, “This Thing Called Aging.” My poems are for the folks who are choosing to sit with me by this fire and draw up another rocking chair and just sit a while together and chew on a poem to see if there’s nourishment or gristle. You decide!