Birthday Holiday

With the arrival of my birth month October, this seems a good time to ponder some thoughts and feelings regarding my 71st personal holiday.  First, I can celebrate being alive and healthy with people to love and who love me!

Second, the passing of my only sister Evelyn on the first day of September has made a major impact on celebrating my personal joy of me being alive.  She and I shared the month of October as our personal holidays of our births; mine was on the 2^nd and hers was on the 3^rd.

After 68 years of sharing our birthdays, this year’s birthday holiday intensifies the major change that has taken place in my world and a unique and weird feeling of loneliness even while surrounded by family and friends.  Now I face new challenges for managing my post-71 years.

Last month a good friend of mine died during his 60s -- which gets younger and younger to me at each birthday.  One of his favorite expressions was: “If I had known that I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”  Me, too!

As with most humans I know, I probably would have made a few different choices along life’s journey while reconfirming most of the major ones that I did make.  One thing that has changed is the awareness that the distance between being 30 and 70 is not anywhere near as big as I once thought.  Life DOES pass quickly.

As many know, I celebrate my birthday for the entire month of October.  My birthday is my own PERSONAL holiday; it is a time where I can focus on celebrating the joys and challenges of my own unique life journey – alone and with others who wish to join me.

Since I have a small family, a birthday month gives me plenty of time to celebrate with a much larger group – my family of friends.  “Show me a man’s friends and the man I shall know” is an often-used phrase that I believe after my years of living.  If you know my friends over the past 50 years, you have a very clear picture of who I am.

Confronted with the reality that many issues will prevent me from seeing some of my historical friends in person before one of us passes from this life, I find each birthday increases my desire to see these persons while we both are able.  Aging does increase the need to prioritize what we want to do with whatever time we have left.

Our society tends to focus on being young, acting young, looking young, behaving with youth activities, etc.  Therefore, even though we are all aging with each birthday, it can be difficult to find one’s personal path to the aging journey.  Some embrace looking for their personal path while other prefers to deny that aging is taking place.

Getting older is full of changes.  I find it more difficult to make new friends.  There are plenty of chances for acquaintances, but the in-depth relationships of a historical friend grow more difficult as each birthday passes.

Most people my age have their full ‘quota’ of friends in their friendship circle.  Many are not willing to place the time and energy into building the friendships that once came so easily when one was younger and had more common activities.

In addition to having a full quota of friendships, many have turned their focus on to their grandchildren and the arrival of numerous medical issues in their lives.  Each of these takes one’s current time and energy.  And there seems to be less time and energy available to each of us as we age even though the day is still 24 hours.

One aspect of my focus on maintaining personal health has been that this birthday marks the beginning of my 9^th year of my walking program.  As of this birthday, I have completed 1122 miles toward my annual goal of 1200 miles.

While one is gaining the presence of grandchildren in our lives, one is also learning about the loss of friends.  Some just decide to go in a different direction with their lives and it does not include me any longer.  While some are kind to talk about it and share what is happening, others just depart.  As with each person who enters my life, each leaves a special mark that I carry forever in my heart.

The departure of friends like my sister who quickly can die without any warning or as a result of a very long and draining illness, encourages me to confront my own mortality and make frequent contact with dear friends a personal priority.

I have always felt blessed by my family of friends.  They have been there for me to offer kindness and support as well as to receive whatever gifts I could give them.  Some have been very generous to me in a material form.   However, the caring, love and nurturing support from these people are the most important to me.

From one I received a cruise to Hawaii for my 69^th birthday and another gave me a plane ticket to Hawaii for my 70^th birthday.   I also received an all-day trip to Callaway Gardens in Georgia.  For my 71^st birthday, a couple of friends in Texas have invited me to join them on an all-expenses paid Caribbean cruise this December.  

Birthdays can start processing the differences between being left alone as our ‘family’ leaves us in various ways versus the challenges of loneliness.  Do we live alone or seek some form of group living style?  How do we manage the choices of each?

We confront the reality that money has a great deal of power on the state of our mind toward positivism and negativism in our lives as we age.  For many we are evaluated and judged by others on how much wealth we have accumulated during our lives.  Having sufficient funds does make many of our life options easier during our later years.

Few seem to understand this power while they are young; I know that I did not learn the principles of saving and investing while I could do something about it in my youth.  Now the absence of sufficient funding affects many aspects of my life at this age from health care to travel.

Of course, the most positive aspect of my personal holiday is that I am still here in this life to celebrate a 71^st birthday.  “I am upright and living above the grass” with good health.


My life insurance  company expects me to live for 16 more years.  I am going to do all that I can to assist them in meeting this expectation of me living until I am at least 87!

Regardless of the manner and degree in which we choose to celebrate the special joy of our birth, this celebration is still part of our own individual personal life journey.  

We make our birthdays into what has value for us while others are invited to participate to the degree that they prefer.

Comment welcome.  Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com

Losing Part Of Self

On Wednesday, 1 September 2010, a part of me died when my sister of 68 years passed away from a heart attack about 3:00 in the afternoon.  This event brought a decade of her pain and suffering to an end while producing a hole in the lives of many people who loved and cared about her.

After a decade of illness and the many trips we made to the hospital I had prepared myself that she was about to die.  But, she kept bouncing back in spite of her rheumatoid arthritis and pain from it and other illness.  I grew to believe that she would outlive me and her death was seldom on my mind.


We both lost our younger brother Bob on 
12 September  2004  who passed at the age of 61.

Her latest encounter with the medical world was on 18 August when she had knee surgery followed by time in a rehabilitation hospital.  As I have done so many times in previous years, I brought her home on 31 August.  She projected a feeling of being upbeat with her attitude; she could be at home in her comfortable chair and have her cat back in her lap.

Even with all of the previous close calls that my sister had, her death 24 hours later was a complete surprise.  I could feel a significant part of my historical self slip away.  After 68 years as brother and sister with the full range of feelings and behaviors that entails, my life has changed significantly with her departure from my world.  Since both of my siblings who were younger than me have passed, I am in that unique and somewhat lonely position of being the last family member alive.

One of the areas of which I am thankful is that my sister and I departed in an atmosphere of positive feelings.  In her early days of illness, I played “Big Brother” and tried to nag her to do what I thought was good for her.  The results were lots of arguments.

Finally I realized one of my own Hugheyisms: “People will basically do what they want to do with their own lives and they behave to meet their needs, not mine.”  When I stopped trying to take over my sister’s life in a belief to have her practice my view of good health, our time together was a great deal more positive.  I am glad that I finally began to practice what I have always preached!

Rather than a traditional funeral, my sister and I shared a similar value in that we wanted to have a memorial service with the focus of what we have done with the gift of life that God has given to us.  Her two sons, Bryan and Daniel, produced a special memorial service to honor their mother that conveyed the spirit of her as a mother, teacher, and friend to so many in her community.  I believe that she would have been very proud of how they conveyed to the many in attendance the essence of who their mother was and the ways she helped others with her gift of life.

My experience has been that there is so much activity during the period around a person’s death.  There is never enough time to be for visitation and listen to all of the people who were important to the deceased.  I am so thankful that so many people made the effort to make sure that her sons and brother got to hear of how Evelyn made an impact in their lives.

I have been blessed by the phone calls, visits, emails, etc. of loving people who not only wanted to share their love of Evelyn with me and her sons, but wanted to also convey their sincere caring about the three of us and how they could help us manage this surprise loss.  Time will be a major healer, just as it always as been, but the caring of people around me will help nurture me in so many ways during the difficult days ahead.

Longevity genes are not present in our family with both of my parents dieing at young ages.  My younger brother died at 61 and Evelyn passed at the same age as our mother, 68.  Going through this experience reinforces for me to make the most of my ‘bucket list’ and spend as much time as I can interacting with family and friends while living each day to its fullest.

Evelyn and I shared October birthdays.  Mine is on the 2^nd and hers was on the 3^rd.  For the first time in 68 years, she will not be present to have us co-celebrate the most important personal holiday of my yearly calendar.  For the first time, my joyous celebration of my life will be tempered by her absence.

However, her memories are always a part of me starting back during World War 2 when war rationing forced us to share the same birthday cake; 1//2 on the 2^nd and 1/2 on the 3^rd.

Yes, a significant person in my life has departed; I shall never be the same.  Like all losses I prepare to grieve in the days ahead and know that I shall emerge with the powerful awareness that I was blessed to have Evelyn as my sister. 

 I make the commitment to myself to choose to recall the positive parts of our relationship, support her sons in every way that I am able and make sure that her only grandchild knows how much she loved him.

Comments welcome.   Email: silverlistener@gmail.com

What Is The Problem?

Unless you are caught in the middle of a situation, one of the entertaining aspects of human behavior can be to learn how a number of people can all look at the same object or situation and yet see it completely different.

An example can be family communication.  Individual A likes to interact frequently by email, phone and visiting.  He/she likes to share what is happening in his/her world and learn what the other members of the family are doing, planning, fearing, celebrating, wishing for, etc.  Knowledge and frequent communication builds stronger family bonds for this individual.

However, this person can be placed into a family that views this behavior in a completely different manner.  These other individuals see contact with family as being reserved for special events like birthdays or when there is some major news or illness to report.  Individual A can see their interactions as more like an exchange of newsletters than anything else. 

These other family members have lives and friends of their own so they see family as only a portion of their social world.  Infrequent family contact meets their needs at a very satisfactory level.

So, while Individual A is venting his frustration that his/her family cannot be more like what he/she would like for them to be in communicating, the remainder of the family members are saying something similar to: “what is the problem?”

Unless the family members come to accept each member as they are and remove his/her set of expectations, each will be unhappy. Often whatever we call a ‘problem’ is a set of attitudes and expectations that we carry toward ourselves and the other people in our world.   Some will immediately see a situation as being a problem while other looking at the same situation are wondering:  what/where is the problem?

 It is often helpful to recall that we cannot make another person value what we value in a relationship.  People still do what will meet their needs as they live their life, not what will meet our needs or solve our problems.

Naturally, this same behavior can carry into all aspects of our lives other than just with family communications.   It can enter the world of our work, participating in social organizations, and even such areas as to how we drive on the highway. 

We are all different and unique from each other.   This can bring happiness by the appreciation of diversity or conflict when others want to behave in a way different from our expectations. 

Each of can be confused and irritated when someone sees us as being “a problem” when our response is more likely to be “What is the problem?  I don’t see any problem.”   Or, we have the choice of becoming angry when we can see the problem so clearly and other do not see what we see.  We may be tempted to yell “why can’t you see this problem like I can?” 

Of course we can always choose to turn the interaction into a blame-game by saying something like “you are the problem, not me.”  That is practically guaranteed to leave all participants with defensive feelings of anger and a low outlook for resolution.

We can conclude that since we are unique and individual, we will probably be in a large number of situations where we see something different than another.

Recalling that “different strokes for different folks” can be helpful in assisting us to resolve a situation rather than deciding to play victim and/or blame psychological mind games with others and ourselves.  The first helps us find win-win resolution while the second usually ends with lose-lose outcomes.

Comments welcome.  Email:  silverchatline@gmail.com