Family

The Marvelous Grandpaphone

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Photo by Arthur Edelmans on Unsplash

The word “grandpaphone” came to me as I woke from a dream.

In the dream, I was at a family reunion. Some youngsters were showing me a trick that they learned. They poured a liquid on an old LP record. It flattened the grooves, making the surface shiny and smooth. I said they shouldn’t do that and explained what the grooves were for. I wanted to tell them about playing my grandmother’s old wind-up gramophone as a boy. It played recordings on cylinders instead of disks. But first, I wanted to figure out whose grandkids these were. They must belong to one of my siblings. However, they seemed not to know who I was talking about when I named my brother and sisters.

I realized the meaning of this dream in what my son calls “Ha-Ha time” (half asleep and half awake).

The children who erase the LP and do not remember my generation’s names will be my grandchildren’s grandchildren. I don’t know all the first names of my sixteen great-great-grandparents. Do you know yours?

Unless your ancestors are the kind of people recorded in history books or you are an obsessive-compulsive genealogist, you are unlikely to know much about that generation.

The dream confronted me with an aspect of mortality that may be even more profound than the eventual death of my body — the erasure of the fact that I ever lived.

I heard this hymn playing in the background:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all who breathe away,
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies in the dawning day.

Isaac Watts revised by Brian Wren

That was when I woke up, and the word “grandpaphone” came to me. A grandpaphone picks up and plays the vibrations of the ancestors through the generations.

That is the best I can hope for. My efforts to become immortal aren’t bearing much fruit.

If my descendants have an enormous trust fund, it won’t bear my name, and they won’t have other reminders of my existence.

I did publish a book of sermons, but it went out of print in the 1990s. The paper in the copies I have on my shelves is already turning yellow.

I can count on appearing in the histories of the churches I served, but I fear that most of those churches won’t make it past the middle of this century.

The dream was calling me to recognize a truth my culture ignores –the importance of ancestors.

My particular Christian tradition has been guilty of looking down its nose at what it calls “ancestor worship.” So we reduce one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the earth,” to handing out corsages on Mother’s Day.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel was once asked what this commandment meant for people who had been abused or abandoned by their parents. Rabbi Heschel said the commandment does not require us to pretend that bad behavior is honorable. What it does command us to do is to have a reverence for the mystery of our own existence. Our parents, their parents, and all our ancestors are the symbols of that mystery.

Our ancestors do, indeed, represent a mystery: the mystery of who we are, how we got here, and, maybe, where we are going.

I was lucky to know all four of my grandparents, one of my great-grandmothers, and a step-great-grandmother. Some people come from family lines full of the kind of people who get biographies written about them — or at least an article in Wikipedia. Some people don’t even know the names of the two people who made them. But we all have this in common: a family tree that doubles in size with every generation: four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents — you can do the math. We don’t often realize that if even one of our 128 ancestors seven generations ago had not “come through,” as it were, you and I would not be here.

Perhaps your reaction is, “I’m just a random set of genes that came together to win the life lottery.”

Or maybe you think like my grandchildren. Once, when all four of them were together, I told them how my 15-year-old self got up the nerve to reach out for their grandmother’s hand, and she let me hold it. After telling that story, I asked, “Are you here because I reached for her hand? Or did I reach for her hand because you are supposed to be here?”

They all agreed that their inevitable future existence was the reason I crushed on their grandmother.

Whatever you think—and I admit there are days when I think my life is a lottery ticket and days when I think my life is inevitable—just thinking about it should fill us with reverence for the mystery of our existence.

You can create a very simple daily discipline of remembering your parents and their parents, grandparents, and ancestors and bowing in gratitude, thanking them for the gift of life. Since I have added that to my morning routine, I feel a reverence for life that I haven’t felt before.

I think I am playing the grandpaphone.

layers of cake

Life’s Layer Cake

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Even in the flat gray of the picture tube, she can make out the blue veins in her outer thighs, which somehow don’t seem possible, not yet. Not yet. She’s only forty-two, which, okay, when she was twelve seemed like one foot over the threshold into God’s waiting room, but now, living it, is an age that makes her feel no different than she always has. She’s twelve, she’s twenty-one, she’s thirty-three, she’s all the ages at the same time. But she isn’t aging. Not in her heart. Not in her mind’s eye.

Lehane, Dennis. Small Mercies (pp. 1-2). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 2023

As I come up on my 75th birthday, I can identify with Mary Pat, the main character in Dennis Lahane’s new novel, even though varicose veins are one of the few signs of aging that I don’t have. But, that other thing — the feeling that the person I was at all those different ages is still there someplace inside of me — I get that. And, I’ve been thinking about those moments a lot recently.

When you get to be my age, you realize that nothing is permanent. I have a vivid memory of standing at the foot of one of the world’s tallest buildings and thinking about the effort it took to build something that massive. I wondered what could possibly bring down something that big? It was the night before our son, Jim, and his wife, Rachel, would be married in the chapel of Hebrew Union College, a few blocks away. The building was the World Trade Center and almost everyone in my family was staying at the Marriott in the lower floors that night, August 11,2001.

Nothing lasts forever. It’s not just big buildings that come down, but giant corporations (Pontiac, A & P), venerable institutions (your church may be one of them), and social norms (a marijuana store just opened five blocks from where I’m sitting.)

Most of the time, the changes are so gradual that we hardly notice. But then, it hits us. On their 50th anniversary I looked through my parents’ wedding guest register. I had known most of the people who signed, and I realized, with a start, that the majority of them: my grandparents, their brothers and sisters, and close friends, were all gone — as were several members of Mom’s and Dad’s generation. That was twenty-six years ago. Now my parents’ generation is all gone, too.

It feels like my life and the lives of everyone I know and love are like leaves in the Niagara River. We float along together for awhile and pick up speed as we get closer to the falls. That truth can be terrifying.

But, there is another way to look at life. Instead of a river, the times of our lives can look like a layer cake, or like an archaeological site:

https://www.southalabama.edu/org/archaeology/news/stratigraphy.html

Like Mary Pat, I have caught my reflection and seen, not just my balding head, but myself as a 55-year-old senior pastor, a young husband and father, a teen-ager whose pants’ inseams were longer than my waist size, even the pre-schooler blowing dandelions on a summer’s day.

In some meaningful way, the person I was, and the people I knew, and even the things I did all seem to be preserved in those layers of time.

And maybe they are. I was recently introduced to the Buddha’s Five Remembrances:

  • I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.
  • I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.
  • I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.
  • Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.
  • My only true possessions are my actions, and I cannot escape their consequences.


Yes, four of those remembrances are about change. I can’t hang on to my youth, my health, my life, or my loved ones, but my past experiences and actions are different. They continue to be a part of my life.

I miss our son, Matt, who died last summer. I can’t call him on the phone. He won’t be around to celebrate my 75th birthday. But, in the layers of my life, he is still the tiny infant we brought home from the hospital, the toddler learning to walk, the teenager whose comments made his younger brother laugh, the young man introducing us to the woman he married, the father with two delightful teens of his own.

These memories don’t tempt me to live in the past. They remind me that the past lives in me.

As I look back, my life looks like a layer cake. The more layers, the richer my life is. Every decade, year, day, hour, moment, is a layer. I am learning late that what I decide to do with this day and hour makes a permanent difference.

As one of the wisest survivors of the Holocaust said:

Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness.

Victor Frankl, Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

The Mystery of Three

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“Is Jacquie there?” 

This question — the very first words I heard after I picked up the phone –  told me that my mother-in-law was calling. It was back in the day when people paid for long-distance calls by the minute and she didn’t have the pennies to spare on chit-chatting with her son-in-law. I got it.  I also suspected that her feelings about me were . . . complicated. 

Over the years, however, we forged a relationship.

She and I were both early risers. When she would come to visit, we would sit together in the kitchen drinking our first cup of coffee of the day and we would talk about the three people we both loved with all our hearts.  Not long before she was diagnosed with the cancer that would take her life, she sent me a Father’s Day card on which she listed all the good qualities she saw in me. It was an affirmation I still cling to. 

My love for her daughter and her love for our sons transformed a difficult relationship into a kind of friendship. She died more than 30 years ago, and I still miss her.

We are tempted to see the world in binaries. The most fundamental being “I” on the one hand and anything else, including “You,” on the other. And when it is just “you” and “me,” we either try to absorb each other, or push each other away.

The first page of the Bible says God made it that way. On the first day God creates the first binary: day and night. On the second day, God separates earth from sky. I never noticed until someone pointed it out to me recently, that God does not bless these first two days. These binaries are static; in opposition to each other. But, on the third day, God separates the land from the sea and these binaries start producing a third thing: Life. That is when God starts calling the Creation “good.”

This is the mystery of Three.

The ancient alchemists were focused on transformation.  How does one thing turn into another? The alchemists knew that one substance all by itself was inert. Two substances, like oil and water, would never really come together. But, add a third thing — a coagulant — and they would form something new. 

The alchemists wanted to turn lead into gold. But there is also an alchemy that makes a distrustful stranger, a competitor, even an enemy, into a friend if you add a third thing. According to the mystics, that third thing is either Love or Fear. Both of them can turn enemies into friends.

You know the saying:  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Fear seems to be the basis of everything from family dysfunctions to international relations.  

We create communities based on fear, not because we are bad people, but because we have evolved to sense threats to our existence. And we have learned that we have a greater chance to survive those threats if we band together. The members of NATO have many competing interests, but they recognize that Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine implies a threat to each of them. That is not an irrational fear. 

However, alliances based on fear can survive only as long as the threat persists. Indeed, NATO was on the verge of falling apart as Russia became more integrated into the global community. 

Lacking any genuine threat, human communities are tempted to manufacture fears in order to hold themselves together. Just think of the ways our political parties energized their bases to get out the vote two months ago. Sadly, it works. And it is easy to do. 

But, there is another image of the “Three” that appears in front of churches during this short season of 12 days called “Christmastide” — a mother, a father, and a baby. You don’t have to be Christian or even religious to understand that this is a symbol of Love with a capital “L.” 

It is a reminder that human beings can and do forge relationships based on their mutual love for some other person or thing.  At weddings we laugh and dance with each other. At funerals we cry and hug each other. We connect with complete strangers and create community because we all love the same people. People who love growing flowers form garden clubs. People who care about the poor form the crew at the hunger center. 

While the headlines focus on the building up of international alliances based on the fear of Russia’s military aggression and China’s economic hegemony, tens of thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations are banding together rescue people from poverty, hunger, and disease in ways that seldom appear on Fox News or CNN. These groups are often coalitions of people from many nations and of different faiths.  

When people band together to fight a third party they often feel a sense of belonging and purpose. But, ultimately, those relationships are destructive.

In his play, No Exit, the philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, created a vision of Hell as a cell containing three people who would spend eternity creating shifting alliances based on their fearful hatred of each other. It is a hell in which a lot of us live every day. Fear encourages lying and betrayal. It creates a “brood of vipers” as one biblical prophet called them. 

In contrast, the relationships forged on mutual love are usually marked by deep loyalty and faithfulness that persist over years. These relationships  encourage honesty and integrity in those who enter them. And they are creative.

It does not have to be a child, but it does have to be something that calls out the best in people — something they love and serve with all their hearts, and also makes them want what is best for each other.

Again, the Holy Family is an obvious symbol of this mystery and Christians have spun it out into the doctrine of the “Trinity.” I would assert that, in the conversation between the great Wisdom Traditions of the world, Christianity’s main contribution may be its insight that this Mystery of Three is what puts the “uni” in “Universe.” *

As a teacher of mine who was well-versed in both theology and science pointed out: planets and solar systems and galaxies are held together by gravity. Atoms and molecules are held together by atomic forces. The universe is held together by mutual attraction — the universe is held together by love.

As the New Year begins, consider the Holy Family and ask yourself These questions:

  • Which relationships do you have that are based on fear?
  • Which are based on love?
  • Which ones are most satisfying?
  • Which call out the best in you? 
  • Which ones will you work on?

And, If you would like to transform a relationship ask:

  • What do both of us love?  

Do you have any stories of transforming a relationship? I’d be curious to hear them.

The Feast of the Holy Family, January 1, 2023

*(Although, sadly, Christians have spent almost 2,000 years fearing and hating people who understand this mystery even slightly differently from the way they understand it.) 

Re-membering: How Grief Makes You A New Person

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Seeing the Whole Person


In the days after my Dad died, his grandchildren put together a display of photos. There were pictures of:

  • A grandchild steering his garden tractor while sitting on Dad’s lap.
  • Christmases past surrounded by kids and grandkids.
  • Dad giving his daughters away at their weddings.
  • Dad and Mom, barely out of their teens, at their own wedding.
  • A 12-year-old farm boy standing proudly next to his first deer.


Suddenly, it seemed like all of him was there. Not just the man I had seen the last time we were together: an old man who could barely hear anything you said. I also saw him in the prime of his life. I saw the young man I remembered from when I was a boy. My memories brought all of him together in a way that would not have been possible when he was alive.

Our memories ambush us years after the funeral. The smell of fresh-baked bread reminds me of one grandmother. The sight of a new commemorative postage stamp reminds me of the the other, who encouraged me to collect them. What triggers your memories of those long-gone?


When we remember our loved ones, we re-member them. We put them — and ourselves — together in a new way.


Re-membering Together


People gather after someone dies to share their memories. It may be the calling hours at the funeral home; an Irish wake; or in Greek Orthodox culture, a dinner honoring the deceased on the one-year anniversary of their death. Jews observe Shiva for a few evenings after the funeral. Friends, neighbors, and extended family visit the immediate family in their home.

Every traditional community has a way of creating these gatherings. Our secular suburban life is poorer when we don’t have them. But, just sharing a cup of coffee with good friends in those first few days after a death can help. In this pandemic era, we have even learned how to gather on Zoom.


We gather to listen with empathy as the most-bereaved talk about losing their loved one. Telling these stories can help them process their loss. But, it also helps the most-bereaved to hear stories about their loved one from others who knew that person.


In response to the first of this series, my sister-in-law, Jo-Anne, said that everyone’s life is like an elephant. The people who know us are like the blind men who famously announced their true, but very different, conclusions about that elephant. We all see only part of a person — including our parent, spouse, sibling, or child. Hearing stories about them from others helps us fill out our picture of this person who is so important to us.


I came away from my Dad’s funeral with a much bigger picture of him. I listened to people who had worked with him at the electric company, or on the volunteer rescue squad and the town board. Neighbors told me how he had helped them. After all, he could fix anything; from your refrigerator to your kid’s broken arm.

This also happens when I gather with my brother and sisters. Each of them related to our parents differently. As I listen to their stories, they fill in the picture, and at the same time, deepen the mystery, of who my parents were.


The Pieces Come Together in a New Way


“Closure” is a myth. We have this fantasy that, after someone important dies, we will go through the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, and acceptance. Then we should be able to pick up where we left off.


Instead, we are changed

as we re-member our dead

into our lives.


The Mystery of Your Existence


All my grandparents were born in the 19th century. All my grandchildren were born in the 21st century.

If you are now in the Third Half of your life, you can probably say the same about many of the people who loomed large in your childhood and some of the people who are dearest to you now. And, here you are in between the past and the future.

We are participating in some kind of grand scheme of things. My hope is that we are moving toward Shalom, wholeness, peace, good will toward all people, and toward Creation itself.

Remembering and passing on our memories is one way we actively participate in this grand scheme.

The Bible says God does not forget us. Whatever resurrection is, it is definitely a kind of re-membering.


Remembering is the work of grief that lasts long after the tears stop flowing.

There are three more aspects of this work:

  • We make sense out of our memories
  • We forgive.
  • We decide what we believe about life, death, and life after death.”

I will write about them soon.

Let me leave you with this beautiful litany:

A Litany of Remembrance – We Remember Them


In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
we remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
we remember them.
In the opening of buds and in the rebirth of spring,
we remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
we remember them.
In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
we remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
we remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
we remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
we remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live, for they are now a part of us,
as we remember them.

by Rabbi Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Riemer
From Gates of Prayer, published by Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/

Acquainted with Grief: 1 Grieving all the Time

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If you are in the Third Half of Life, you are probably grieving.

The grief may be passing through your life like a thunderstorm, or sitting over you like long days of rain. Or it may, for now, be part of the climate of your life.

You may or may not believe that global climate change is real, but I bet you have noticed in this Third Half of Life that the emotional climate of your life is not as bright and carefree as it once was. Your days, no matter how bright, may be tinged with sadness, the warmest of hugs and most intimate conversations may be accompanied by a chill.

This does not mean you are morbid or unhappy, it just means that you know in your bones that things — and people — can end.

As with global climate change, ignoring these changes only makes things worse. Acknowledging the fact that grief is part of the Third Half of Life enables us to savor the sunlight and find meaning even in the rainiest of days. Grief can make us more human, if we don’t avoid the work that goes with it.

My personal experience with grief has been blessedly ordinary. Like almost everyone my age, I have seen both my grandparents’ and parents’ generation pass away. I have been spared, so far, the loss of my beloved, or any of our younger family members. My only credential is that I have watched people grieve for over half a century. More than that, I have grieved with them.

I was not many years into the ministry before I realized that part of the psychic load of being a pastor was that I was grieving all the time.

Believe it or not, I loved my parishioners. I had to. It was the only way I could stand most of them. Given all my faults, I must have been loved by them in return. So, I grieved when they died. And, I did not have to be an empath to feel the deep griefs so many of them carried in their hearts. Not that it was a constant topic of conversation, but there would be moments when:

  • A widow would recall the life she shared with the man she loved.
  • A mother would recall a child who died before I was born.
  • A man would mention that he still missed a cat that he had to euthanize a year ago.
  • Someone would talk about father who died when he or she was fourteen.

These were the vibes that people emanated whether they told their stories or not.

Most of all, I have had a ringside seat with people when they lost loved ones. I sometimes had to bring them the news myself. As we prepared for the funeral, I coaxed them to describe their loved one. I would follow up with them in visits weeks and months afterward.

That work helped me develop some deep convictions about grief — especially what the work of grief is. Most of that work is subconscious — it is soul work. It cannot be described in words.

A colleague of mine, the pastor of a neighboring church, pointed to this inner work when he described how he handled his brother’s sudden death in an auto accident. The two of them were a about a year apart in age. They had been close all their lives. So, my colleague felt the loss of his brother very deeply. He said that he mowed his lawn almost every day for months after the funeral. Pushing his mower back and forth over his large lawn gave him the space to do that inner work that no one can describe.

However, there are four things we do when we grieve that can be described imperfectly, haltingly, because we tread on the edge of mystery. These four things are:

  1. We remember
  2. We make sense out of our memories
  3. We forgive
  4. We decide what we believe about life, death, and life-after-death.

These are not “stages of grief.” You can find lots of books on that subject. This is the work we do for everyone we love and lose. It never really ends. Right this moment, you are doing that work for people who have been dead longer than a lot of the adults you know have been alive.

In the next few weeks, I am going to go into this work in more detail.

It would help me to hear from you about how you have handled the grief in your life.

Image credit: Raul Diaz, Berlin Germany, Holocaust Memorial https://www.flickr.com/photos/radzfoto/2621999611/in/dateposted/

The One Question To Ask When Reviewing Your Life

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I sometimes think that we waste our lives looking for answers, when we should be looking for good questions.

A few days ago, I was part of an online presentation to some people who were considering a cochlear implant. One of them said he was afraid to undergo the surgery. “What if it fails?” he asked.

A surgeon who does cochlear implants responded, “It never fails.”

That’s what my surgeon told me when I expressed the same fear.

The surgeon went on. “Some people think that they will immediately go from hearing at thirty percent to hearing one hundred percent. Even if they eventually get up to ninety percent, they think it was a failure. People who were hearing at thirty percent and hoped the implant would raise it to fifty percent — and wound up hearing at seventy percent, think their surgeries were wildly successful. It all comes down to what you expect”

That’s the question I’ve been looking for.

I have been looking back at my life. Was it a good life? Or was it a failure? Was I blessed? Or cursed? Did my life have any meaning or purpose? Did I make any difference in this world?

Before I answer any of those questions, I need to ask another.

“What did I expect?”

I realize that most of my expectations were set by a 27-year-old who thought pretty highly of himself.

  • He got good grades (if he cared about the subject).
  • He married the love of his life (out of his league, frankly).
  • He got a lot of affirmation in his early years as a preacher and pastor.
  • He had two sons who were scarily smart and blessedly healthy.

Why wouldn’t he expect to live a life he could be proud of? Do great things? Be loved and admired?

Didn’t happen. Certainly not on the scale he expected.

Part of my job in the last few years is to teach that young man some compassion.

Compassion basically means accepting people’s frailties, their weaknesses, not expecting them to behave like gods. That expectation is cruelty, because they will not be able to behave like gods and then they will fall in your estimation and will also fall in their own self-respect.

Osho

This question, “What did I expect?” leads to compassion.

Compassion is not cheap grace. I made some major choices that were cowardly or selfish. They led to real failures. I own that. One reason I made some of those choices is that the 27-year-old inside of me did not think I could fail.

Ask the owners of the Titanic how that works out.

“What did I expect?” leads to humble realism about myself and other people. I learn to accept my failures and I am kinder to others.

This question, “What did I expect?” also leads to gratitude. It pushes me to ask, “What did I have a right to expect?”

The answer, of course, is, “nothing.”

As someone who has buried lots of people who are younger than I am now, including parents of teenagers, teenagers, children, and even newborns, I know that none of us has a “right” to life. Even being born exceeds what we can expect.

Starting with no expectations at all, I see that . . .

  • Spending my days with the wisest, most open-hearted (and attractive) woman I know
  • Being able to breathe and walk on my own
  • Having four of the people I love the most call me “Grandpa”
  • Feeling the sun on my face

All of these are blessings beyond compare.

What do you think of your own life?

It’s a good question. A necessary question.

But first, ask yourself:

What did you expect?

Living With Limitations

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What I’ve learned from my Grandfathers since they died

Last week, I wrote about my strategy for a healthy old age and how I learned it from my Grandfather Talbott.

You may have read about how I built myself up so that I could run 3 miles without stopping, and said, “How nice for you. Not everyone gets to have a healthy old age.”

Frankly, I’m not sure I will have one either.

I did the running to recover from a strange illness. In December 2019, I had fever, cough, congestion, fatigue, and brain fog. Sounds a lot like COVID-19. But, I had it a month before the WHO even knew there was an outbreak in Wuhan. I was tested for antibodies six months after I had it. None showed up. Not unusual for COVID patients, but it means I can’t prove that I had it.

In January 2019, I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder. Life-long smokers get COPD. Now it is showing up in people who had COVID 19. I never smoked.

That is why I began walking and running last spring — to build lung capacity.

But, beginning in late November and continuing right up to today, I have spent most of my waking hours lying in bed with fatigue and brain fog. The brain fog has lifted, or I would not be writing this. But the fatigue continues. 

My “push the broom” solution isn’t working either. I’ve done enough exercising to know what being tired feels like. It is not the same as  feeling nauseous, having a headache, and wanting to fall asleep after walking around the block.

The Cleveland Clinic calls this “reduced exercise tolerance.”

This, too, is a symptom of “Long Covid,” officially: Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). (I have a theory that Medicine creates the most highbrow names for the stuff it knows the least about.) No one knows how long the disease lasts. Will it get better? Or worse? How will it affect my COPD and a couple of other things that I have wrong with me that require lots of exercise? Will I die of this?

All this uncertainty makes me remember my other grandfather — Grandpa Flint.

When he was in his 50’s, he had a stroke.

In his 60’s, he went blind.

In his 70’s, he spent years battling cancer, and ultimately lost the battle.

This is what I remember:

When he had the stroke, he did the hard work of learning to speak and walk again. He had to quit his job, but he started a business. He stocked a small lake he owned with trout, then charged a dollar for each one that fishermen caught. He was able to continue that business even after he could no longer see to drive or read.

Because he was legally blind he was able to get books and magazines recorded on phonograph records. He used to say that he read more after going blind than he did when he could see. He also bought a juicer. He made carrot juice everyday because he heard it was good for the eyes. When he mentioned it to his ophthalmologist, the doctor said, “Well, I never saw a rabbit wearing glasses.”

One day, he asked a fisherman, a doctor, to look at a mole on the back of his neck. The doctor told him it was cancer. That was the beginning of an almost two-decade up-and-down experience of dealing with cancer in different organs. At the end, it invaded his bones.

He decided against chemotherapy. I thought he was crazy. Looking back, I can see that, in the 70’s, chemotherapy was both agonizing and not very effective. He might have lived a few more weeks or months, but his quality of life would have been worse.

As it was, he was in a lot of pain. There was no such thing as hospice or palliative medicine in those days. Politicians believed they had to limit pain-killers to protect dying people from becoming drug addicts.

I used to visit him in his last months. I was struck by the change in his personality.

All his life, he was a big personality who liked being the center of attention. His stories always sounded better than the actual experiences probably were. His marriage to my grandmother was sometimes tense. He was an extrovert married to an introvert. He was the guy with big ideas married to someone who, my mother said, “could always see the hole in the donut.” They were opposites: just like every other couple I know.

In the end, he bore his pain with grace. He told me that he had never loved or appreciated my grandmother more. His faith in God was his source of strength when his body failed him. In the midst of his pain, he saw goodness all around him.

My cousin, Dawn, who grew up within walking distance of our grandparents  knew them far better than I did. She suggests that those good qualities were there all along. They were covered up by the boasting, gregarious personality that he presented to the world.

But, isn’t that true of all of us? Isn’t our basic goodness encased in a shell of bad habits, defensiveness, and need for approval? And doesn’t it usually take suffering in some form to crack that shell?

As my teacher and friend, Laura Atmadarshan Santoro says:

“No one ever said at the end of a good meal surrounded by loving friends, ‘I need to make  changes. My life needs to take a new direction!’ It is only when we are hurting that we change.”

I hope I will start feeling better as Spring arrives and the pandemic restrictions finally lift as we all get vaccinated. I want to get back to walking and running and working out again. I’d like to go on to a healthy old age, like my Grandfather Talbott. I like the slogan: “Live long and die short.”

But, this period of repetitive, long-term illness has caused me to look at my Grandfather Flint for guidance, too. I can learn to:

  • Listen to my body and support my health with nutritious food and as much exercise as my body will bear.
  • Learn to make plans with the proviso that I might not be able to carry them out.
  • Love everyone around me.
  • Write some things that I hope other people will read.
  • Pray for the world, especially for those who suffer.
  • Appreciate and enjoy every day as much as I can.

When I compare this time in my life with my Grandfather’s last few months, I would hardly call my experience “suffering.” In fact, my life is so leisurely and stress-free that I fear I will become like one of Jacquie’s great-aunts. My mother-in-law always described her as “someone who enjoyed poor health.”

Nevertheless, I understand better something the Bible says:

We also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God  has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Romans 5:3-5 New English Translation.

What A Healthy Old Age Looks Like

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What I’ve Learned from My Grandfathers Since They Died: Part 1

One of the challenges of this Third Half of Life is health. Sure, that means eating right and exercise, but it begins inside of our heads. 

When we get older and we get sick or injure ourselves, we are tempted to look at the calendar and say, “I’m old,” and think: 

Old = sick

Old = feeble

Old = dying.

We are not necessarily helped much by the medical profession. Doctors were once taught that the paradigm of health is a man. So, they treated things that were uniquely female, like menopause or having a uterus, as pathologies that needed medication or removal. 

 That may have improved. However, it’s hard for lay people and professionals to get past the unconscious assumption that the paradigm of health is a 19-year-old. The more we deviate from that ideal, the more likely we are to get  prescriptions and procedures to “fix” us. 

As my mother used to say, “Every time I go to the doctor, I get a new pill. Then, every two years, I wind up in the hospital and they take them all away from me.” 

Too many of us are conditioned to think that there is nothing we can do about our health. When I talk with friends about how a lot of chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes or even heart disease can be healed with diet and exercise, a lot of them say wearily, “just give me a pill.” 

I think that they lack a mental image of what a healthy old age looks like.  I am grateful that my Grandfather Talbott taught me that old people can rebuild their health after it takes a nosedive.

I’ve learned a lot from my grandfathers since they died. The older I get the more I learn. It’s not that I remember stories that they told me or any advice that they gave me. But, I do remember how they lived and how they negotiated old age. I am benefitting from their examples.

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

James Baldwin

Grandpa Talbott was a dairy farmer. He was active in the Dairyman’s League, a cooperative of farmers who banded together to sell their milk at a fair price. As my Dad took over the farm, Grandpa took on more responsibility in the League’s organization. Before I got to high school, he was commuting 300 miles to New York City every week to work at the League headquarters as the treasurer. Then, he became president of what was then the largest dairy cooperative in the country.

It was a lot of stress and responsibility. By his mid-60’s, he was sick and worn out. He spent several weeks in the hospital before he retired.

Shortly after he retired, he drove up to our farm one morning. Dad and I had finished breakfast and we were cleaning the barn after milking. The cows had gone off to pasture. The barn floor needed cleaning. I had used a shovel to take care of the manure. Grandpa picked up the push broom and started down the barn floor, sweeping everything on his left into the gutter. He went very, very slowly.

My Dad and I watched him. It was kind of agonizing. When he got to the other end of the barn floor, he leaned on his broom to catch his breath.

My Dad said, “Go take that broom away from your grandfather.”

I walked down the floor and said, “Here, Grandpa, I can finish it.”

He said, “No, Roger, I need to do this.”

So, we watched him come back, sweeping the other side. Then he got in his car and went home.

He came back the next day. And the next. It took a few weeks, but then he was sweeping the floor as fast or faster than I could. He would stay and help my Dad with other chores. He also worked on my uncle’s much bigger farm. In fact, he was plowing my uncle’s fields into his 80’s.

I, too, pushed too hard and too long on my work for my own good. By the time I retired in 2016, I was overweight and suffering from a severe digestive disorder. I found a doctor who said she could cure me. And she did. I made a lot of life-style changes and got better and better. Then, I spent December 2019 suffering from a flu-like illness. I spent six weeks in bed with mild fever, and moderate fatigue and brain fog.  Sounds like COVID-19 doesn’t it? Trouble is, doctors diagnosed the first case in New York City in March 2020.

Whatever it was, I feared I was going to spend my life as an invalid. But I started walking and working out. Then, I decided to try running. My son, Jim, who lives near us, is a runner. When my knees hurt, he taught me how to shorten my gait and land on my toes. The pain disappeared.

By the end of October, I could run 5 kilometers (3 miles). I had to thank my Grandfather Talbott. 

As I tied on my running shoes every other day, I thought of him pushing that broom.

When I could only run about 20 yards, I thought about him pushing that broom.

When it rained, I thought of him pushing that broom.

He’s been dead thirty years, but I keep learning from him. Next week, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from my other grandfather since he died. 

Who have you learned from since they died?

Becoming a Jew-ish Grandparent

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It has been some time since I last posted in this blog.

OK, it has been a LONG time.

I have a couple of excellent excuses.

I was sick for several weeks. Nothing serious, just persistent, and very fatiguing. My doctor has been trying to figure it out.

The other is that my daughter-in-law, Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg, had a conversation, with David Raphael. David and Lee Handler have founded the Jewish Grandparenting Network.

Rachel told David about our unusual family. Perhaps there are other Methodist ministers who have a Rabbi daughter-in-law, but I don’t know any personally.  Or any other Christian clergy that fit that description.

David got in touch with me through her. We talked. He asked me if I would write about our experience as the Christian grandparents in an interfaith family. I agreed.

I plan three posts on their website. It’s harder than it looks. In a sense, I am speaking for a number of people, Jacquie not least of all. I want it to be right.

This is the first one. It explains the dash in the next-to-last word in the title. Click here to read it.