Figuring Out Life While Aging
Hashtag: #spoileralert
– After reading poems by Emily Dickinson, and Tweets on Twitter
My future hides before me;
The ending pre-ordained.
The losses will continue
But bright joys may remain.
My feet will grow more tender;
My knees and hips more lame.
I may remember much;
I may forget my name.
The ending could be sudden,
Or agonies, – and slow.
But life that waits before me
Holds time and love and hope.
I’ve lost the password to what used to be my life.
The air is strange and I’m losing my sense of balance.
I search through remnants in the home I sold,
wondering what to keep, or sell, or trash.
I listen to the chatter of family discord:
recent losses, expected deaths, while mangled hopes
fall like tears, splashing on me,
where I sit, creating a new password.
The uncertainty of pain
breeds hope until
loss
silences gratitude
for what was
and is now gone.
While prayer is grasped
and groped through,
grinding new hopes into
fragments of lesser loss,
the heart
twists
In Death’s waiting room, I watch
The receptionist checking files, and
I tell her it’s not me. I don’t
Have an appointment
Yet, I hope.
This one here beside me,
Who is looking away and
Doesn’t know it’s time,
Who doesn’t want to go
Into the next room.
It’s not me, I tell her,
Not me yet, I hope.
My grandfather used to say he’d eat
Sawdust
If it had whipped cream
On it.
In my sawdust times
I chase the whipping
Cream
Of pleasing people.
“Take care of yourself” they said
But I didn’t know how
To be
That selfish.
“Like on a plane with a dependant” they said
“And the oxygen masks drop down,
Put yours on first;
That’s being responsible.”
Alone,
By the summer lake,
I feel the breeze.
Discordant Dance
Before I knew I was unhappy
The questions were unanswered.
There was no crisis,
Just the ongoingness
Of dizzying agony.
Without the busyness of costumes,
I became curious:
What shaped these blows?
Why did I accept being thrown away
And jerked back?
Why these steps
In pain
Over and over and over?
How can I stop the dance?
Is it my choice?
Where was this dark dance
Choreographed?
The mirror watched
As I twirled and twisted,
Watched impassively
Until, finally, a little light bled in.
I almost saw a question,
And twisted away.
I felt an answer trembling at my fingertips,
And closed my eyes.
I tripped, and caught myself
By staring at the mirror.
Again,
And again.
The mirror saw what I felt:
The dance was shifting, gentling, stretching.
And the questions began shaping
The new choreography.
The photographs, strung like uneven pearls
across the years, challenge our memories,
declaring our connections, chosen moments posed
on cusps we didn’t recognize, and only now
see
https://soundcloud.com/joanvinallcox/familhyreunion
https://soundcloud.com/joanvinallcox/familhyreunionhttps://soundcloud.com/joanvinallcox/familhyreunion
I’m shedding my thesis library quite deliberately. I won’t be reading any of them again. That part of my life is over. I sat and pulled off all the very many markers I’d added to these books, while reading almost nothing of what the makers had indicated was important to me, years ago. While doing so, it occurred to me that reading has been my life art. I read for solace. I read for information. I read for concepts and thought maps to help me understand my life. Why is reading not thought of as an art? Look what I did to one of the many, many books that fed me!
I dove into books and swam through the ideas and language, then rewove my mind experience with memories of my experiences and into future understandings and behaviour. I created, not just a Ph.D. Thesis, but experiences in the classroom for me and for the students. I learned. I grew. My perceptions became more intricate and detailed. I read more, and grew more. This has been the great joy in my life.
The dismal days of. December
Cloud my heart with cold thoughts.
Death is expected,
Despite the decorations.
I hear the calls for kindnesses:
I watch the lights appear.
Versions from the old story
Are sung in greedy descants.
Where can I find warmth
In this place of palaces,
Jewels, and feasts?
Where is my heart’s stable?
Learning Living 