Author Archives: jwlef1

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The wife of a physician friend of mine calls him an FIP now that he’s retired. When I asked what she meant, she said an FIP is “Formerly Important Person”. I was never an FIP, but I was an important voice in people’s lives. I never thought I would miss that. People would ask for my opinion on everything from operations, to their sex life and even if they should allow their daughter to go to prom. At the end when I decided to retire I was ready. I was tired of always being on call for my patient’s emergencies. Now I am starting to miss it. This week it will be six years since I left. Sometimes I think even my own family blows me off since “it’s just Dad, or it’s just Jim”. The passage of time has really had an effect on me in that I no longer feel as essential as I once did. I think this season did not help.

This winter was difficult. February was a very dreary month with snow and freezing rain and many cloudy wintery days. I didn’t go to the gym as much. In fact I think I took most of January and February off. I would swim, but didn’t run. . My cousin in Arizona helped a lot by inviting us out there. We went in mid March. This was the first time we had ever taken a winter vacation.  When we left it was a cloudy 37 degrees. We got off the plane to 73 degrees and sunny. This is the high season in Arizona. The weather is great. Spring breakers and baseball spring training all happen at the same time. My cousin and his wife were very generous and showed us much of the area. We went for a long walk in shorts and tee shirts every morning in the beautiful weather. We also had a chance to reconnect with some relatives on my father’s side. This was the first time we had seen them in 46 years. Just seeing them and hearing old family stories was important. I found out that my Dad’s father was physically and emotionally abusive to my Dad’s younger brother. This whole family story is constantly changing. My sister was in Arizona at the same time and we began talking about the family. We wondered what had happened to some of our cousins. We began to search and found out that one cousin and his wife had been dead for a number of years. Another cousin had died just two years ago and no one informed us.

I found his brother on Ancestry and wrote him. The family has lived in California for almost sixty years and really lost contact with the rest of us. He was glad to hear from me. He is 76 and still a practicing attorney. I may send him some stuff about our grandparents from Ireland. This whole experience got me to realize that our generation really is passing. We are all seniors now. This mortality thing really is getting more and more present. I think it’s easy to say live in the moment and focus on the present, but the reality is that the present is passing more and more each day.

I have another cousin in Arizona that we visited. She lives there in the winter and in Illinois and Michigan the rest of the year. She is 83 and still very vibrant and full of life. She used to babysit me and the male cousin who invited us to Arizona. She has many family stories and really is one of the last family history resources we have. She told us of a terrifying day when she was 11 years old. She had taken my cousin and I in a stroller to a store to buy us each a toy. On the way back she heard many sirens and found streets blocked off. This was the polio epidemic of the late 1940s. Everyone was terrified. She reports there were daily diagnoses and daily deaths announced at her school. The more she talked, the more I realized that each time has it’s own set of crises. Here I am in my seventies still trying to put some set of meaning on my life’s experience. On some days I can do this with no problems what so ever. Other days are more difficult. I think the deaths of cousins in my own generation has again made me focus on the real boundaries of life. There is a beginning and there is an end. I like to think of Mark Twain’s quote: “I know everybody dies, but I thought they would make an exception in my case. ”

There is no exception. I know my wife and other relatives continue to say I am in good health and should enjoy this time. Most days I can. I just think the cold shower of reality comes up occasionally and makes me realize that time is not endless.

This week our 8 y/o grandson stayed overnight with us. His imagination and energy still amaze us. Yesterday we visited my oldest son and played with our 18-month-old grand daughter. Today we will visit our other son and his 8-month-old daughter. They all have the wonder of discovery and joy and endless love. Right now they are the best medicine I can have for this winter disease. They really do light up my life.

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Christmas has never been the same since my sister’s sudden death eight years ago. I still remember the wonder we felt as children and I remember waking her up so we could sneak into the living room at 2 or 3 in the morning to see what Santa had left.

It does help to see my grandchildren and nieces and nephews have that same wonder, but I do miss my sister. She was the guardian of most of the family memories and my other sister and I often feel lost trying to remember family stories. The losses just seem more painful at Christmas because it is such a magical time of year. It is of course very materialistic. The Church always wants us to remember the “ reason for the season”. This is difficult with all of the pressure of the ads and the expectation that “this will be the best Christmas ever”. I think it helps to remember that this was really a pagan feast that the Church absorbed. The Winter Solstice was also a time of celebrating. Now almost all of the traditions of Christmas– Trees, Yule logs, Gifts , etc. have ties to those ancient feasts. The Christian churches want us to remember that Advent is the season to focus on the return of Christ. This is not what the media focuses on. All you hear is “sale, sale, bargain, bargain”. For me it helps to focus on this as a time of family celebration. The food, gifts, laughter all seems to be a sign of who we are. I think that is why this is such a bittersweet time. If you think about it, you really began your own self-definition in your family.The special events, birthdays, anniversaries,graduations, marriages,health issues of all your family members build your picture of what family was supposed to be. You carry on the values and traditions that you experienced there. As you grow older you have your own experiences, but the family imprint, good, or bad, will always be there. If you lose a family member thru death or alienation you really lose a part of yourself. You don’t have that person to talk to and say, “Remember when”.

The old proverb that “ Time Heals All Wounds” is true for the sharp pain that happens after the death, but the ache comes back and is always there. A sudden word, a certain smell, a special time of year, all bring back the memories and pain of loss. I once had a patient whose main issue was the drive-by death of her 19-year-old son that had happened 15 years before. She would have sudden migraines and overwhelming episodes of depression. She was very active in her Church, but had never been able to talk about it there. A real breakthrough for her occurred when she was finally able to talk about it with her fellow bible study members. She had a feeling of letting go and talked about the comfort they provided. Even that did not make the pain go away.

Another patient had trouble accepting the death of her four-year-old son. She would keep his room exactly the same as the day he died. She would continue to celebrate his birthday every year. She would drive by the school he would have attended and watch for the friends he would have had. She had another child, a daughter who was younger than the boy who died. She finally began to realize the effect this was having on her and began therapy. The day she packed up her son’s room was for her a real sign of acceptance. However this also didn’t make the pain go away.

The pain is always there and just becomes another part of life. We all have this marvelous ability to prioritize. As life goes on the pain can begin to slip into the background. However our brains are like giant hard drives and when the right trigger is pushed-be that a sound, a smell, or even a holiday, the memories come flooding back. The reality is that those losses are always with us,. As time goes on we adjust and we begin to get on with our lives as our loved ones would have wanted us too.

I know that we all go thru losses and that really is a part of life, but the general truth of this doesn’t help. So at sometime over the next two weeks I may even shed a tear as I think of those years we were all together. I hopefully will also have much laughter and love at the ones that still surround me. Merry Christmas. Remember what you had and treasure what you have.

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Sometimes I think I have lost the ability to be surprised by people and their motivations. This probably comes from the many years I spent listening to people and every sort of problem imaginable. From incest, to murder, to stealing candy bars, my patients would come in with all of their unresolved issues and try to work them out.

I think by the time I retired I was just tired of listening, but then something will happen that challenges this. In mid August we went on a Viking River Cruise thru Prague and southern Germany. A friend of mine had done it last year and recommended the trip. The cruise was beautiful and well worth it. We liked the whole experience. We met lots of new people and they were almost all in our age group. The typical age for this according to the cruise director is 60-75. There was one very independent 91 year old who had more energy than almost anyone on the ship. She does a cruise at least yearly. Every night we would have dinner with at least one new couple at our table of eight.

Besides the usual questions about occupation, location, and grandchildren, people became comfortable enough to really open up. I think the atmosphere and environment of the ship encouraged people to talk and share about their lives. I am still trying to understand this whole experience.

One couple in particular has really made me think. He and his girl friend sat at our table and we began to talk. Between the two of them they have 10 grandchildren, but the families really don’t mix. We asked how they met and he said that they met dancing the Tango. He is 68 and works in heating and air conditioning. He is thinking of retiring by the end of the year. She is 62 and has been a hospice nurse for over 25 years. He told us that he was a competitive roller skater for many years, but then hurt his knee. As he recovered he began looking for some other form of exercise. Just by chance he saw an ad about a class for learning the Tango. He took the class and it overwhelmed him. He became so involved with it that he would use his vacation time to go to Argentina to learn more. As he talked it was evident that this was one of the grand passions of his life. He met his girl friend at one of the classes and she liked the way he danced and talked. She told us she had been a widow for many years. She had dated occasionally, but nothing really serious until now.

The Tango apparently is culture unto itself. There is a specific way of moving and communicating. He said that he learned in Argentina that when you first met someone you wanted to dance with you didn’t speak. You stared intently at someone and if they stared back and nodded you would walk in a very specific way until the two could begin dancing. He told up that at this one class there were hundreds of couples and people began dancing without really being able to move very much because of lack of space. The Tango doesn’t require a lot of movement as much as it does the ability to communicate to your partner what you want to have them do. He told us that they had stepped back a little from the culture because they both loved to travel and this may become his new passion.

I think the reason I keep thinking about this is the realization that new passions and fascinations can enter your life at any time and at any age. I had been thinking that retirement meant a time of slowing down and contemplating the past and trying to reach that stage of “Ego Integrity vs. Despair”. Sometimes I thought this was really within my grasp, but now I do need to rethink.

When we decided to go on this trip we also planned on spending an extra week by ourselves in Paris. We had been there before and wanted go back and see more. One of the places we went to is the Pere LaChaise Cemetery. This is somewhat like Forest Lawn in Hollywood in that many famous people are buried there. The difference is that the French cemetery is almost 400 years old. I wanted to see Jim Morrison’s grave. His grave is one of the more visited along with Oscar Wilde’s. What struck me was that no matter how important or famous, all lives have a beginning and an end. I suppose you can sit and contemplate your life and what you have accomplished. One friend of mine had an image he shared of an old man sitting on his porch and cutting cheese. This sounds very peaceful, but it also sounds very limiting. Even in this last quarter of life new passions are still possible. I need to continue to be reminded of the importance of continuing to grow until the end. I might never learn the Tango, but maybe I can still learn to waltz.

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Memory is still a very important topic for people in my age group. Every Tuesday I have breakfast with a group ranging in age from 68 to 78. Sooner or later one of us will talk about problems remembering words, events, appointments, history, etc. A neurologist has said that this is a normal function of aging. The time to become concerned is when you forget the function of certain objects i.e. you don’t know what a stove is. I had a patient many years ago that had severe organic brain damage. Her family was still letting her drive. When I began questioning her about this, she admitted she didn’t know what a stoplight was and thought that it was a clock. Thankfully her family removed her car keys.

The thing about memory is that everything we have seen or done is stored somewhere in our brain. Sometimes a word, a song, a smell can bring back very vivid memories of the past. Imagine walking into a house where someone has just baked Chocolate Chip cookies. What would that smell do for you? Would it bring back memories of your childhood? For many people it does.

I had another patient who began to have extreme panic attacks in the summer when road construction was happening. The smell of fresh asphalt reminded him of the smell of helicopter fuel in Vietnam. He would often stay in his house all summer long and not want to come outside because of it.

I am thinking of this because my sister and her family are going to spend a week at a lake in Michigan that we went to as children. My uncle owned a small cottage there. His son and I were the same age and we would often spend the entire summer. The more my sister talked the more memories came back. It was a very small and primitive place, but we thought it was the grandest place in the entire world. We had a very small boat with an outboard motor. My uncle would let us take the boat and go out on the lake. We would swim all day and then collapse at night. One of the highlights of the summer was when would go to a small restaurant/store near the cottage. They had some small arcade and pinball machines. We would save our pennies and small change and look forward to playing them. It was a very innocent time. The more my sister talked, the more memories of that time came back.

I once heard Carl Whitaker say that he never really thought you lost anyone. He said that if he tried, he could bring back all the sounds and smells of the room his father died in almost 60 years ago. As long as you have those memories you are never really alone. The more I thought about it, the more I agreed. When someone close dies or leaves, the pain is very sharp. It feels like it will never end. As time goes by the pain is still there but some of the sharpness goes and you get on with life. Some people never get thru it. My grandmother would say two rosaries a day for my grandfather after he died until her own death. My mother would break down in tears years after my father died. Other people have told me they can go for weeks, months, years without thinking of a deceased love one, and then suddenly something will trigger them. The memories, both good and bad, burst thru. I have had many people say things like: “ I haven’t thought of my mother, father brother, sister, etc—in years. Why am I thinking of them now? “

Sometimes it seems like we all have these hidden passwords to our own past. We don’t know what the passwords are. We don’t know where they are or what they will unlock, but when they appear we are amazed at the result. Sometimes this can leave us laughing. Sometimes it can leave us in tears. Sometimes it can terrify us. I had a patient who suddenly remembered severe episodes of abuse that happened when she was 5 or 6 years old. She remembered when she was 25 because of seeing something on TV. The memories literally overwhelmed her. Our mind really does try and protect us, but sometimes that can also be a problem. Those who suffer from PTSD would like to find a way to safely deal with their memories. Their memories are not the happy ones, but the terrifying ones. They creep in and seem like they will never leave. I know that there is now an experimental drug that produces a sort of amnesia so these poor souls can let go of the trauma of their past.

For the rest of us we just have to deal with this enigma of our own memory. We all have so many memories and our individual filing system remains very mysterious. It would be great if we had a magic key to enter and file clearly and really discard the unpleasant ones. However that is not the way our minds work. So I will try and be thankful for the memories I have—both the ones that make me laugh and the ones that make me cry.