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April is again the cruelest month. The weather is unpredictable and we all wait for Spring to appear. It’s a busy family month with birthdays for my two sons and my wife. It is amazing to think that both my sons have grown into adults with adult responsibilities. I still think of them as children and have to continue to remind myself not to give them advice and just to offer them my love.

I still think this aging thing is difficult to accept. I know I cant do many of the things I used to- or if I do, it does take longer to recover. The memory lapses don’t bother me that much. It doesn’t seem that different from when I was younger. I don’t think even death concerns me right now. I know it will happen and it is certainly a reality I have to face every day. I see the music, film and sports stars of my youth all fading away. I can even criticize their appearance and think that I don’t look as bad as they do.

What has been bothering me is thought of lack of function. The television show “60 Minutes” had an episode this week about Alzheimer’s. They presented an actual couple they had been following for 10 years. The wife was diagnosed in her mid 60s. Her deterioration over the ten-year period was graphic and tragic not only for her, but also for her caretaker husband. Fortunately this is not a common condition in either of our families, but both my parents and my wife’s mother died fairly young. I hope if this does happen, my sons will convince which ever one of us is the caretaker to make a decision to let go.

I saw a lot of families struggling with addiction and mental illness. The addict or person with mental illness certainly had their own struggles, but what always struck me was the impact on the family. I would spend a lot of therapy on the importance of setting limits and encouraging families to realize the effect this was having on their own lives. One family struggled with the husband’s heroin addiction for over 40 years. I remember a family conference after another period of relapse with the wife and adult children trying an intervention. Despite all their pleading and tears, the addict continued to say “I just like the high”. He had been using since he was 16 and had two lengthy prison terms on his resume. His wife just would not let go and it adversely affected her own health and her relationship with her children. I would see parents of rebellious adolescents trying everything to help their children only to begin blaming each other for what was happening. The whole concept of enabling and contributing to someone’s illness came out of studying alcoholic and addicted families. The idea of giving someone “just one more chance” is often just a way for the problem to continue. One husband spent over a million dollars on his wife’s treatment. She never got better until after they divorced. Another father would send his son thru endless treatments and hospitalizations. He would always blame the therapists when his son relapsed. He could never understand how his constant rescuing and helping his son avoid consequences was one of the real reasons therapy was not working. He also had difficulty seeing what was happening in his own life. His marriage was failing, his weight was out of control, and he had developed diabetes.

The 60 Minutes episode showed the progression of the illness in just not the wife, but also the real deterioration of the husband. He talked about his own depression and thoughts of suicide. He was committed to caring for her, but finally after 10 years, he could not do it anymore and agreed to place her in a nursing facility. I’m sure he had very mixed feelings about this- both of guilt and relief. However he really had no other choice.

I think it’s this choice that I am thinking about. Our decision to move seemed somewhat impulsive, but it had been simmering away for a long time. I really did not want to move. I don’t like change. Maybe that is a real sign of ageing. However I finally realized that if something happened to me, my wife could not physically manage the home we lived in. Both of our sons were over an hour away and would have difficulty getting to us in an emergency. Now we are closer to our sons and this house is more manageable for my wife.

So what I simmer about now are all the senior concerns about illness and loss of ability to function. I certainly don’t want to be a burden on my family. I also would not want to get to the point of suicide or mercy killing. Right now I don’t really know what the answer is. This, like much of this stage of life, is just one more important thing to think and talk about.

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I still have difficulty letting go. I hold on to old clothes. I still have most of the shirts, pants, and ties I wore to work even though I have now been retired for almost five years. Now the only time I wear a tie is when I have to attend a wedding or a funeral. I still have textbooks from college and the thought of even giving them away once caused a serious argument with my wife.

I know that George Carlin has a famous routine about “stuff”. I laughed when I heard it the first time, but it’s true. Your “stuff “ is what helps define you. When we moved from our home of 36 years there were almost monumental decisions of what to let go of. I would make almost daily trips to Good Will with boxes of our “stuff ”.

I still have boxes of old hard drives that I am somehow, someday, going to catalog. I have boxes of family pictures that I need to organize even though I haven’t looked at them in years. I have a 2006 Ford Explorer with 112,000 miles on it. The windows don’t work, the rear windshield wiper doesn’t work, the heater fan only works on level three or four. It usually gets all of fourteen miles per gallon, but I am comfortable driving it. My wife is not. I have had the car since about 2008. She has never driven it. She says it’s because she is too short and can’t reach the controls comfortably. I am still comfortable driving the car, but a decision had to be made.

This new life we have doesn’t really fit this old car. It is almost too big for our garage and the mileage is getting to be a burden. I just had to replace the battery and I know I will have to replace the tires soon.

So we have to get a new car and let go of my old friend. The whole process of researching cars, test-driving, talking to salesmen is one of my least favorite activities. One of the guys I know loves this. He always tries to work the deal in his favor. I suppose I could do that, but I just don’t trust the salesmen. I had a number of car salesmen as patients and the more they described their jobs, the worse it sounded. I tried to do it online, but that almost became too complicated. There were no humans involved. One service was based in Texas and if I liked a car they would transport it up here. I could drive it for three days. If I decided to buy it I would just have to do a wire transfer of money to their bank. I was uncomfortable with that process. I did more research online. I ended up giving my name to a car research site called Edmonds. Big mistake. Phone and Internet for then contacted me over a week by various dealerships. I thought I had found a car so I called a dealership. They said “Come on down—we have this car for you”. We got there and after much delay they said that car was gone, but they had many more just right for us. We walked out. The next day we did go to a dealership and ended up buying a new car. My wife likes it because she can drive it. She also likes all the new safety features. It beeps warning noises if you drift over the lanes. She says she now wont have to tell me when I do this, the car will. I like the car, but I also liked the Explorer. I think change is harder as you age—at least it is for me. I get used to things being a certain way, get comfortable with certain routines and then everything changes. I still have difficulty accepting that I am no longer an active therapist. I consciously let go of all my old patients and resisted all of their attempts to maintain contact. I did maintain contact with one. I would see or text her intermittently over the years. She has gone thru a lot and I just couldn’t see leaving her. However she is now in a new relationship and seems to be in a good place. She hasn’t contacted me for a while now and maybe even this is ending.

I think what I liked about being a therapist was meeting people at times of crisis in their lives and actively entering into their process. At times it was almost like being swallowed up into a whole new universe. I liked the acceptance and even the power of being listened too. Yet after almost forty plus years I really had to realize that it was time to let go. I have had to start thinking about what it is that I want at this last quarter of my life. I have a wonderful wife, grown married sons, and grandchildren. I really want to be able to focus on this. I still ask myself almost every day, “Is this enough? “ Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. I still think I am in process of deciding what I want to do. Eric Erickson called this stage Ego Integrity vs. Despair. I would like to continue to develop and someday it is really possible. I keep telling myself that I need to be grateful for those days and what I have. The 12 Step programs focus on “One Day at a Time”. All of the 12 Step mantras sound so simple, but they are really difficult. The key is the ability to let go—but that’s my problem. I just have to accept that I am still a work in progress. Maybe I need to keep focusing on my favorite 12 Step mantra “Progress not Perfection”. We are all just fallible organisms. The more I focus on the positive aspects of my life the more acceptable this progress will be.

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Another tragedy, more spinning, and more thoughts and prayers. I keep going back to the quote “Who knew Healthcare was so complicated?” Life is complicated and there is no easy answer to this. There was an interesting juxtaposition of stories on PBS on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday the coverage was all about the shooting in Florida and the evil of guns and mental illness. However on Tuesday there was a very interesting piece on the benefit of deer hunting in Iowa. The deer have no natural enemy and can over run some of the corn and other crops. The herds need to be culled and harvested to reduce the damage they do. The interesting part was the number of deer and amount of venison that is donated to food pantries and to homeless shelters. This is a real benefit to those programs in their attempts to feed the hungry, especially with the planned reductions in funding.

The “solutions” to our mass shootings always comes back to reductions in the type of firearms available or increased mental health awareness. This doesn’t necessarily mean treatment since those resources are also being reduced. I keep thinking that it’s not the guns. The availability of automatic recoil weapons does appear to make mass killing easier, but shotguns, hunting rifles, handguns can also accomplish this. I had a patient who tried to kill someone with a metal can of tomatoes. Should all metal cans be registered?

In some parts of the country there is a strong family tradition of hunting. Firearms are considered tools and are often passed down from generation to generation. If we begin to think that you have to be a certain age to own a gun, or hunt, or shoot in competition, this would seem to only complicate this issue even more.

I also have concerns with putting the responsibility for identifying mass shooters on the public. Of course if someone is walking around with a machine gun or a machete covered in blood I hope someone reports him. However most of these shooters are somewhat isolated. They may make comments on social media, but if questioned they will deny any intent to harm.

I keep thinking of some of the patients I sent to the emergency room because of my fear that they were going to hurt themselves. I would have to fill out a long form specifying my concerns and their comments and actions. They would then be interviewed by another therapist, MD, counselor and then either released or hospitalized for a day or two. Then they would be back on the street. A friend of mine had a patient released from our treatment program with a very solid aftercare and outpatient plan. We thought he was ready to be discharged. He left the hospital went home and killed his wife, child, baby sitter and himself. It is very hard to read someone’s mind and identify those who are a real danger when they have no real history of violence.

This is especially true with adolescents. One of my old supervisors used to say “Adolescence is a disease”. The teen years are very turbulent. Hormones, school, peer, parental pressures can often be overwhelming. Every day can bring a new challenge. Unfortunately almost every teen will admit to considering suicide at some point. For some it is just a passing thought, for others it is a recurring nightmare. One of the other things we would see is that after a teen succeeded in suicide, there would often be others at the same school that would at least attempt or threaten to do the same thing. The fascination with the attention these children got overcame any fear of consequences. There is some speculation that their brains really cannot conceive of consequences because they are still developing.

After this latest episode, I’m sure there will be someone who wants the “fame” and notoriety of being another school shooter. There will continue to be loud accusations on both sides and the usual solutions proffered. This will probably mean that nothing will be done until the next time this happens.

Many people long for the good old days when nothing like this was going on. I recently read a column that blamed everything on loss of respect for life from abortion, violent video games, and the escalating sexual culture. I keep think that the good old days had wars and an enormous amount of violence. If anyone disagrees, I would suggest they go and look at a certain wall in Washington where an enormous amount of violence and loss is documented.

Over the next few days we will all be overwhelmed with the sadness of all this. Young lives lost for no real reason except to satisfy some poor deluded soul’s need for attention. So what is the solution? I really don’t know, but I hope that mental health resources and treatment are increased not just in schools, but also in all our communities. I hope that something as simple as a universal background check could be established. I would like to limit the ability of people with severe mental illness from being able to access firearms. I don’t want anyone to lose his or her rights, but I would like some common sense to arise in our culture. As complicated as this is, we can do something!

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So the second Women’s March happened on Jan 20,2018. Last year my wife went with a woman from DAR and an old friend. She was very impressed with the March and wanted to go this year. Unfortunately she doesn’t know any DAR members around here yet and her friend didn’t want to go. I was not comfortable with her going by herself so I volunteered to accompany her. The day started with an early train ride. When we arrived at the station there were three other women standing there. They asked if we were going to the March. My wife said yes and they screamed happily and said “and you brought a Man—YES!!” They then began to talk about the old days of the Women’s Liberation Movement. This then passed quickly into the size of their teen-age bras and then to burning their bras. This was the start of a very remarkable day.

When we arrived at Grant Park the crowd didn’t seem that big, but it kept growing. Estimates now are that there were more than 300,000 people in the park. I have never been in a crowd that large. I have never been in a crowd with that many angry, passionate, white women. There were some Hispanic and African American folks. There was also more than a scattering of men. Much of the focus of the day was to get everyone to register to vote so that we can get rid of the present administration. The crowd was remarkably well behaved. No physical violence happened and there were really a lot of funny and very witty signs.

The last time I was in Grant Park with a fairly large crowd was in 1970. We had gone down to see a free concert from Sly and the Family Stone. The crowd then was pretty happy and fairly high. You could almost get a contact high from the amount of weed that was floating in the air. Now since this was such a long time ago I need to talk a little about Sly and his group. They became really famous after the Woodstock concert movie. Everyone wanted to see them. The problem was that because of their own substance issues they were often late or often didn’t even show up for their scheduled events.

As we all waited and waited and waited for the band to show, the nice easy-going crowd grew more and more restless. All at once chairs were being tossed and there was a real threat that things were getting out of control. Now the Chicago Police at that time were not big music fans. This was only two years after the riots of the 1968 Democratic convention. By this time anyone with long hair was looked at as a Communist sympathizer trying to overthrow the government. They saw the crowd getting out of control and “By God there was not going to be another riot in this town!!” So the police charged the crowd and every body started to run. My friends and I were all semi hippie do-gooders. We tried to get people to not run and be careful. We though we were doing a good job until the tear gas and mace hit us. All of a sudden we couldn’t breathe and really couldn’t see. We all staggered away and were thankful that we weren’t hurt more.

So the Women’s March brought back a lot of memories. During the presidential campaign someone asked me why I didn’t want Trump to win. I said that I didn’t want to live thru the 60s again. I had already done that. I came from a very traditional family and always believed in our government. When I started college in the mid 60s the Vietnam War was just beginning to heat up. I couldn’t understand why people were against it. As the years passed and more and more information came out and more and more guys my age were being killed, my position changed. Not only did I not want to go into service, I didn’t want anyone else to either. Why get killed for a government that lies to you? We would march and wear T-shirts and armbands and have long alcohol driven conversations into the small hours of the morning. When the war finally ended we all were relieved and ready to get on with our lives and then came Watergate.

Unless you lived thru that, you really cant understand the absolute betrayal that we all felt. Our own President was conspiring in a criminal enterprise. How could that happen? The country was totally divided. The war had begun the divide and Watergate only made it worse. The group that supported Nixon was not as large as those against him, but they never forgot what had happened. As the Democrats and Republicans changed places in the government, they would always try to get back some of what they had lost during this time.

I think we all hoped those times were over, but the anger and seeming hatred of the past keeps coming back. Now it is starting all over again. The speakers at the Women’s March would have fit right in at any of our 60s and 70s meetings. I kept waiting for a crowd roar of “Power to the People!! No More War !! ”, but instead the new cries are “Time’s Up—It’s our time now!!’ and “We can Win!”. I hope my apathy and reluctance will go away soon, but everyday seems to bring a new crisis. I just think it really is time to step back and think about what I really want and how much I want to work on achieving it. Right now I am focused on my own very small world and the people in it and right now that is as far as I can go. Nikos Kazantzakis has a quote in one of his books. “When a man is young, the world is too small. When he is old, his own village is too large.” My village feels very large right now. I just want all the people in it to be safe. Maybe that is what I need to keep thinking about.

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This is the season where memories return. Christmas in our family was always a sacred time. I remember growing up how my parents always tried to make it a special season. I also remember all the conflicts that went with it. After my Dad returned from the war and I was born, we lived in apartments in Chicago. Usually all were on the south side and fairly close to my grandparents. After my grandfather’s death we still lived only a block away from my grandmother. Even then there were all kinds of Christmas rituals. The whole process of buying a Christmas tree and setting it up was always an event. My parents would end up arguing on what was the best side of the tree and how it should be turned so it would seem the straightest. Sometimes this would be a minor discussion and sometimes not. One that always stands out was when we lived in Warrenville and they almost got into a physical conflict over Christmas, the tree and cleaning the house.

However usually my parents went all out for us at Christmas. My mother would shop and shop, so that we would all have something wonderful. All of this would happen when my parents really did not have that much money. When we were very young, we would all go see Santa. I still have old black and white pictures of me and my sisters sitting on Santa’s lap. Usually this would be at the nearest Sears store since that was where Santa lived when he wasn’t at the North Pole. Sometimes we would even go downtown to see Santa there and see the displays in the Marshal Fields windows. The movie “A Christmas Story” is very popular with my generation because it recreates a lot of those times. I still remember the magic. I never wanted to give up believing in it.

When Christmas Eve finally arrived we would all take our baths (hardly anyone had a shower then) and go to bed. We would have trouble falling asleep and I know I would always wake up very early. I would go and wake up one of my sisters and we would sneak into the living room where the tree and the presents were. We were afraid to turn on the lights so we would try and figure out what the toys were just by touching them. Then we would go back to bed and wait for our parents to wake up so we really could see what was under the tree.

I think back on the real sacrifices my parents made for us then and I think that is why I always wanted my sons to have special Christmases. They really had no one else. Their grandparents were dead and my wife’s father was involved in a new marriage. My sons didn’t look forward to any presents from he and his wife. They would always bring them hand-painted plaster ornaments. They had probably put a lot of time and effort into them, but they didn’t mean that much to an eight year old and a four year old. My sons still joke about that to this day. So I supposed at times we were too over the top. I still remember my wife and I staying up way too late on Christmas Eve wrapping presents or putting toys together. I remember the looks on our children’s faces as they came downstairs to open their presents. Sometimes it was still dark and my wife and I would stagger around and try and find a way to get a cup of coffee as all the chaos was going on.

I hope most families have at least some of those memories. I hope my sons pass it on to their children. Maybe part of the depression and loneliness at Christmas is because of missing those times or never really having any. One of the realities of life now is facing that time is not never ending. There is an end. My sister will be dead seven years this December. Christmas has not been the same since her death. She went into a coma on Christmas Eve and never recovered. She died two days later. So the memories now are somewhat bitter sweet. The way around this of course is to see the faces of children as they experience the magic of this time. Maybe that is where the magic always was—in the faces of children. Maybe just by being around them we can all still experience the joy and wonder of this time.