A Short Kvetch # viii

On the way up to visit our grandchildren, Marsha received a call that her Mother (Playing, I fear, in Overtime) had fallen on a trip to a store. This added another dimension to our four day holiday.

How does one make peace ... befriend .... the need to take care of others. Before we left on our road-trip (600+ miles is a lot more than it once was), I began talking about the Dance of Glee and Sadness. But there are, indeed, many such dichotomies beyond the Big Two, with another being Being Taken Care Of .... and Taking Care Of.

My sense is that those who cannot Dance, cannot, to use another metaphor, Juggle the Dichotomies of Life fall ill to misery. When Samantha's spouse saw things Differently than she did, he was seen by her as calling her Wrong. When he was in need of Being Taken Care OF, she felt Abandoned and loudly expressed her feelings of Abandonment. To paraphrase some Justice whose name I can't recall: the expressed need to say 'but I was JUST* expressing my feelings' is the last refuge of scoundrels ... well .... the dominant refuge of personality disordered folk. (*One of the lesser-known transplanted to the USA Hungarian psychoanalysts from Europe, Sandor Feldman, used to say that anytime a person uses the word "JUST," the listener should be aware that there must be much more that isn't being said .... in this case something like ... 'I'm expressing a feeling for the purpose of beating you over the head with it .... more about healthful and toxic sharing of feelings, later on.)

Whether through words or gestures, actions or facial grimacing, those folk who haven't learned how to Dance with the Many Dichotomies of Life tend to wreak havoc on their environment ... and Players in the Last Quarter are no exception.

Any case, a four day holiday and by the time we picked up Pooch at the kennel, we were washed out. Enough for today to list three of these dichotomies.

• Sad                                   Happy
•   Taking Care Of                   Being Taken Care Of
•      Sense of Distance                  Sense of Closeness.

I look forward to thinking out loud about these and others.

Kvetch viii .... en route

Driving with my old partner .... Cisco and Pancho playing in the fourth quarter, together .... Hey, Cisco!.... Hey, Pancho! made it most of way .... Somewhat embarassing to admit that it ain't easy to drive, anymore .... Made it to see the lady who has suffered being my Mother-in-Law for 46 years .... She has about a 20-30 second memory .... Lives among those with similar memories. Looking in a time-travel mirror. Already word retreaval (and spelling) is difficult .... and communication has begun to have a built in lag-time as I need an extra two or three seconds to process incoming. People do think I'm deaf .... 'no' .... I'm just busy processing, folk! Oh! and TV commercials have become impossible as their speed precludes any processing time at all.

Stopped to dine with my niece .... dine? She has 2, 6, and 10 year olds .... and a husband. And the beat goes on. Went on to see Marsha's baby Sister .... She's old, too. Beginning to feel it's a conspiracy .... this aging thing.

But pushing on in search of our Grandspawn .... gonna surprise them in school.

Oh, my God! Marsha just read that Jim Hillman died. He and Bly more or less put together the Men's Movement that I was never involved with. Reviewed one of his books with him .... conversation style .... the book (The Force of Charachter) was on aging, of all things. And now the Jolly Reaper has Grimmed him, too. Go with Grace, Jim Hillman!

On the road, again.

Kvetch VII

Maybe it's not a rule ... but, often, Players in the Fourth Quarter go to visit those parts of the clan that claim direct kinship with them ... especially those little creatures known as Grandspawn .... Brings the following to mind:

Woolcott in Long, Long Ago ..."We have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant ... and the passage is along a rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick travelled. But this at least is part of what he meant; that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel but rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy which through god shall endure forever. The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn.

I'm taking the turnpike. Vaia con Dios

Kvetch VI -- Dancing and Prancing

It's a good morning to talk out loud about this .... letting Sadness and Glee intermingle and interweave.

As I've mentioned, 10 weeks ago I fell in the garden .... It had rained and rained ... and Noah left the Ark a bit too soon ... pavers were mossy-slick. Four days later, I was introduced to my herniated disc .... Pain that I couldn't recall experiencing in the First Three Quarters, including from a fractured knee cap and some post-operative pains from a minor surgery.

I had led a charmed life. Healthy as ... well .... your average horse. True, I was prone already to weekly arrhythmias .... but they weren't painful .... sometimes nervous making, especially when, on the occasion while doing my daily run, my heart rate would suddenly surge over 220 bpm and then would spend an hour or a day or -- once -- three days bouncing around from my usual Resting Heart Rate of 40 or so up to 150 or more and then drop, again ... M and I refer to it as my bouncing heart ... preferred, apparently, to a cheating heart.

Any case, back to the herniated disc. For the first two weeks, I couldn't think of running .... walking was excruciating ... hell! for the first week, sleeping was possible only lying over a hassock with prescribed narcotics ... head and feet down ... mid-section draped on hassock. Things improved and by week 5, I was walking with one cane and thrilled to be doing so. Indeed, I had managed to cancel only several days of appointments! Who could ask for more? Weeks 6, 7, and 8 were more or less pain-free, cane gone by week 8 and week 9 was spent moving 4 cubic yards of gravel to my driveway -- one wheel-barrel at a time. Cannot fully describe how pleasurable it was to be able to move that gravel. There is a prayer: Blessed are You, God, straightens out those who are bent over. (As I recall, this is not only part of the Jewish liturgy but was reportedly -- so sayeth Diogenes -- recited each morning by Socrates, the Stranger from the East ... )

As an aside, some parts of the experience were heart-warming and another was -- dare I say -- welcome. 

• My eldest Grand-daughter lent me a walking stick that I had carved for her commemorating her performance in a Chess Match. The Handle was the Great White Queen and the tip that kept knocking on the ground was an evil Rook ... silly messages were carved on the staff. And she lent it to me. There is a rule: Grandpas are not as important as Grandmas ... but I got to use the sacred walking stick.
• Marsha was especially kind to me ... 'can I get you this and that?' 
• The intoxicating pain-killers did bring back memories of youthful intoxications .... I told the young Doc the first night in Hospital that the Dilaudid wasn't touching the pain but really felt quite pleasant and I was thankful to him for that.
• Most welcome of all, however, was my new-found ability to know a bit of what it was like to have an acute and Holy-Cannoli-Batman-it-could-be-chronic condition. Many of the visitors who come to see me in my work have chronic conditions .... emotional and/or physical.  I would, not infrequently, feel a loneliness in not being able to fully walk a mile in their Birkenstocks. Now, I could ... even if only a little.   

Any case, three days ago, I ran for the first time in 9 weeks and 6 days (who's counting) and, today, I'm Charlie-Horsed, as might be expected. My ankles scream when I walk .... my shins and inner thighs chime in with their own kvetching and announcements: there's still life in the Fourth Quarter.

How lucky can one Old Guy be .... but visitors will be here, soon.

I need to describe another time the manner in which life's surprises capsize living for those whose Sadness and Glee don't dance, together.

Tomorrow ... M and I are heading up to see her unwell and crotchety Mom and her family, one of my nieces (the one who liked to sing Broadway tunes with her Uncle 20+ years ago) and her family, and our only two distant Grandkids (and their parents). Maybe, I'll get to borrow a bike and go for my first ride in 10 weeks with my fourth (of five) grand-daughter and only grandson.

How lucky can one Old Guy be?

Not-so-Kvetchy V

Promised myself that I'd begin to describe the dance I mentioned, the Dance of Joy and Sadness. As I've come to believe with the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes (the Old Man calls himself Kohelles, maybe best translated as the Congregant or the Member of the Congregation) that when all is said and done .... only relationship really matters, I should note that I'm moving to reason that Sadness and Glee are both visible in relationship ... and relationship is all. Regal vestments and tall horses, wisdom and knowledge matter little ... for they are all, in Kohelles's language: "emptiness of emptinesses."

Damn! That sounds sad, again, and indeed, Kohelles mourns (or is it moans, aka kvetches) that he'd prefer to be in the home of a mourner than in the home of party people.

OK. Back to thoughts of relationship and, particularly, relationships of or among Players in the Last Quarter.

On the Sadness side, we have:

• Mom and Dad are aged or, for most of us, memories;
• Kids are gone, unless we had kids in our Fifties, Heaven forfend;
• Our bodies are no longer quiet and invisible;
• We have some fear of making our bodies even less visible (ran for first time in nine weeks and since herniating a lower vertebra and am a bit worried about reinjury);
• Death is no longer the task of Grandparents or even Parents; 
• Friends are beginning to look old;
• Lover/Spouse, if still with us, is a bit frayed at the edges; and
• So are we.

On the gleeful side, compensations abound:

• Even for those of us whose parents were monsters (maybe there are exceptions), there are memories;
• Children visit and bring their spawn. Even if a tease about it going on forever, the presence/presents of Grandchildren carry with them all kinds of relational promise. All the folk we say goodbye to in the Third and Fourth Quarters (betimes, before)? We get to say hello to these little ones. (I'll talk about the Jacob complex, later: the belief that we can be parents to our Grands.) Additionally, they don't have much memory of the mistakes we made with their Parents; they think we're quaint and very special. The special part is, indeed, very special. And in this economy, it is not uncommon for Children to move in -- even with their livestock;
• We have less and less to prove. For many of us, we have accepted that we don't need to look perfect or, for that matter, to act perfectly. I mentioned recently how, at a very nice restaurant, a friend (of almost 45 years) had a raucous laughing jag. No biggie! Had it been 1968 when Marsha and I met her and her husband, especially with her subsequent complaining to Waiter and Manager about the absence of any good Black Tea "with these prices," we might have been embarassed or escorted to the door. But not two couples who had been married a total of 95 years;
• We don't fuss the small stuff quite as much (except, apparently, for matters surrounding Black Tea). Between the laughing jag and the "Tea Party," my same friend chastised me mercilessly for my selfishness in having done some strenuous work that day .... didn't I know that if I reinjured my vertebra I'd be a burden to Marsha. I suppose she was right -- that and $3.50 might get her a cup of coffee in a cheap hotel in Davenport/Moline, so I dutifully listened with no intention of obeying;
• We don't even have to drive as fast. Nothing to prove, as I said, and if we're a bit late, so be it. I have noticed that my hearing seems to have improved, too, as I more often now hear horns blaring behind me -- what are they trying to tell me; and
• As to having to look good, well .... Somewhere along the way a child learns to ask for what they can get and sometime in the subsequent 60 years or so, it sinks in.  'The Sports car and the hat just ain't gonna make hair grow where it don't no more!'

But that doesn't answer the question: how does Sadness dance with Glee? It's a start. No hurry. I'm not going anywhere.

But let me begin with some language for talking of those whose Sadness and Glee cannot play together and then in a next posting try to put flesh on the bones of language.

Were I a Dog -- I identify strongly with Dogs -- when my People come home, I'd hear the door and run for it with my tail wagging. Just yesterday, Marsha and I took each other out for an "airing" and came home to find Pooch Smiling and Barking and Old Pretty Girl Freud, the Pussycat, walking down the stairs to say hello. Arrivals are gleeful.

When we left for a second airing, Pooch did his only trick: sitting on a couch (note: we no longer believe furniture will last forever), leaning back and "reaching for the sky" ... this is Pooch's only trick ... begging ... playing the supplicant ... showing long and tearful face .... "please don't leave me alone." Departures are Sad. Marsha and I both tear up when we part from Kids/Grandkids.

Gleeful ... Sad ... Gleeful ... Sad ....  Depending on what music you put it to, one leads a life in which Gleefulness and Sadness play with each other.

I've spent much of my adult life working with people who cannot balance what I think of as The Big Two (emotions). Therapists of all stripes have names for these folk: Personality Disorders ... or, if they rub them the wrong way, Borderlines. If your therapist calls you a Borderline, s/he's not saying s/he loves you and you're likely being charged a full fee.

But enough, I'll try to describe some character types whose Big Two dance and some who cannot play with both Sadness and Glee, simultaneously .... but not today.

Kvetch IV

I certainly don't want to give the wrong impression, here. There is much to rejoice. Even if one's lover/spouse is more likely to ask how one is ... checking on whether one has survived the joys of cardiac arrhythmias and bedroom frolics ...  more likely to ask those questions than to wax poetic, even so, there is laughter and playing in the Last Quarter. Indeed, before a screening of a rather heavy film on Freud, Jung and one of Jung's patient-mistresses, Sabina Spielrein, a friend had a laughing jag at the tony restaurant we were sullying with our Fourth Quarter sillinesses. Life still can be a hoot. But more of that, later .... for now, back to Sadness ....

Sadness (continued)

There is no one in the land who has taken a breath and who has not breathed-in sadness, though there are many who cannot, thereafter, hold their breath and savor this feeling and allow it its natural course. Many are those who develop an allergy to sadness and cover their feeling with anger or even rage, unjustified optimism, haughtiness, or the numbness of depression.

Our culture and our language value the hiding of sadness more than they do its experience. The culture mirrors our fear of the vulnerabilities that are part and parcel of sadness. It has become more acceptable to rage in daily interchanges than to cry. It is common for us to greet the mourner with silliness, such as: “at least he didn’t suffer” or, if he did, “at least you had ample opportunity to say good-bye.” It is an everyday occurrence for those who suffer debilitating or life-threatening illness to hear near and dear commend the use of positive thinking. And parents throughout the realm may be heard chiding their children about their unhappiness: stop that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about. The equation of unhappiness with sadness is, itself, a communication that depreciates sadness by limiting it to the absence of glee and pleasure.

My interest in sadness must, indeed, predate a first remembered encounter with attempting to discuss the potential fallout from avoiding the experience of sadness. I was, perhaps, fourteen years old and a student at a school of biblical studies. We were studying the Book of Genesis, particularly the story of Abraham immediately following the accounts of the expulsion of Ishmael (Gen. 21) and the attempt to respond to God’s call to slaughter Isaac (Gen. 22). Sarah dies and scripture reports: “And Abraham arrived to eulogize Sarah and to cry for her.”

Curiously, the text in each scroll written over two millennia or more uses the single Hebrew biblical word v’livkosa (and to cry for her) with one letter reduced in size — with no satisfactory explanation offered. (Note the curiously superscripted letter on the last line.)

While a variety of commentaries had their explanations for this miniature letter (the letter Koff which curiously has the meaning “palm of a hand”), I suggested to one of my mentors that perhaps scripture was hinting that Abraham was incapable of deeply experiencing sadness. (Simplistic? maybe but cut me a break, I was 14.) I went on to wonder if the troubles that befell Abraham’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (the major characters of the drama that is Genesis) might be explainable as a consequence of this absence of feeling in the patriarch. My teacher’s reaction was to become enraged and to grant a two-week furlough from school, a moratorium that was intended to afford the author of this blasphemy time to consider his deed and fate and a welcome return to Mom's cooking.

In the years that followed and the clinical work that has occupied my adult interests for more than thirty five years, I have often fascinated about the centrality of sadness in my own life and in the lives of those who have occasioned my office. Searching the literature for studies on sadness proved frustrating though there was no dearth of writing on such matters as pathological mourning, depression, and melancholia. Sadness was of interest, if at all, as a symptom of disease. Furthermore, the visitors who occasioned my office, themselves, seemed to equate sadness with both the absence of happiness and with  depression.  Many a person has arrived at my office with bottles of pills, complaining of depression when indeed they were sad about life, about loss, about saying goodbye to children and grandchildren or to parents and were embattled from the inside by a compelling need to deny these feelings.

Need I add that most of us Players in the Last Quarter are orphans! If there is no other reason to experience Sadness in the Fourth Quarter, the accumulated losses ... the good-byes .... they suffice.


I'm thinking I should think about how Joy interweaves with Sadness in a potentially sweet dance, next.

Kvetch III -- Beginning to talk of Sadness

As I suspect I'll be talking to myself and to whomever listens about sadness ... I think I'll take a couple of Kvetches to explain what I mean .... and how Sadness is different than Depression ... the world (including professionals) often confuses them ....

Sadness I

Depression is not a disease that afflicts the one without the other.
The one is ill and the other must mourn the loss of love. The one
cannot move and the other fears taking a singular step that might bring
more pain to the one who was once the source of so much that was good.
One lies in bed upstairs looking into the emptiness and the other
wanders downstairs or searches the streets for answers to questions
unknown. Depression is a disease that infects a couple and most often a
family.

Depression is a disease that infects a family.  The suckling at the
depressed mother’s breast who can find no welcoming gaze can find no
succor, no emotional sustenance. The youngster watching his father lost
in the morning hours amidst clouds of smoke and pots of coffee knows
and sometimes adopts the trappings of depression. The young woman
watching her mother night after night lying lifeless in disarrayed
blankets and threadbare afghans knows all too well the hopelessness of
attempts to redeem this mother who bore her. The lover seeking out a
soul mate feels the tensed musculature, witnesses the hand-wringing,
and viscerally knows the meaning of absence. Depression is not a
disease that afflicts the one without the other.

Depression and sadness are not the same.
Depression is not sadness gone amok.

Sadness can intertwine with joy; depression cannot. Sadness bears
witness to the loss of a gift that once was, while depression allows no
memory of joy and, most often, disallows sorrow. Sadness affirms the
possibility of future celebrations that may take seed on the grave of
what cannot any longer be; depression attests to the inevitability of
loss that will follow on any connection. Sadness seeks comfort and a
comforter; depression seeks nothing for only numb nothingness fills the
depressed.

There is no one in the land who has breathed and who has not
breathed-in depression. If we add to the ranks of those who suffer
depression, those others who have shared space with them for days or
weeks or years ... we shall have accounted for most — if not all — of
humanity.

There is no one in the land who has taken a breath and who has not
breathed-in sadness, though there are many who cannot, thereafter, hold
their breath and savor this feeling and allow it its natural course.
Many are those who develop an allergy to sadness and cover their
feeling with anger, unjustified optimism, haughtiness, or the numbness
of depression.

Our culture and our language value the hiding of sadness more than they
do its experience. The culture mirrors our fear of the vulnerabilities
that are part and parcel of sadness. It has become more acceptable to
rage in daily interchanges than to cry. It is common for us to greet
the mourner with silliness, such as: at least he didn’t suffer ... or
if the departed lingered, then: it was a blessing that you had time to
say good-bye. It is an everyday occurrence for those who suffer
debilitating or life-threatening illness to hear near and dear commend
the use of positive thinking. And parents throughout the realm may be
heard chiding their children about their unhappiness: stop that crying
or I’ll give you something to cry about. The equation of misery with
sadness is, itself, a communication that depreciates sadness by
limiting it to the privileging of the absence of glee and pleasure.

The capacity for Sadness is a central component of Playing WELL
in the Last Quarter.