The Gero-Punk Project

I am jogging around the city, slow and loose like an athletic teenage boy who fully occupies his young and unscathed body. I am alert and aware. I have to be–it is daytime (the angle of the sunlight suggests a late summer afternoon). There are humans of all ages (and many dogs) doing what creatures do on a beautiful day. So I have an audience. There’s a satchel slung diagonally across by back. Inside the satchel are cans of spray paint: red, black, and silver. I am tagging buildings, spans of pavement, even park benches and the sides of buses. I am leaving my mark with panache and impunity, defacing whatever surface calls out to me.

***

Life is short! Act now!

Gero-punks of the world unite!

It is never too late to be inspired by one’s mommy.

You are an age, all ages, and no age at once. Embrace this mystery.

Yeah, sometimes growing older sucks but it is also really cool. Deal with it.

Gero-anarchy, anyone?

You don’t want to be old? STFU!

By Guest Gero-punk blogger

Penny Layne Thornburg

This year, I lost three grandparents over a period of five months. This has been a tremendous loss for me, and one that I underestimated. What I’ve found out about grief– besides the obvious of being powerful, uncanny, ugly, scary, raw, and that it has the ability to knock the wind out of you — is that my grief and the grief of others is the same, regardless of the person’s age. I guess I just always assumed that I would feel sad when my grandparents died, but that I would feel worse, or that my grief would be greater if someone closer to my own age died. I was very, very wrong.

Both sets of my grandparents were married for 71 years. Yes, you read that right. 71 years! Take a moment and let that sink in! That’s twice my lifetime. My mom’s parents lived in Idaho and I saw them as a child maybe 3-4 times a year. They were wonderful people and I loved them very much, but I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me. What I mean by that is, because of distance, and personality differences and ways of having relationships, we just didn’t know each other. I didn’t know what their likes and dislikes were. I didn’t know who their friends were, or how they liked to spend their time, or how they felt about God, or about their childhoods. When we saw each other, they greeted me at the door with a hug, and when we parted ways, it ended in a hug.

During our visits, they smiled at me a lot, but they never talked to me. They didn’t take the time to get to know me. As a child, I thought there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t like me. As I became a young adult, I felt angry because it felt like they were uninterested in me. Over time, I discovered that they did love me, they even liked me, and that what they knew of me was enough for them. We all do relationships differently. I am a talker, a feeler, an observer, and I am all about expressing oneself. My grandparents were loving people. Quiet. Thinkers. Observers. Just because they didn’t talk to me much does not mean they didn’t love me. This I know for sure. As time went by, my visits to see them became less and less frequent. I went for a period of five years without seeing them. I thought of them often and loved them from far away. When I saw them at the end of that five year stretch, they were living in a nursing home.

My first glimpse of them after five years was my grandfather shuffling in his slippers, pushing my grandmother (who was now wheelchair bound). They were moving at a snail’s pace. I will never forget the washing of forgiveness that drenched my body. I was frozen still as I watched them. It took my breath away. Tears poured down my cheeks. I remember thinking, “Who could be mad at them?! This is so beautiful!” Every feeling of not being good enough and not being liked or important to them was completely washed away and was replaced with grace and deep appreciation. When I got into my grandparents’ shared room, my grandmother was petting a stuffed animal and talking to it. It was precious. She chatted about a poster on her wall and she called the little girls in the poster her daughters (they were not). When I bent down to take a photo with her, she grabbed my hand and said “Hey, I know you! You’re my granddaughter!” I will never forget that moment. It was sweet and moved me to tears. I realized in that moment was that what I knew of them and what they knew of me was enough. All that mattered is that we loved each other. It was a really wonderful and forgiving experience for me.

This past August, my grandmother died from pneumonia and heart failure. I was able to fly to Idaho for a quick 24 hours for the funeral. I remember feeling sad, but was stoic during her service. I remember feeling guilty about feeling this way and wondered what was wrong with me. I guess looking back I realize some of it was just shock. My poor grandfather was so sad. He cried a lot and was so confused and would ask the same questions over and over. My mom and her siblings had to medicate him to get him through the first few days after my grandmother died. Nine days later, my heartbroken grandfather climbed into my grandmother’s bed and had a massive stroke and died. This death really shook me up. I couldn’t believe I had gone from losing one grandparent to losing two in just a matter of nine days. I was unable to attend my grandfather’s funeral because of finances and school. I was really sad to have missed this. I was mostly sad for my mom. She is the only child of her parents who doesn’t live in Idaho, so I knew that coming back home would be really hard for her and I knew that her grief would be great, and I was worried and unsure about how to navigate through that with her. I worry that I will lose touch with my mom’s family because the grandparents aren’t there to give us motivation to get together. I will have to work extra hard to stay in contact with them. My tears eventually came and though the grief of losing them didn’t knock me off my feet, it did take me months to not feel sad anymore.

In January, I was able to be next to my grandpa’s bedside along with 4 generations of family, as we sang my dad’s dad home to Heaven. That was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been a part of. It was such a bittersweet moment. My dad’s parents have always completely immersed themselves in my life and in the lives of all their children and grandchildren. My grandparents have been my lifeline. They have cared for me and prayed for me and loved me unconditionally every single day of my life and I realized that for a few years before my grandpa died, I had anticipatory grief over what it was going to feel like to lose them.

I changed my desktop picture to my dad’s parents’ 70^th wedding anniversary picture that was in the paper, right after my grandpa died in January. I look at it every day. My grief is still great for losing all my grandparents, but especially for my Grandpa Hubert. He was a staple in my life. A constant. Someone I could count on. Depend on. In a sense, I lost my Grandma Vivian when my grandpa died. She is altered. She is weak and sad. The thing about my Grandpa Hubert is, if you were to look up the word joy in the dictionary, you would see a picture of him. He completely embodied joy. It was so sad for me as his health declined, to watch him lose his abilities to do things that he always enjoyed, as well as caring for himself. I was always afraid that he wasn’t experiencing any joy. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with my grandma and she said he had joy until his final moments. She reassured me that even though his health was declining, his spirit didn’t. I was so relieved to hear this. I had been so sad and worried that he was unable to experience joy in his final days. She told me he took joy in the simple things– the housekeeper coming in to clean his room, his nurses who cared for him, the phone calls and visits from his children and grandchildren, and even in coconut cream pie that he ate on his last day of life here on earth. He took the time to get to know every single person that came into his life and let them know he was praying for them, even if he only met them one time and had no relationship with them. What a wonderful example of loving your neighbor! When we gathered around him and sang hymns to him, he threw his arms up in the air and folded his hands and brought them down to his chest. It was the single most precious experience I’ve ever witnessed. My grandparents are as close to God as anyone I know. They are my direct lifeline to God. I’ve never appreciated this more than now that Grandpa Hubert is gone.

My grandma Vivian, though altered, is still pure to her core. She will make you laugh, make you cry, pray for you, challenge you, hold you accountable, and love you with a fierceness that I don’t dare question. I will never question whether I am loved or cared for by anyone on this earth- because I know Grandma Vivian is loving me enough for an infinite amount of lifetimes. She is still the first person I call when I am crying and need to be comforted. Right after my grandpa died, my grandma was asked by a family member that if she could go anywhere, where would it be? She said she’d like to go home to Kansas where she was from. Just last week at her almost 91 years of age, she got back from a trip to Kansas. What a wonderful gift she received being able to go see some relatives for the last time and see one last time where she came from. We were all so grateful that her doctors cleared her for this last trip.

I have an elder friend, Grace. She is 92. I visit her almost every week. She is such a blessing to me. I think about what life will be like when Grace and my grandma pass. Who will fill my life with such love? Some of the best gifts I have ever received have come from my visits with Grace and my grandma. Some of the best conversations and lessons in life I have learned from these two women. Simplicity. Stillness. Love. Quiet. Peace. An ability to sit with the present. I worry that my life won’t be as rich or as full after they are gone. There is something profound about sitting still and being quiet with another. They have given me priceless and unconditional love that I have never experienced in any other relationship in my life.

Growing old brings life to the present. The past doesn’t matter. The future doesn’t matter. What matters is the here and now and these women have taught me that. I hope that long after they’re gone, I can remember to embody this principle for living- mindfulness and being fully present. They have given me more joy, more grace, more love, more comfort and compassion than any other relationship I’ve ever had. Age has nothing to do with grief. Grief is about the loss of someone wonderful that is no longer present with us. My grief is deep for the grandparents that have passed, and my anticipatory grief is even bigger for the life that will be after my elders are gone.

“The history of our grandparents is remembered not with rose petals but in the laughter and tears of their children and their children’s children. It is into us that the lives of grandparents have gone. It is in us that history becomes a future.”

~ Charles and Ann Morse

Whew, what a week! But I am glad to report that my close-in people and I made it through and are only temporarily worse for the wear.

I woke up early today, earlier than I’d usually be up on a Saturday. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I am usually awake early almost every day of the week but on weekend mornings I often am not up and about right away, I give myself the gift of a more languid unfolding of the day’s start.  But on this particular Saturday morning I had a phone date scheduled for 8 o’clock a.m. with Rick. He is a really busy guy, the busiest I know, despite the fact that he claims to be “practicing for retirement.” And I am not what you would call an un-busy gal, so finding a time to connect on the phone  — he lives in Boulder, Colorado and I’m here in Portland  — can be challenging. We are connected frequently via email, but sometimes we really need to be voice-to-voice, especially when we are brainstorming ideas for or working out the details of our various collaborative projects. This past Wednesday Rick and I had a phone conference with the (new) managing editor for our book Aging: Concepts and controversies, as it is time to begin work on the 8^th edition of the book, so this morning’s conversation was mostly about what this work looks like, who will do what and when.

But we talk about other stuff, too, because in addition to being my colleague, Rick is my mentor and has been for some time. As such, he has intimate knowledge about the “professional” realm of my life and has supported my development (in so many amazing ways) as an educational gerontologist and gero-punk.  Many of the cool opportunities that have come my way in the past decade are because Rick, from whom I have learned much about professional generosity and true collegiality, chose me to be a part of what he calls his “legacy planning”: there are projects such as the book I mentioned that he started years ago and wants to see carried forward beyond him into the future, thus he invited a younger colleague – me — to become his co-author; and there are new projects that he wants to create collaboratively rather than alone because in so doing he learns new things (such as about emerging teaching technologies, hybrid pedagogies, and ways to use social media for community building and collaboration).

Another sweet dimension to our relationship has emerged in the past few years – friendship – though I actually only realized that this was the case this morning. Rick has met my daughter, I have met his wife. I know of his children, he knows of the rest of my family – mommy, brother, my daughter’s father. Periodically we ask after each others’ close-in people, wonder how they are doing.  As well, we have offered to each other access to knowledge about deeply personal aspects of our lives.  This past December, when I was emotionally unmoored due to an unexpected crisis, I let Rick know what was happening in my life – not just in the “professional” domain, but life-wide. I trusted him and invited him to behold me in all my complexity and messiness and uncertainty. And he did behold me, with compassion and kindness, and offered me a gift—he shared something deeply important about who he is that I had not previously known through our interactions primarily as colleagues and mentor/mentee. In this mutual exchange of intimate information I think we began to become friends.

But I don’t think that I had really ever thought this thought until today, after our phone conversation.  After speaking for about 40 minutes, Rick mentioned that we needed to begin to wrap up the call as he needed to move on to his next activity—a walk around the lake near where he lives. The activity I had in mind for myself post phone date was a walk around the ponds near where I live.

It was when I was on my walk, remembering with delight that Rick was on his walk as well – though in a different state and time-zone – that I realized that we have become friends. Two friends full of ideas ambling along at the same time but in different places, far away and close at the same time.

At the beginning of our phone date today Rick asked how I was and I told him about how the second half of my week had gone since our previous phone conversation this past Wednesday. On Thursday, Isobel was home from school sick with a bad head cold and my mom had the intestinal flu and was vomiting, so I was in full-on family care giving mode (and preparing at the same time to teach my afternoon class!). To make matters worse, I couldn’t effectively work from home because our internet router had died (on Wednesday) and a new one won’t be arriving for 3-5 days, so the work I can do right now is significantly impacted. I made a joke to Rick about being a sandwich but as I have further reflected upon the sandwich metaphor for family care giving  — during my walk, after I reflected on my friendship with Rick — I realized that this metaphor doesn’t ring true for me, not at all.  You’ve probably heard the “sandwich generation” reference many times before as it is almost a meme (It has been around for over thirty years as a metaphoric shorthand for midlife persons – usually women – who are caught in between caring for children and caring for older family members. That is, they are “sandwiched” on either side by family members who rely on them for care.).

I think I get what the “sandwich” metaphor is trying to capture, and I know it is a powerful heuristic that many mid-life family caregivers resonate with.  And I certainly feel my share of stress as I face the complex challenges that are emerging at this point in my travels through the life course – parenting a young adult, being parented by an older adult, being a grown-up daughter (who is still growing up!), being a friend to Isobel’s father and my former spouse, nurturing my intimate relationships, figuring out how to make ends-meet when the monthly cash-flow only suffices for three weeks, navigating workplace politics, taking care of myself body/mind/spirit and claiming the time and space for my own creative work (not to mention being a citizen of the world working toward peace, freedom and flourishing for all).

But I am not a sandwich, not even a really great egg and avocado on sprouted grain bread sandwich, nor do I feel sandwiched between my 17 year old daughter and my 67 year old mother.  In fact, there aren’t any food or other metaphors that really adequately capture my inside experiences at this point in my travels through my life course. Don’t get me wrong, I love using metaphors as potent shorthand ways to indirectly talk about complex experiences. But sometimes even the keenest, cleverest metaphor isn’t quite up to the job.

So let me take a more direct and simple approach to describing how I feel at the almost-end of another week of life-adventures (There was a bunch of other stuff that happened that I didn’t even mention!):

I am happy I got to begin my day speaking with Rick on the phone: I am excited about our projects! I am glad we are friends!

I had an interesting time walking in the park because in addition to thinking some new thoughts I got to see: a broken robin’s egg – brilliant blue shell shards scattered on the ground; blue heron flying low and slow above the stream; and nutria partially hidden under a bridge.

I am relieved that Isobel is feeling better and so is my mommy (though I fear she’ll over do it now that she is feeling better!) and that I have yet to catch either of the bugs they were felled by.

I just ate a really good egg and avocado sandwich — thankful for simple and tasty nourishment.

Once I finish writing this little essay I’m going to go to my mommy’s place to poach her internet (since ours is still down) so I can get this dispatch out to all of you who might want to read it – so I am thankful that I can see her and get a bit of assistance, that I can write this and that this might be read.

Then I’m going to finish working on another writing project on cross-generational friendships, a project about which I feel excited and nervous.

And perhaps I will take a little nap, because I am tired from the week and it just wouldn’t be Saturday without a little nap.

And I feel grateful, so grateful, for my messy, complicated, uncertain life.