TRIUMPH OF SPIRIT IN LOVE, NATURE & ART

Posts tagged “Old Age

It’s 4 AM and I Miss You


(Please don’t eat my children)

It’s 4:27… 4:28… 4:29 AM

and I miss you

I hope to God you’ll awaken

and bring me coffee

and tell me something funny and I will laugh

and you will be so pleased to see

someone “get” one of your thousands of spontaneous jokes.

I miss you…

you with the beautifully streaked-with-grey, fuzzy hair

and hundreds of lines, going up, down and sideways

around the corners of your shy blue eyes.

You don’t know I am awake

missing you… your suddenly taking my hand

in yours and holding it on the sofa as

we silently watch our country self-destruct.

I hope to God you’ll awaken and all will be okay

for another day

for it is not promised

for it is not guaranteed

Nothing is.

The wonder that is you

that I found so many years ago

after being alone for so long and through so much.

Unadulterated joy you bring me

as I worry about your every breath

God keep you in his arms

and protect you

for it is 4:38 AM and I am missing you

as you lie in the arms of Morpheus

and I see lights on across the street

Others are awake

as you slumber

Time drags on as I am alone

I cannot wait for you to awaken

to see the twinkle in your eye

and the tousled hair.

I miss you

as I sit here typing and

reading of other’s lives.

It is 4:45 AM

about two more hours

for you lie

in our bed of 33 years.

It is 4:46 AM

and time goes so slowly

as I count the hours

until you awaken.

You with your gentle voice

the pleasant voice

that helped so many

as you listened to their anguish

A healer I always said you were/are.

Almost 5 AM

and I miss you.

If I miss you this much now,

oh, and here come the tears,

what of the day or night

God takes one of us away.

Or could we be so lucky

to go in each other’s arms?

My morbid mind

destroying the present with

fearing the future

It is 4:54 AM

and you have arisen

to make water.

You will stop by to see me

and ask why I am up

and ask me when I will come back to bed.

You are gone again

having returned to

the embrace of sleep

For a second the thrill of you

all tousled and concerned

shot through me.

I will come join you

and look at the lights across the way

and wait if I can’t sleep

for you to awaken

and greet me with another day

as our shared time together

zips by with a vengeance now

my time with you.

5:03… eternity

the pain in my throat and head

throbbing

I should lie down

but it has been so long

since words have come

5:05 AM…5:10 AM

I feel chill

I feel pain

missing you.

5:11 AM

Let me go

lie next to you

and think of the wonder

of your presence

in our marital bed.

5:25 AM…


Image

Contrasts… Diamonds are “Forever” Billboard and Old Man in Palayam (Old Market of Calicut), Kerala, India


(Click to enlarge) In conjunction with HeyGo Tours @HeyGo.com

Springtime Reflections


Spring sunset reflections
Of a late dusk
In the twilight of life


Death of Fear and the Beauty of Death


Tears
over fears
of what’s to come
Husband such a
precious soul…
Stay in the present
Enjoy every moment
of together
It is fleeting…

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Bipolar mind
medications
fight living
in the present

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So unZen
Why can’t I
just be
like before
breakdown and
before medications

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Why can’t I
be jolly with he
whom I worship

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Why the constant
chatter of
loud thoughts
Would that I could
go with him
when it comes time

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And if not
hope that I can
help with his
last breath
Secretly
I want to
be the first
to go
quite selfishly
He who cared
for so many
deserves that I
care from me
for him
and more

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Would that
each moment
were not filled
with looking
at Illness
Old age
and Death
and the fragility
Of having a body.


Illusion Crumbles


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Age has crept up on us

like a thief in the night

I think

as I watch the clock hands

remain stuck on 1:30

as I wait

in the third doctor’s office

in six days

with my newly retired husband

ill again

with the illness

that drove him

from his beloved work

with the poorest of the poor

mentally ill

and I wonder

as I worry

about him

how did he do it

and why

and why

did he marry me

taking my major mental illness

as a dowry

and I wonder

how did it happen

that we got so old

we look at people

30 years our junior

on the TV

in the waiting room

and think ourselves

like them

but we are not

old age has crept in

like a thief in the night

were we always broken

cast under a veil

of delusion

which now becomes

seen at times

as bodies

fall ill

and age creeps in

are we finally seeing

the unreality of the “reality”?

 

 


The Cycle of Life


Youth unfolding


537

in the bright sunlight

498

 blossoming in shade

Dahlias '09, frog, salamander, view 031

‘tainted’ by age

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becoming fragile

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the delicacy of death

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From an old Dahlia series, attempting  to show the robust beauty of new life as it grows older,  finally reaching the unsung beauty of death.


September Mind



September sunlight dances on drying leaves, sparkling like diamonds against a flowing stream, an azure sky.  The plants of summer are dying.  Flowers that have given such joy all summer long are now spurned by us as they shrivel into the paradoxical beauty of old age.  The sun burns lightly on summer-drenched skin as clouds intrude intermittently into the almost- Autumn interlude–  a gentle foretaste of the cold to come.  The last butterflies of summer flit among the blossoming Goldenrod and browning Joe Pie Weed.

The beauty of Fall is the beauty of a dying season.  It is the season of death– an alternative to the dew-like bloom of youth in Spring.

When I was very young, I felt death in nature.  I could feel what it must feel like to be a tree or a flower—to just “be”—the Buddhist dictum which I cannot now master.  In my late twenties, my mind broke into smithereens like shattered glass, and I had a choice to make between going on psych meds or going to hospital.  I chose the former and have lived some 40 years more with that choice.  I will not say it was a happy choice, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, because I have become driven into a fury of manic activity and self-seeking in stark contrast to the just “being” of my early youth.  The psych meds have dispelled my “egolessness” which, in turn, makes me more able to “function”–  at a price.  For I no longer feel the waves of peace lapping at the shores of my mind and my religious feelings have, comparatively speaking, shriveled up like the summer flowers in the Fall.  “It’s always a trade-off” I am told over and over again.  My doc told me once that I am one of the lucky ones because for some people the meds don’t work at all.  That shut me up and those words periodically pump gratitude into my system.  I have remained med-compliant mainly because  the meds have kept me out of hospital, DO allow me to function, and, most importantly, I have discovered that being able to function means allowing me to love.

And although more self-seeking, paradoxically this med-induced functionality allows me to give back to the world.  My gift is to describe the “just- being” in nature that was imprinted indelibly on my mind when I was young.   Death seemed beautiful to me then, a state of simply being at one with the soul of nature.  Now I confess to a fear of dying, rather than a fear of death, but most of all, a fear of loss of the love of my life.  For we are in the September of our lives and all is intensified now that we are more aware of our finiteness.  Truth be told this was always potentially the case, but we lived, like most youth, in the inevitable delusion of immortality.

So I function now at the cost of loss of my revered altered states of consciousness.  Perhaps I am in September mind, channeling words and images of the beauty of nature that flooded me long ago are a mere trickle now, as my time to “just be,” once more for this time round, approaches.


“Let’s Just Hold Hands”


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They have been married for 52 years.

Now she is in rehab

on a feeding tube,

a phantom of her former self,

so frail.

And he is hail

for her.

He says to her:

“Let’s not talk about the past.

Let’s not talk about the future.

Let’s just sit here and hold hands.”

And so they sat for three hours

until the darkness fell.


Old Barn with Window View


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Could not resist the lovely curve of the roof of this little red barn– some might call old age sag.