Why did I choose people who were dying? My first reason had to do with my lifelong intrigue with the concept of death, not the common Edgar Allen Poe kind.
Compare it to what I later learned to be the Buddhist view. Death is but a transition into another phase of existence. It is so just like birth was a transition into this unique existence. On birth all of a sudden: “Voila, here we are!” What we discover is being in a limitation of space, running in time, and all other nuances produced by this strange place.
I was interested in sharing whatever process a person went through finally before popping out of here. This was sharing by listening not be telling. The stories were wonderful, the responses resonated from most. Some wondered what the hell was the matter with me that I wanted to hang around them in their dire time. Others were loving, grateful and best of all graceful
By most I was appreciated and I valued this. It felt warm; I was doing something for someone else. Although I had and did this before, never so directly and singularily had I been involved in such a task of doing for another.
In the past it had always been within the context of doing professionally often with an accent on doing good for someone. In my profession, a trial lawyer, there were always so many other exigencies of every action you could never keep your eye on an issue of primary intent, namely, doing some good for someone.
I suspect many hard working males imbued with the obligations we take on as a Provider in our social structure just do not have the time if we are to do what seems to be our object and obligation in those middle years. We are challenged to do well at what we have become. Doing this with all its ramification leaves no time for anything else.
As stated in other writing, disregarding redundancy, I will say again:
“A young person wonders what she or he will be. A middle age person strives at what he or she has become. An old person ponders what was it all worth?”
This came to me while writing as an older person. Having happened on this pearl of wisdom it came home poignantly over lunch with my son. He is a man in his later 40’s maintaining a stressful time consuming position as a bank VP handling computer security. It is nice when a father sees the apple falling not far from the tree.
He said he felt he had it all together as a father, a husband, as a professional, doing all that he was supposed to be doing well and working hard at keeping up with that. He then said with all this sense of fulfillment he still felt he was missing his need to help others. The only way I can handle this feeling, he said, is knowing if I am to do my work right and have the time to be a good father I can’t take the time to get into programs of service for others. He finished saying he resolved this with the thought that the good income he brought home allowed his wife to do the things he could not. He did at least get some vicarious satisfaction from this.
“OMG ” did I chuckle hearing that. I had had the same discussion with myself at the same age resolving it with the same sense empathetically as he had. It was not until I retired did I then start feeling the joy of doing it directly.
A Key to Good Health while in the Early State of AD is found in helping others. It cannot be emphasized enough. It pulls us out of ourselves, out of the litany of lament we are too prone to flop around in. It involves us with others. It is positive and fulfilling, being a tool to help another cannot be compared to much else available in the experiences offered in life.
We are limited, nonetheless. Mine was a case in point. As soon as I was diagnosed I had to quit driving. I could bus it and use Metro Mobility to get about. Then it became a question of where and what.
My first thought was a hospital, any volunteer task. Most hospitals place you caring for patients in one way or another. I did not even try asking if they would accept a guy with AD.
Before diagnosis for one reason or another I could not continue to regularly keep up with any program. We were going for chunks of the summer, north to the lake as Minnesotans do, then we became snow birds going to AZ, again a typically MN thing to do. Then my health started to tank first to vascular disease then to AD including a lot of extraneous operations in between.
I wrote in the conclusion to a memoir of my life and my thoughts that I had done much, figured out the order of it in its apparent chaos, I was satisfied with how it went, actually better than I could have made it go, but felt something missing. I had not done enough for others in the space allotted to me between birth and death.
Nothing like asking for rain! Very shortly on writing this conclusion I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Within days of Diagnosis I wrote: Thoughts About my Diagnosis as part of a sequel to my memoir. If anyone is interested I have posted right before this post. Click on the title to go there or place the following address in the WebSite Address window at the top of your browser to take you there, http://im-mike.blogspot.com/2011/03/thoughts-about-my-diagnosis.html
What was said, written so soon after diagnosis has remained true for me ever since. It has served me so well which will be a subject of another later essay. All I have to say of it at this juncture is this: I always felt a void in me, an emptiness in my soul. AD happened. I was a sitting duck waiting for it to happen in spite of my best intentions. I got it; after cursing the almighty for it I accepted it. As a result I have been committed to using it to help others ever since.
That emptiness no longer exists or persists in my soul.
I was lucky. My good luck was probably because of my AA background my writing foreground and understanding what I wrote in my memoir. I put it together in a book entitled From AA to AD, a Wistful Travelogue You can find it on Amazon.com. There I explain the extra help my life gave me.
For the rest of all of us, we must do something about bringing our kind to water and hopefully the rest of us will drink from it. That water is comprised in programs one of which is:
3. Volunteer Coordination: We need to put together a central source to find volunteer opportunities for Early Stage AD where they can be directed to do volunteer work in the range of their respective ability.
My third proposal will be covered in more detail in the next posting, stay tuned!
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