Category Archives: Humor
Life is a School
Life is a school where tests are not about passing or failing, but are a learning tool instead. Loneliness is a universal experience meant to fuel a lifelong quest for God. And the vulnerabilities of those we love open us to prayer. Then the joy of loving leads us from just crying “Help!” to celebrations of “Thanks” and “Praise.” Lack of money challenges us to learn to live by God’s priorities. Loss of health brings us to depend on Him. The old are freed from caring what others think; they see that only God’s opinion matters. And recess comes when once we admit we’ve passed our peak, we’re free to just be comic relief.
Being the Persons God Loved Into Existence
God made us precisely to be imperfect, incomplete and insufficient human beings. It is our neediness and feelings of helplessness that keep us depending on God’s grace and mercy….To be a saint means to be myself…..the problem of sanctity is in fact the problem of finding out who I am…my true self….God leaves us free to be real or unreal.” Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation.
“In no way does God expect us to act perfectly. We are challenged instead to accept ourselves with all our assets and liabilities; to be perfectly the imperfect people we are. God never seemed to want another perfect being. Prayer gives us the courage to confront our illusions……to embrace our weaknesses as well as our strengths. Without condoning our destructive behaviors, we can recognize them as opportunities for humility, forgiveness, and mercy…..To be who we are, the persons God loved into existence, implies the acceptance of grace, self-honesty, healthy self love, and a keen sense of humor.” Sister Maria Edwards, Spiritual Director and Author
1 Corinthians 1:18 —“The message of the Cross is foolishness to the world, but to those being saved, it is the power of God. God chose what is weak and rejected, so no one might boast. Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord”.
Romans 5:3-5 “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our heart through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”
“Hope is a series of small actions that transform the darkness into light…..Despair is an affliction of the memory. Hope depends on remembering what we have survived. Hope is the gift that rises from the grave of despair…..We can choose to persevere in hope through darkness.” Sister Joan Chisttister in Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope.
“Faith is: a conviction that God can and hope that He will.” From Thomas(?) Greene in Bread for the Journey.
“But trusting and listening for what He is teaching, when he doesn’t.” Eileen Norman
You Aren’t Who You Thought You Were, Are You?
Quote from The Zen of Cats by Bernard Gunther:
“Who you think you are can’t survive, but who you really are can’t not survive.”
In my fifties I worked with a Spiritual Director in an attempt to find out who I was. I had always been a chameleon, adapting to fit relationships, any relationship, even someone chatting in the line at the grocery. I’d done this since childhood, but finally decided that I was tired of not being sure who I was if no one else was around either physically or in my head.
To discover my whole real self involved looking at shadow parts that I didn’t admit to, even though they were obvious to others. One of the ways to do this was to work with my dreams. If we start writing them down as soon as we wake up remembering them, we can begin to discover what they are saying to or about us. Some of the characters in my dreams and therefore in my psyche, weren’t very nice. They were, in fact, very different from the persona I considered my ‘self.’
One day, after a somewhat disconcerting session with my Spiritual Director, I went to visit my mother in the nursing home. Mom was in the late stages of Alzheimer’s and didn’t even seem to notice me, never-the-less recognize me. So, I sat next to her bed and just held her hand. I was in inner turmoil over the possibility that I wasn’t just the friendly, generous, caring person that I liked to think I was. As I sat there, I was trying to convince myself that this negative side of me wasn’t real.
Mom had a roommate who had only been there a few weeks, but in all that time she never seemed to notice me or the nurses when we came in and never responded in any way when anyone spoke to her.
As I sat there silently, rationalizing about my feet of clay, the roommate raised up on her elbow in her bed, looked straight at me, and said clearly, “You aren’t who you thought you were, are you?”
As I stared at her dumbfounded, she lay back down, closed her eyes, and never said another word in my presence. About two weeks later she died. We really are all connected. I just hope God can use me someway in the last days of my life to help someone else in the tapestry.
So much for denial! Obviously, even when I am psychologically jamming my fingers in my ears and singing Jesus Loves Me at the top of my inside my head voice, God can speak loudly and clearly when it’s needed to grow more honest in order to become more loving.
A Life of Crime at Ninety? Maybe Not.
Not long ago, one of my friends mentioned that she no longer had fingerprints. They had worn off. So, several others of us in our late seventies and early nineties checked, and discovered that ours had all pretty much worn off also. The thought that we could turn to a life of crime now tickled our fancy.
As we speculated about this, mental pictures of us attempting to rob a bank had us laughing helplessly.
Our scenarios varied from the image of us making our getaway on our walkers at a snail’s pace, to attempting to escape with one of us waving a water gun around, another holding the money bag, while the third struggled and had to ask the guard to open the door.
Another possibility got us howling. Since I’m the only one of us able to drive anymore, but am also known for distractibility and erratic short term memory, the others pictured themselves waiting helplessly outside the bank clutching the money bags, after I had been tempted away by a Sale sign and forgot all about them.
Another likelihood was all of us forgetting where we had parked the car. And we were pretty sure that we would be nervous and have to ask to use the bank’s bathroom before leaving.
We decided we had missed our chance for a life of crime, printless or not.
Old Age : A Dangerous Excuse for Congenital Flakeyness
I was born lacking a sense of direction, blind to physical details, and inclined to value feelings more than logic and intuition more than facts.
The up-side of this is a gift for seeing creative possibilities and having the motivation to implement them for making people happier.
The down-side is having to always leave the house early, because you know you will end up taking a “scenic” route no matter how many times you’ve been there before and the odds are it will take at least fifteen minutes to find your car to get home from any parking lot.
When my friends and I began hitting retirement age, even those who were born with internal GPS’s and a penchant for noticing and remembering the exact number and level of parking spaces, seemed to be “losing” those enviable talents.
“Hooray!” I thought, “I can finally blame my inadequacies on age and won’t have to put up with my friends rolling their eyes whenever I get caught wandering about in my usual fog.”
My children have always said that no one will notice if I am losing it, since I never had it together.
I can still drive, while two friends, who were there for me when my life was in crisis years ago, no longer are able to drive. One lives with her daughter out in the country. Her daughter works full time, so Barbara is house bound all week.
My other friend, Hilde, lives fifty miles away in a very nice nursing home. Her daughter also works, so she spends most of her time reading in her room alone.
I have felt so blessed that I have the chance to be there for them by taking each of them out to lunch, window shopping, to a botanical garden, or art museum at least once a week. Both of them need to use a walker and I sometimes also need one for walking very far. Because of the distance between their residences and the complication of so many walkers, I usually take each of them out separately on different days each week.
Last week was shortened by a holiday with family and a trip out of town, so I decided to attempt taking them both out to the delightful Aquarium Restaurant in a huge mall about sixty miles from my house.
Whether from delusion or the onset of senility, I decided that I would be able to find it easily since I had been there several times before. NOT!
I parked close to what I thought was the mall entrance closest to the restaurant.
We just took their two walkers, because I wasn’t having any pain that day.
Naturally, I had mixed up the entrances and we found ourselves with a longer walk than we usually attempt. Since it wouldn’t take much longer than going back to the car, reloading and then unloading the walkers again at the next entrance, we made our way slowly through the crowded mall, with a few pauses to get our breath. But our two hour lunch made it worthwhile. The food was delicious and the fun of watching all the unusual fish was an interesting change from our normal days.
To save my friends from the longer walk, I positioned them seated on their walkers at the nearest exit, while I walked back to get the car. About the time my hip began to protest my pace, I realized that I had turned the wrong way and needed to retrace my steps back to where I left Barbara and Hilde and then go on to the next exit where we had parked. By the time I got back to Barbara and Hilde, both my hips were protesting painfully, so I just went on without stopping to tell them what I had done. A big mistake.
As I headed back through the mall, the pain became so severe that I had to find a chair and sit down for a few moments. Neither of my friends has a cell phone, so there was no way to let them know this was going to take a much longer time than we expected. The pain would let up and I would start walking again as long as I could bear it. Then I would find something to sit on for a few minutes. I finally made it to the right exit and went bravely out into the hot sun. No car anywhere. I felt sure I had parked very close to the door and in plain sight from it. By now sweat was running down my face and my hip pain was tempting me to sit down on the pavement until someone offered to help. As usual I had waited until I despaired to begin praying.
As I finally prayed, it occurred to me that a large SUV had pulled in between my car and the entrance and was completely blocking it from view. Thanks be to God! I made it to the car and turned it toward the exit where I hoped my friends were still waiting.
I thought I remembered a Mexican Restaurant at that entrance, so I watched for the sign. And drove and watched and drove and watched and drove and watched, until I realized I had no idea where I was or where my friends were. I turned around illegally, then noticed the police car stopping across from me. I just kept going, driving slowly and praying desperately that I could find them without having to call in the police. I finally spotted them still waiting inside the doors to an entrance next to a Macaroni Grill, not a Mexican Restaurant.
Well they both start with an M.
They wheeled out to the car at warp speed, asking anxiously if I was all right. I threw the walkers into the back and sped off, determined to put distance between me and the police. As I described my adventures, my friends nodded empathetically.
I asked Barbara what she would have done, if I hadn’t returned when I did. She said there was a security policeman near-by and she was getting ready to give him my cell phone number and ask him to call me. I breathed a sigh of relief. The oldest of us three, Barbara at ninety, still had her wits about her.
Of course, when I finally got home, I realized that I hadn’t turned my cell phone on that day.
The challenge now is to convince their daughters that I’m not losing it. I’ve simply never had it together, but somehow I’ve always managed to get us all home safely as long ago as Hilde and my adventures getting lost consistently in our twenties and my doing the same with Barbara in my fifties.
If they think I’m senile, our days out may be cancelled. No more using age as an excuse for natural flakeyness.
Ten Things You Can Do In Your Youth to Make Old Age Easier
1. Learn to laugh at yourself.
2. Pick friends with a sense of humor.
3.Cultivate a few healthy younger friends.
4. Practice being invisible to discover some of the benefits.(See Pecs and Buns post.)
5. Practice driving a scooter in Walmart on Saturdays.
6. Develop the habit of never passing up a bathroom.
7. Find clean convenient bathrooms on all frequent routes. (This helps with children and grandchildren, who tend to ignore their early warning signals and will help you when your early warning system becomes defunct before the rest of you.)
8. Choose tattoos that are old age friendly.
9. Buy stock in Charmin and Post it Notes. (Society is aging as a whole.)
10. Choose Doctors the same age as you. (They will believe you when you say everything hurts and with luck will live at least one day longer than you.)
Family Traditions or How Many Generations of Teenagers Can One Woman Humiliate?
Sweet memories.
My great-grandson, Aaron, played the xylophone in the junior high band last night. What fun! I could actually hear him, since there was only one xylophone.
He is following in the foot-steps of his great-uncles and great-aunt; Mike (trumpet), Steve (trumpet–until his friend, Donna, drove over it–then a flugel horn provided free by the school), and Julie (flute).
Fortunately for Aaron, if he ever plays in the marching band, I no longer have the stamina to run down Main Street alongside the band with tears of delight streaming down my face. I wonder if Mike has managed to blot that total humiliation out of his memory? Probably not.
The last time Steve came home for a visit, he was still shuddering over his memory of sitting on the junior high school bus with all his friends watching me collect pinecones from under the schoolyard Pine tree.
In spite of starting out frozen with embarrassment, Julie eventually forgave me for attending Parents’ Night on Halloween in a witch’s costume, because her classmates thought it was cool.
But, you are safe Aaron. I have gotten at least a little kinder with age, plus I no longer have the energy required to totally humiliate a third generation of teen-agers.
I now even have a plan for when I get really squirrelly in my old age. I already talk out loud to myself at home and laugh out loud at funny thoughts while driving. So when I noticed an older woman at a crosswalk talking out loud to herself as she walked along, I thought, “Oh dear Lord, there I go in a few years.”
But then I remembered a couple of friends who are at about my level of squirrelliness and it occurred to me that if I just keep hanging out with them, when we walk around together talking to ourselves, it will look like we are talking to each other. The key to old age is to travel in packs.
Plan in place. Problem solved.
The Gold in the Golden Years
Whatever time is left
Use it up
Wear it down
Regardless how thin
The fabric becomes
It is rich with the sounds
Of laughter
Salty with tears and
Friends.
From the poem Time on the blog: poetry, photos, and musings, oh my – by lea
Six years ago, my ninety-one year old friend Barbara, who was on a walker from a painful hip surgery, expressed her despair from feeling useless. But as we shared lattes with a friend in her mid sixties, who has slow growing cancer, we laughingly imagined walkers for us like baby walkers with crinoline skirts to hide them, and small secret Porta-Potties built in. Then, in the parking lot as we attempted to help Barbara into the van, somehow she got stuck bent over half way in. We tried to gently boost her backside without hurting her hip, until the giggles overtook us. Frozen in place, the three of us laughed helplessly, humor overcoming even our fears of age weakened bladders. When I called Barbara the next morning to make sure she hadn’t been hurt, she started laughing all over again, insisting she had been laughing all morning just thinking about it, and even wished we had a photograph.
The next day, I visited my friend with dementia in a nursing home in Nashville. She had once again dreamed of her parents’ death as a present day event and had awakened overwhelmed by loss and frantic about funeral arrangements. Each time she grieves anew, I can only hold her hand and ache for her endless losses. But later, seeing the wonder in her eyes, when she listened to me telling one of the caregivers about her courage and faith and her kindness to so many in her life, I recognize a moment of grace even in the now worn fabric of our lives.
The following day, my alarm went off three hours too early and I had the coffee made before I finally noticed the actual time. Later, I realized on my first stop of the day, that I had my coat on inside out. That night at a my sister-in-law’s eightieth birthday celebration in an upscale restaurant, I somehow managed on my second trip to the bathroom, to go into the men’s room. Then when leaving, I couldn’t find my coat check number in my tiny purse. Since I don’t drink, I couldn’t even blame it on something temporary. At least it’s fodder for a blog post.
The Gold in the Golden Years are our friendships and shared memories, but perhaps most of all, the freedom to laugh at ourselves. Laughter is carbonated grace.
Wishing all of you a joyous Christmas season filled with laughter. Eileen
The Gifts of Age: Part Five: If Old Age is Better than the Alternative, We Are All in Deep Doggie Doo
People talk about the stress of being a working mom, as if stress ends when either or both jobs stop. Who are they trying to kid?
Old lady stress is 24/7.
Little Old Lady Stress
Second Stand-Up Gig
At night, as soon as you get your pillow nest all arranged to support aching backs and knees and burrow gratefully into it, doubt enters the room. Did I lock the doors? Did I turn off the stove? Did I switch the wet wash to the dryer? Did I take my pills? Yes, I think I did all that tonight. No, that was last night. Oh hell, I better go check.
Then, because your bladder is your only body part that’s gotten more active with age, there are at least three trips to the john every night. And since your early warning system is now deceased, these are made at warp speed, even on a walker. Panic is a great motivator. There should be an Olympic competition for this. You wake up tired and wonder why.
The disconcerting end to what seemed like a reasonably nice day is realizing that you have gone all over town smiling today without your upper dentures.
The first stage of dementia is becoming childlike in saying whatever you’re thinking out loud, then wondering why everyone is looking at you like you just farted.
The fact that you can’t introduce your best friend isn’t so bad, since she’s your age and can’t remember your name either. But when you mix up your grown son’s second wife’s name with the first’s, it’s a whole different ball game.
When you see on face book that the younger members of your family are comparing miles walked or jogged each day, you think to yourself, If I had a pedometer, it would show at least ten miles walked each day looking for my glasses, my purse, and my coffee cup, coming back inside for my car keys, and going in and out of rooms at least three times each before I remember why I went in.
Your new four letter word shouted frequently is WHAT? And a dinner party of peers is mostly everyone shouting WHAT? and then pretending to hear the replies. Though irritating, it doesn’t really matter much, since no one will remember anything by the time they get home anyway.
Cleaning gets increasingly complicated when vertical surfaces are covered with the latest in home decor for the elderly, post it notes. And there are also stacks of everything imaginable on all level surfaces, because now out of sight, means lost forever..
Your hearing turns mysteriously obscene, as you now confuse the initial sounds of words and can’t believe they are saying that on prime time TV.
When you express worry about some of the disasters being experienced by of others your age, your children encourage you to be thankful that’s not you. And you mentally add the word, yet.
Many weeks, if you didn’t go to so many funerals, you’d have no social life at all. And you remember that you used to wonder why your older friends were depressed.
When everyone’s talking about diets, you’re thinking, Sure. Like I’m going to give up my last pleasure in life, so I can look good in my casket.
Your grand and great-grandchildren are the bubbles of joy in the cesspool of old age, but also the barbs of reality. When sitting in your lap, looking up at you with their big innocent eyes, they ask, “Grandma, why do old people have turkey necks?”
And you grit your teeth and freeze a smile on your face, when your great-grandson proudly introduces his fiancee, the tattooed lady with enough metal appendages to set off airport security alarms.
There’s really only one thing worse than getting old, (I’m personally going to be really pissed if it turns out to be death). To me, it’s your husband getting old. Most of us thought if we married, we’d always have someone able to open jars, move heavy furniture, and clean the gutters. Another fairy tale bites the dust.
But other than these, old age is a piece of cake. Whenever you can get to the bakery.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 