Making each hour count

Never Done: Had lunch with Jane

Josh's mom can't see, and it's extremely hard for her to hear, so it's hard for her to make new friends. A new woman, Jane, moved into the apartment right next door to hers and also sits at her meal table. When Josh and I first showed up to spend the weekend with his mom, we met Jane, in the dining hall, and she seemed clear and present and invited us to join them for lunch. We hadn't arranged to eat there that day, but we decided to eat together with them the next day.

We sat down, and Josh and his mom and I started to ask Jane questions about herself, and she started asking us. Where is she from? (Central Pennsylvania) Where are we from? (Brooklyn, NY.) Does she come from a large family? (She's an only child.) Did she have a career? (Not really.) Does she have children? (No, but she has a lot of cousins.) Was she married? (Yes, actually she still is.) What's her husband's name? (She can't remember.) Where are we from? (Brooklyn, NY.) Where does her husband live? (She isn't sure.) Where are we from? (Brooklyn, NY.) And by this time, Josh and I understood that she is a lovely and gracious woman with a shattered memory and excellent coping mechanisms. She couldn't remember from literally minute to minute that she would need to talk loud and slow for Josh's mom to be able to hear her, but she was unfailingly positive: whenever she became confused, she would look around and say, "This is a lovely room we are sitting in. So elegant."

It was an extraordinarily sad lunch for me. On the one hand, I was sad for Josh's mom, that our hopes of brokering a friendship were dashed. On the other hand, I was sad for Jane, who might or may not be an only child, or have a husband, or have had a career. And yet, when it became clear to us that it stressed her out to talk about herself, we took up the mantle and told stories, and she seems to have had a lovely time, just being in the present moment, listening to us talk. Josh's mom certainly enjoyed it, and when I could keep my attention away from my sadness and my own fears of aging, so did I.

I have plaguing and intense fears of aging. Maybe it came from having had an older father (not by today's standards, but by 1960's standards; he was 44 and already bald when I was born.) Maybe it comes from being together with my grandfather when he died, when I was just 12. Maybe it was worsened by spending so much time with both my parents over the months leading up to their deaths, and also being with them as they passed on. Maybe all these things have actually helped me with my fears -- I don't actually know -- but aging frightens me.

I find myself thinking today about which middah (mide) might help me through my fears. It seems like the two best candidates would be Patience: Do not aggravate a situation with wasted grief, and Equanimity: Rise above events that are inconsequential. But is my grief wasted? And is there anything inconsequential about aging and death? And how do I peel my brain away from my fear of the future or my confusions of the past, and make each hour of the present fully count?