Aliveness vs. Non-aliveness, A fundamental choice.

          People either manifest aliveness or non-aliveness in their lives. Those who are alive participate, are engaged in life. They stay active, involved, they love to have their grand-children show up. Even if they can’t walk, they love to have the children sit on their laps and read to them. They choose to engage.

         Those who operate out of non-aliveness are tired, waiting for it to be over, whether they are eighty or eighteen. They are on the sidelines, complain a great deal and can always tell you how things got to be this way. It is their story and they are willing at any moment to discuss it in detail. They are “poopy” about life. My Dear Mother spent most of her life that way. Her “story” was that “everything would have been fine if only she hadn’t married Harold (Harold being my Father).” They spent twenty-five years separated before passing on. My brother and I knew we would each have to take responsibility for one of them, knowing that no city was really big enough for both. So, I took Dad and Mal and Mary Abbott, my sister-in-law took care of Mom. In the dictionary, under “saint,” there should be a picture of Mary Abbott. Her tireless support of my Mother was amazing.

         Dad decided in 1993 that he no longer wanted to live until the year 2000. While he had mastered four heart attacks and a pretty serious stroke, he never imagined wearing a bag for his bodily functions. He didn’t feel comfortable going to get his haircut or to a store. He was an intensely private person and he never adjusted to what he considered an indignity.

         After consulting his doctors and a minister friend of ours, he stopped taking most of his medicines and was gone in a few weeks. On the day of Dad’s passing, I knew I needed to call Mom and let her know what had happened. I did so and received a quiet and calm, “Thanks for letting me know, I’m sure you will miss him,” was her only response. I did not expect anything more and I had the thought, “how sad.” 

    About ten days later I called Mom just to see how she was doing, just because. I asked how she was doing and she said, “Not very well.” She allowed that she had waited about ten days too long to say some pretty important things.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Like, I think I actually loved your Father.”

“Well, Mom, he knew that.”

“He couldn’t have, I never said it to him.”

“Remember a few years ago, when he came to talk with you in Grand Rapids and you wouldn’t let him in?

“Yes.”

“He wanted to tell you how much he loved and respected you and that he was truly sorry things had not worked out. Dad told me he thought you were a really great person and that you might have even loved him just a little bit.”

Long silence.

Mother was not a demonstrative person. However, on that day, I could hear the tears coming on the other end of the line.

“Don’t worry about Dad. He is at peace. If it is, as he always believed, he is sitting somewhere chewing on God’s ear, telling Her how things could be improved. If it is ashes to ashes, dust-to-dust, he is no longer in pain. Look and see if there are others, still living, for whom you have communication that is not complete. And you know I am not talking about me. We’ve had our moments and you know I love you. And I know that you don’t like a good deal of how I’ve chosen to lead my life and that you love me!”

“You’re talking about Mal and Mary Abbott.”

“Well, take a look. If they or you were to pass on would they know how much you love and appreciate them?”

         Three days after I had talked to Mom, Mary Abbott called to ask what I had done to Mother? “Nothing,” I said, “Why do you ask?”

“Because for the past three days she has apologized for being a negative, complaining (imagine five letters) all her life.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Let’s see how things are by Tuesday.”

         Mal and Mary Abbott had taken world class care of Mom. Bought her a lovely condominium overlooking Reed’s Lake. The only thing she talked about was what was wrong with it. The condominium was on the second floor and had three bedrooms. She complained about walking up stairs and it having too much room. If Mary Abbott and Mal had bought her a condominium on the first floor, Mom would have complained that the view wasn’t as good as from the second floor and that she didn’t have enough room. Mom never learned how to drive, so every time she went to the grocery store, a hair appointment, any number of doctor’s appointments, Mary Abbott drove her. All Mom ever did was complain about the dog hair or horse hair in the car, the kids being too noisy, Mary Abbott being late and my all time favorite, “You love your Mother more than me!” 

         From that Tuesday on, she became a different person, more present, more grateful and even happier. She had made a choice. And for the first time in her life she actually knew it. She was 83 years old and lived the next seven years in much better spiritual condition. Perfect by no means and she seemed to realize she could not blame the dead for the fact that things in the present were not to her liking. If this realization had not occurred, a difficult period in a nursing home would have been twice as difficult.

         If you ask people who live in aliveness, they will tell you they chose it. To be with people, even in pain. To contribute, even if the means were meager. They will tell you, to a person, that it is a choice, every day, every minute, sometimes every second. They, too, have had hardships, losses, tragedies and they chose to re-engage with life.

         Those who live at non-aliveness cling to their story and deny they have a choice until they make one (If they ever do.). It is never the circumstances that dictate the outcome of a person’s life; rather it is the way we choose to hold our experience.