Certainly true in my current life. But don't think I'm whining. Few people've had the life I've had: prolonged good health, a fine career, extreme "comfort" -- if not great wealth. . .and the love of a wonderful woman I worshiped for most of forty years. Not bad! I'll take it. . .and slide off grinning like a bandit! At least most of the time.
During the final phases of her life, my sainted Gramma used-to confess her age with a pesky grin and add the word "young." As in "79-years-YOUNG!" She never complained about her longevity. She never whined about her cranky joints and often-dyspepsic-stomach. . .or about the growing length of time it took her to complete her daily chores. She stayed busy, often humming a Methodist hymn. And in the final phases of her life, she maintained a sort of smiling grace I took for granted. I'm a little bit wiser now. I now know it's true that she meant her life to be an example for me and the others she loved.
She died in the seventh month of her eightieth year. And until lately, I never quite understood the depth of her creative energy and fortitude. She was one tough and caring lady.
I'm thinking about her today because last night I watched a movie that both broke my heart and lifted me.
I'm not a movie critic. I just know what I like. And what I like is often something that reflects my own life, the way I've tried to live it. . .the good luck I've enjoyed and the joyful love I've experienced.
I say at the outset that Hollywood gangs-up on the unwary. The people we meet in films are gorgeous. Their struggles are touching. Things nearly always work out just as we wish our own struggles to work out: happily ever after. Ahhhhh, those brave and rewarding sunsets.
So! The film we watched was "Love and Other Drugs." Ann Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall -- or however he spells it. If you haven't watched that film, I recommend it. But then, depending upon your own life and dreams, you may not like the film at all. It's about a handsome young guy who wins-big selling pharmaceuticals. He meets and falls in love with a young woman struggling in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease. He has no idea what he's in for in the beginning. He simply thinks he's won a prize. I think he has, too.
As the Hathaway character advances through the stages of her disease, she drives him out of her life. All the reasons for this aren't clear. Perhaps a really good relationship is frightening because the challenges are so great and the stakes so high. And the pay-offs so great. Perhaps there are moments -- moments we hide -- when we fear we can only go on together when we are at our very best. And we doubt we have the discipline to live the good and the testing times with grace. Perhaps such marriages last because we learn over time how to imagine we actually deserve the wonderful days we experience. And perhaps we actually DO grow into the strength such good marriages demand. Maybe we really do try hard, learn and grow. That's surely something good to hope for and work hard to achieve. After all, all of life is learning.
So I have to imagine that Hathaway drives Jake out because she doubts her capacity to face her death with dignity. She doesn't want him to see the weaknesses she fears he will come to see in her. But Jake has his own doubts. . .about his own strengths. There is a brief scene in which Jake meets a grief-stricken survivor of a Parkinson marriage. And this grieving husband assures Jake that as much as he had loved his wife, or perhaps because he loved her so much: he is not certain he could, or would make the same choice again. Perhaps he would have left her to die alone. At one point, he opines, that leaving her seems to be exactly what she would have preferred.
In some brief, yet key scenes, we see the progress of Hathaway' disease, and how it ravages her. She struggles to open safety-top pill bottles, for instance. Still, when she finally drives Jake out, he regretfully leaves. Yet, we see that mixed-in with his apparent heartbreak and regret is considerable relief -- and the whole sprinkled with guilt. Jake's young and inexperienced. He permits her to drive him away. And, as we elderly know full-well, our unfinished business remains tucked within us, no matter how far we may choose to run. Better to face life head-on while we have youthful strength and energy and perhaps a powerful will borne of ignorance.
Never mind how the film ends, except to say it ends at a triumphant point. Nevertheless, I identified strongly with the characters and the situation. More important, I realized from my own experience what sorts of terrible things would surely follow that triumphant point. The film both terrified and lifted me. . .moved me to emotional turmoil and tears.
Nearly four years ago, my wife died of breast cancer that finally moved to her liver. Nancy was a health educator who took good care of herself. She was brilliant and skilled, clever and funny, strong and brick-house built. A green-eyed-ravishing blond beauty with great teeth, she smiled when she drove a tennis ball down my throat. The three years of her terrible dying, and the four since her death have tested me over and over again.
This ordeal came to Nancy and me when we were twice the ages of the characters in this movie. We'd been married thirty-seven wonderful years during which I never loved her less. . .I always loved her more. Every day. Never mind why. You would have to have known Nancy to understand. She was truly that good.
So now I'm an aging widower -- now closer to eighty than seventy. Just before she died, Nancy earnestly said to me: "Find a woman you can love who loves you. Be happy" Not knowing how to respond, I promised to do as she wished.
Need I say I have since discovered two things: first, all the good women within my age-range are firmly attached and deserve to be. And second: it appears that whatever I once was, whatever it was that drew Nancy to me and held her is long gone. I say this with good humor. In 1960, I saw the film "Gigi." Early in the film, the gracefully aging Maurice Chevalier sings a delightful song entitled "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore!" Trust me; fifty years later I have come to understand the song quite well. Enough to say with good grace and humor that I've been loved long and well. If necessary, I feel quite able to finish-up the final phases of my life alone.
"Sorry, Nancy! My love stays with you!"
I have my memories and a few more good things to accomplish. . .not to mention my kids and grandkids. I hope to live long enough to find out what good things may happen in their lives. . .and how I might yet have a hand in their good fortune.
Years ago I heard it said: "The older a man gets, the faster he ran as a boy!" Yet, the greater part of grace is seeing oneself clearly. The few fine, unattached ladies I've seen have not seen me. Or if they have seen me, they felt no need to express interest. Never mind: I prefer to think of them as victims of their own good judgment!
Still, regarding my present Joy and Sorrow, I point to the wise words of Kahlil Gibran, who in his poem by that name so wisely said: "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being , the more joy you can contain." And further on he assures us: "When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."
Wise man, this Gibran.
The Bee Gees got it right. Perhaps, it's true that "nobody gets too much love anymore." But then I've been uncommonly lucky. More than half my life, I've been well loved.
Still, I have to laugh. Incurable Romantic that I remain, I have moments when I imagine that any minute now, some gracefully-grown-old Ann Hathaway is waiting for me right around the next corner.
Pardon me, please!
I'm in a hurry just now!
I'm in a hurry just now!
Poppycock Bob.
ReplyDeleteThere have to be many available women in your age range.
You know well that it's never too late to be surprised by joy.