Loose Leaf Notes

I think of every part of life as a developmental stage. We learn to walk and talk. We develop attachments and a conscience. We are attracted to others, try new things, do work that we love and hope to be recognized. It all goes according to some unspoken schedule and with every stage we can say ‘I’ve never been here before.’

When I was a teenager, I yearned: for a boy, to be loved, for something special to happen. I sought out the saddest songs of the day to play over and over on my record player. The best ones were the ones that could make cry. I never thought of my yearning as a bad thing. It was time I took to myself, a route to the deepest part of myself, a sweetly sad paradox that I knew was part of my humanity and my soul.

Now, as an older person, I feel the same way about grief. I find myself gently grieving from so much leaving: my childhood, my hometown, my youthful beauty, my mothering, my loved ones who have died and the realization that I too will leave this world. It’s a sweetly dark grieving that is rich with meaning because it comes with honoring.

Eldering is a lot like adolescence. We’re sensitive and awkward. Our bodies are changing. We question who we are and sleep more (or less).  And crying is not something to dread. We cry when we are moved, whether by some joy or some sadness. Good love-making can sometimes make us cry, or make us frown as if we are in pain when we are not. It’s about the deepness, being touched, a breaking down of defenses.

I don’t buy the reports that being older is the best time of my life. It’s bittersweet, which can be an acquired taste. Things are given and things are taken away. But it’s a time of harvest, and the work up to this time pays off when the fruit is ripe for picking.

I think the most valuable work an older person can do is inner work, to review, to grieve and to honor. We put to rest parts of our life. We see the puzzle that has taken form. We can add some pieces, but we can’t take others away. It’s an emotional journey, in preparation for leaving this world, which starts long before we actually die, like when my teenaged sons left home incrementally before they physically left.

I have immersed myself in exploring these life changes, just as I immersed myself in the shattering grief I experienced when two of my brothers died a month apart in 2001, as a way to get through it. I approach getting older with a curiosity and as a practice of being with what is. I don’t struggle to be better or more. I value direct experience and questioning what I thought I knew. Slowly, I allow myself be touched and changed. To accept. I am uplifted by simple beauty along the way. I wait for the slightest sparks of interest and follow them.

In 2020, I completed a manuscript of poetry, a spark of interest that I followed, titled Objects are Closer Than They Appear. The manuscript has just been published and is now ready to share. It could be considered a sequel or a deepening of my 2017 book of poetry, Packing a Suitcase for the Afterlife. Available to purchase now on Amazon, it’s a distillation through the rearview mirror of poetic memoir that charts an inner-life adventure and reflects a universality that we all will eventually share.  ______ Colleen Redman