Being Aware and Making Your Choice

I’m guessing many if not most of us have gone through periods of time where we’re confronted with one challenge after another and it feels as if a very jagged steamroller has run over us again and again for “good” luck. We’re so down it feels as if there could never have a thing others call “up.” And typically Holiday seasons make things even worse when it may appear the rest of the world is having fun and we weren’t invited to the party.

And yet I believe it’s possible, though initially it never feels that way, to take these challenges that are overwhelming and subtly turn the tide of the battle. At least I’m going to try even after going to a good friend’s burial on Monday. I guess that may have been the good part. He was in the hospital for three weeks. Nothing was helping him. A four-hour operation may have put his GI track back in line but there was no way he was going to get better. So he backed off tube feeding etc. and went on palliative care. I saw him shortly before he went to sleep and passed. For me, I guess that was OK. I can’t speak for him. It was what he wanted though.

Funny, I’ve been thinking about death a lot for about a year. Maybe it comes with the territory. I’m 82. My friend was 85. A lot of fear. I was trying to work on my fear of death. Another friend, still alive, suggested an alternative approach could be to work on accepting death. I’m working on it. There’s a difference. With fear, it’s easy to fall into the “deer in the headlights” syndrome where you freeze, become immobile. Then you’re locked out of life and death may be a moot point – you’re not really living.

I think my friend who passed realized this when he accepted death as another choice in life. If his health issues prevented him from meeting the challenges he enjoyed then he wasn’t really alive anyhow. He was aware of his choice, fully conscious in the ever fewer moments when he was awake and not in pain. He was courageous and made the choice of a treatment that was right for him.

So, from this I can at least see a way forward as I age and experience more and more age related challenges.

My friend was a composer and he taught musical composition at the local university. He taught his students to look at the big picture: the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. Every day when they woke up and then throughout the day. And all the while to ask themselves how can they make it better: whether it was a piece they were composing or a relationship they had with another person. This he felt would make for a better world for all and also a better composition. And if he was no longer able to do this, then maybe his job here on earth was over. He was courageous and I’ll miss him.

I’m guessing his attitude and approach can help with my earlier musings; graciously accept challenges and turn negatives into positives.

Take care of yourself and others. Have a blessed Holiday and New Year.

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Ken was a Professor of Mathematics, a ceramicist, a welder, and an IBMer until downsized in 2000. He taught yoga until COVID-19 decided otherwise. He continues writing, living with his wife and beagle in Shorewood, Wisconsin. He enjoys chamber music and mysteries. He’s a homebrewer and runs whitewater rivers. Ken is a writer and his literary works can be found at https://www.kmkbooks.com/

He welcomes feedback on his articles and can be reached at havokjournal@havokmedia.com.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.