Trip to India

I went back to India.  My sister-in-law has been there since January, her fourth year of teaching in Chennai during the winter months.  This time I stayed with her in a very nice little apartment in Nungambakkam, instead of the other way around.  She had taken a temporary membership at the Madras Club, so even got to swim in their gorgeous and chlorine free pool a few times!   The mosquitoes were bothering her terribly, but they hardly touched me.  Guess my blood was too thick from the cold weather... (in the picture you can see Roberta with her ubiquitous and trusty mosquito zapper!) 

Very little in Chennai had changed in the 14 months since I had last been there, though I immediately noticed the lack of hoardings (except political ones, of course) that had resulted from a recent court ruling.  The overpass near the airport and Guindy was finally complete.  Other than this, during my 12 day stay, I often felt like I was in a time warp--as if I had never left.   

The trip provided a welcome respite from Michigan winter, and it was great to see everyone again.  Roberta and I took a trip over to Cochin and Munnar.  I had been to Cochin a couple of times, but never to Munnar, a hill station about 3 hours from the airport.   I have posted the photos from this trip on Flickr (above) and a selection on Facebook as well.  It rained while we were there, and the lush greens of the tea plantations came out marvelously.  Roberta was anxious to take photos of "ladies picking tea" and we were not disappointed.  On the day we toured the area, we passed  a group having a morning tea break, and then later on a group that was picking in the rain--complete with their rain garb.  

I had been to Darjeeling before, and expected Munnar to be similar in terms of the tea estates.  But there were important differences.  Like Darjeelling, tea had been introduced to Munnar by the British.  But we looked in vain for the high grade and "tender tip"  tea that I had found in Darjeeling.  Munnar is at a lower elevation--the highest plantation is about 7000 ft above sea level--and the really high grade tea grows at elevations above this.  Still, the tea was very good.  The plus about Munnar was the spice plantations.  We toured one, and saw nutmeg trees, cardamom, cinnamon, and vanilla beans, all being grown and harvested.  The vanilla plants were particularly interesting because vanilla is pollinated by the hummingbird, which isn't found in India.  Therefore, pollination is done manually, and is quite an intricate and delicate process (as you might imagine from contemplating how small the beak of a hummingbird must be....)  At a fraction of the price you would find in the U.S., I bought spices and brought them back (you need to declare them but Customs was quite accommodating).  

The Evening Star

Tonight I noticed the crescent moon with Venus glowing brightly below it--a beautiful sight in the western sky, just after sunset.  I recalled that Venus can be called either the "evening star" or "morning star" depending on her orbit relative to the earth and sun, and that she exhibits phases just like the moon. Tonight she was spectacular, losing none of her glamour despite being close  to the much bigger moon. 

Growing up, astronomy was very much a part of my world and early education, because it was a great hobby and source of fascination for my dad.  Thanks to him, I immediately recognized this conjunction, which we will not see again until the spring of 2010.  Often, on clear nights, and sometimes early in the morning, we would go out in the yard and observe the many wonders of the sky--the different constellations, the Northern Lights--which we could sometimes see where I grew up in northern Michigan--the Milky Way, and important stars such as Arcturus , Sirius, and Vega.  Dad subscribed to Sky and Telescope and for holidays and his birthdays a common present was some book he found recommended in his reading---usually quite technical and expensive!  Dad called these his "heaven books"  and poured over them often in the evenings after work.  He enjoyed the change of seasons for the difference it brought in the night sky, and we often had "quizzes"  where I would have to name a constellation, a star, or distinguish a star from a planet in the sky.  In addition to astronomy, he enjoyed science fiction, especially anything about other galaxies and worlds.  

A number of years ago, I  had the opportunity to travel to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, which unfortunately Dad never did during his lifetime.  (The closest he came was when we were in Chennai, which is about 13 degrees north of the equator. )  Before I left, I got "educated"  on what to look for--the famous "Southern Cross" of course, and some other constellations that Dad had read about and studied on his sky maps but never had the chance to see personally.  I like to think that now he can see any star or constellation he wishes--and perhaps even a distant galaxy or two, far, far away... 

Compassion

There is a famous saying attributed to Mark Twain about how intelligent his father was becoming as he, Mark Twain, grew older: "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." While apochryphal, the saying illustrates a truism about a child's perception of his/her parents: it is a moving target. When we are growing up, our parents are usually larger than life, though they go through a major dumbing-down when we are teenagers and young adults. As we become adults ourselves, we see them more as they are, but often still with the color of our childhood experience. And all the while, our parents, too, are evolving, so our perceptions need to change not only with our aging but with theirs. And sometimes, too, we may begin to see things we had simply missed.



Growing up, and well into adulthood, I would not have used the word compassionate to describe my father. It was not that I thought he was unkind, but it was not a quality that stood out to me. Kind and compassionate seemed hallmarks of my grandfather's character, not my dad's. In contrast to my grandfather, who seemed to exude a kind of saintly wisdom, Dad was much more likely to pass judgment, at least in private if not in public. And there were simply other things about him that impressed me more as "Dad" qualities: his curiosity, love of learning, controlling nature, and willingness to engage in a discussion on nearly any topic that interested him, to name a few.

It is said that as we grow older, we become closer to our true values. Perhaps that is the case in part with Dad and the quality of kindness that emanated from him in the last years of his life. As our son Harry noted at the funeral, this aspect of Dad's character came into sharp relief as his dementia advanced, and in the end, his mental faculties gone, love and compassion were all that remained. A few years ago, before we went to India, Marty, Dad and I went out to dinner, and we were seated at the bar at our favorite restaurant. By then Dad had found it difficult to follow a conversation, and beyond talking about how he liked his food and early banter with the bartender when we arrived, he didn't say much during the meal. When we got up to leave, however, he went over to a woman who had been sitting alone opposite us, put his hand on her arm, and started talking to her. Both Marty and I had noticed the woman, who didn't talk to anyone while we were there, but we didn't pay enough attention to her for her emotional state to register with either of us. After a little while, she looked up at Dad, put her hand on his arm in return, and gave him the unmistakable look of one who has just heard some well-needed words of encouragement. One of us asked Dad about it, and he replied, "that woman is very sad. I could tell just by looking at her, and I wanted to say something to her to make her feel better."


While it became a more visible attribute in Dad's later years, a few days ago I came across something that made me realize that compassion, especially for another person's sorrow, had been part of Dad's character for a very long time. He was a great fan of Variety Magazine, the trade publication of the entertainment industry, and subscribed to it for as long as I can remember. Among his papers, I found this clipping, which he had kept all those years. It is not dated, but Variety was founded in 1905, so that would put this clipping at around 1944, when Dad was only 26.

Three Weeks Out

It is a little more than three weeks since Dad died. Most of the thank-yous are written (still a few to go), the death certificates received, the immediate process stuff done. I attend services nearly every day, mostly in the morning, which gives an early start to the day. I write a lot, and sometimes, I become melancholy around four or five o'clock, when I often visited him before coming home to make dinner. But life is returning to the new normal. Right now I am in Keene, where Dad did not spend much time, so his death feels more remote to me in this place.

At Dad's funeral I saw an old neighbor that I had lost touch with since my mother's funeral five years ago. He put me in touch with two other neighbors. Those connections, with their memories of my dad in his prime, feel comforting. I have gone through some old papers, and found things that I didn't notice when we moved the stuff from my parent's house--including some letters from when Dad was in the Army during World War II, a couple of poems he wrote, and his Masonic apron--the last item one I will mail to his old lodge, as it is an honor for a fellow Masonic brother to inherit it. All of this put me back in touch with Dad as he was when I was growing up.

The weirdest thing right now is the feeling of being an orphan. This sounds a bit crazy for someone in their fifties. It is nothing like being left by your parents at a young age, I am sure. But beyond the relationship with the parent him or herself, there is a different feeling when the second parent dies that I did not recall with the first. When my mother passed away, my father was still very much alive, with the prospect of several more years, and he was also living with us. There was a kind of shock then at losing a parent for the first time. Now there is a different shock, that of being left without any parents at all. Some people who have experienced this have said that they feel a new sense of their own mortality, that they now realize that they are "first in line". I don't really feel that --perhaps because if I live as long as my parents and grandparents I have between 35-40 years to go and that is a very long time. After a while I know this, too, will settle in.

Memory Lane

I have a lot of memories of my dad that need an outlet, so my posts will likely be more frequent for a while.

Today's date--Jan 26--kept sticking in my mind. It's Republic Day in India, but that wasn't what was flagging my memory. Then I remembered that it is two years ago today that Dad returned to the U.S. after his time with us there.

Afterwards, the apartment felt very empty for a long time, not only because he had left, but Ganesh, his nurse and friend, was gone as well. Though my sister-in-law was there until spring--and that softened the blow a lot-- it was still much lonelier at the dinner table, bereft of Dad's unique sense of humor and cheerful spirit. Sometimes I would go into his room--his clothes no longer there but books on the shelf awaiting my own move back to the U.S. at the end of that year--and feel as if someone had died. In reality, I think this was what psychologists call "anticipatory grieving"--a kind of precursor of death when a person you are close to is in a slow and inevitable decline. Of course, at the time I had no idea how long it would be--despite his dementia, Dad was still relatively healthy. But the feelings now remind me of what I experienced then.

Probably the hardest thing for me these past several days since his death has been not going to the nursing home. It was just something I did this past year--it was always at the back of my mind as a daily "to-do"-and on busy days I even wrote it in my planner. I varied the time of my visits, but the period between 3-6 in the afternoon tended to be the most usual for me. That time is now also the most difficult to get through. Sometimes I have caught myself thinking that I need to stop by--only to be taken up short by the reality of Dad's death, and experience that awful, sinking feeling that is so characteristic of a fresh grief.

Despite these feelings, I am much luckier than many who lose a parent. It is hard to begrudge death to someone who has lived a long and full life, and whose final years have seen steady decline in mental and physical function. Rather, grief is mixed with something almost akin to joy--although no longer seen, the person is recovered, and gone to a better place. My grief is also relatively simple, without the complication of tangled emotions, anger, disappointment, or having lost a parent without warning or at a young age. But I have realized that it is also less complicated because I find myself relatively free of regret--a terrible emotion to combine with feelings of loss. And I think that I have my dad to thank for this, albeit in a strange way. Without intending it, he taught me a great deal about the nature of grief.

Dad was only nine when his mother died suddenly after a short illness, and though he spoke of her--more than 70 years after her death, he said that he could still vividly see her face in his mind's eye---it was with a kind of philosophical distance. But his father--my grandfather--lived a very long life, dying a month short of his 96th birthday, and they were extremely close. My grandfather was a gentle and tender-hearted soul and after the death of my grandmother, my dad's stepmother, he lived with my parents for nearly ten years before his own death. When he passed away, my dad--then only a few years older than I am now-- was filled with remorse. No one who knew Dad would have doubted his love or dedication to my grandfather especially during his final years. But despite being told this by many people, including my mother and me, he was quite inconsolable.

People who knew my father only in his later years, his personality softened by dementia, saw a man very much like my memories of my granddad--sweet and gentle, and full of kindness. But in his prime, Dad could be short tempered and impatient, and he had a decidedly directive--some might say controlling--nature. I think it pained him immensely to see my grandfather losing his physical and mental abilities, and his and my mother's lives were also constrained by their duties as caregivers especially in my grandfather's last years. These pressures sometimes caused Dad to be sharp and overbearing, and when my grandfather passed away, he deeply regretted those occasions. "I was too hard on Pa," he would say to me; "he couldn't help what was happening. I should have been more patient with him." I know that this remorse added considerably to his grief.

I can't say that I thought of this consciously when Dad grew older and became less able to look after himself, but I think now that it must have worked on me in some invisible way. My grandfather never approached Dad's degree of dementia--two years before his death he was still using words like "loquacious" and "supple" in conversation--but both body and mind were in decline and the sad part was that he was both aware of it and cognizant of the stress he was causing my father. "Joe barks at me," he would say, "but I know he doesn't mean it." There was only one time that I can recall that I lost patience with Dad --he had messed up something in the kitchen a year or so before we went to India---and I felt terrible afterwards that I had "barked" at him in the same way he had done with his father so many years before. At that point I did recall his remorse after my grandfather passed, and resolved to try not to give myself the same punishment. Part of my determination to take him to India was my belief--shared by Marty-- that being with us, whatever the risks, would far outweigh any "danger" he might be in living in a developing country. As it turned out, he got better care than we could have hoped for even in the United States, and we had the pleasure of being with him and seeing him make new friends. My main regret after he left was that he might have stayed there a bit longer. But then Marty reminds me of the difficult journey back on the plane, and I know that we were close to the right time.

Of course, if I had these years to do over, I would surely have spent more time with him, talked to him more, and been less distracted, especially in India. On one level I know that his dementia became so advanced that he probably wouldn't have known the difference. But I would have. Still, I am thankful that I learned to anticipate the grief that I now feel--and somehow understood in time that it is hard enough without adding the sharp sting of remorse.

Dad's Final Journey

As the country prepared for the long-awaited transition from the Bush years to the Obama years, I was experiencing a transition of a very different kind: my father's passage from this world to the next. Dad died peacefully and in no evident pain a week ago today.

Years ago when I read Little Women, the description of Beth's wish for her then imminent death stuck with me--she simply hoped that the tide would go out easily. So it was with Dad. Just before his 91st birthday last month, he told first the head nurse, and then me, that he was dying. "I can't put anything in my body anymore, " he replied, when the nurse asked him gently why he thought so. He lost even more weight after that, and in the last few days no longer sat up--clearly conserving all of his energy just to stay alive. The nursing home staff, who see this all the time, told me then that he probably had less than a couple of weeks to live. As it turned out, it was under a week.

Though he went quickly in the end and I did not quite reach the nursing home in time for his final breath, I spent a lot of time with him those last few days and nights. I tried to be a faithful visitor this past year, often biking the three mile distance to the nursing home in summer--as he would have done himself, for he never took the car when he could bike or walk somewhere-- and going almost every day I was in town. I confess that there were many times when I could not stay long--I found it too difficult to watch him struggling to eat, or he would be asleep, or just out of it. But during the year there were also longer visits, when we had time to share his favorite music, the poems of Emily Dickinson, or conversations where he would enthusiastically try to explain something to me--though often struggling to find the words. The miracle was that as advanced as his dementia had become, he always knew us, and never lost the ability to say "I love you"---many times with tears in his eyes. There were other things that got through to him--a few days after I had broken the news to him of his older sister's death, he was able to recall it, and thereafter sometimes called me by her name instead of my own.

At the funeral, I heard many wonderful stories about my dad, and the tributes paid to him were truly heartwarming. One of his only remaining high school classmates showed up--there are now only two left in the Class of '35-- and told of knowing my dad as a boy. A neighbor recalled my dad tutoring him in math. And a fellow Mason told me a wonderful and very funny story of my dad's early days working in the family dry goods store.

My ritual of visiting the nursing home now shifts to the ritual of saying Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for the next 11 months. At 91, Dad lived a long and full life, and it was a special joy to have him with us after my mother died and in India. I am grateful we had him for so long.

Exultation is the going

Of an inland soul to sea-

Past the Houses-

Past the Headlands-

Into deep Eternity.

Bred as we, among the mountains,

Can the sailor understand

The divine intoxication

Of the first league out from Land?

---Emily Dickinson

RIng out the old, bring on the new....

Happy New Year! It's the beginning of a new year, and I realize I haven't written for over a month. Perhaps because there hasn't been much to write about, although I'm sure I could have found something: icestorms escaped (we were in Michigan when the one hit in New Hampshire, and vice versa), travels to New York and Las Vegas (where I attended a fantastic conference on executive coaching), looking for a job, etc.

Bottom line, as the year ends and a new one begins, I'm still feeling like I'm "in transition." Looking back, it's been a pretty strange year.

• Other than a little consulting here and there, I haven't worked for the first time since I was 15 years old. Initially, I enjoyed the time off, but now I'm eager to get back and do something meaningful.



• I haven't forgotten as much Japanese as I thought (as I studied intensively for a proficiency exam in December).

• At times I still miss India. I may go back this winter since my sister-in-law will be teaching there.



• Despite having more time to work out (which I did), I gained 12 pounds. Feel a bit like Oprah in that respect: how did this happen? Definitely want to reverse that and then some in 2009.



• I attended Vipassana in the spring and discovered that meditation is a big key to my equilibrium. I will likely do this in one form or another the rest of my life.
  
  
• Ditto yoga. Although I've been spotty at going to the yoga studio the last few months, I faithfully do several poses every morning, courtesy of the Wii Fit. Gets my circulation going and clears my mind for the day.



• I'm no longer a vegetarian. I don't go wild over meat, but I do enjoy it a few times a week. (hope this isn't related to #4 above.....)

• Have spent a lot more time at our place in Keene. Really love it here. Many times when we return to Detroit I feel a drain on my energy--no surprise given the dismal environment.

• As the year begins, there is a lot to be grateful for: family, health, my dad still being with us, the bright future of a new and dynamic president.....I'm looking forward to 2009.