Dearest Rachel –
Given a fairly calm and otherwise uneventful week – it’s too hot and muggy to go walking (and in any event, Lars is being visited by some old friends from Europe, although he’s invited me to join them on Friday when they hit the city in earnest; we’ll see how that goes), not much is happening until after Labor Day, and I just got a text from Mom about a power outage at the ‘office’ – I figure I might as well add a companion piece to yesterday’s thoughts about what happens when first our parents and then we age. Granted, this isn’t something that you had to concern yourself with – at least not on your own end – but the same could be said about literally everything going on in this world these days.
I should warn you, this one might have a slight political tinge to it; it sometimes seems like every momentous life decision is fraught with politics, though, so it can’t be helped. At the same time, this is one where – despite being told that I’ve no right to comment due to my chromosomal nature – I think I have more than the usual stake in, due to past events and their timing. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
Even as I considered the many possible fates I might endure as I grow old and feeble – including the fact that, unlike Dad throughout this prolonged decline, I’m not likely to have anyone at my side as I do so – I recognized that the real concern about it all is a lack of control. To be sure, he was of fully sound mind pretty much until the last day or so, but in our experience, that hasn’t exactly been the norm. Keeping your faculties seems pretty much to be a fifty-fifty proposition – unless you factor genetics into the equation. You knew you were likely to lose your mind, and exercised it to stave that day off (not that it ever came, but you were prepared to ensure that it was longer off than you ultimately needed it to be). As for me, I have no idea; I have to wait and see, and that factors into to that later discussion I brought up earlier.
But the question of mental stability aside, age wrecks havoc on your physical state. I may be in decent shape for my age, thanks to the efforts I’ve put in to make myself presentable for Megumi – and in fact, it’s the best shape I’ve been in in a good fifteen, twenty years as a consequence – but I have to accept that it’s not going to last forever. I won’t be able to cross town on foot indefinitely, just as six or seven years ago it would have been an equally ridiculous proposition. In short, at some point, I won’t be able to take care of myself as well as I do now. Such is the fate of aging, and it comes to all of us who don’t pass away young (which, I hardly need to point out, we regard as a tragedy).
At some point, the aged need to rely on others for succor. Oftentimes, this charity begins at home, with the children. I’ve discussed the concept of filial piety before, and how you embodied that in the last few years of your parents’ lives. Sure, you couldn’t be as johnny-on-the-spot as I can, due to my proximity to my parents’ home (and the fact that I’d set up an ‘office’ there in part to be available for them), but that week every month was an indication of your devotion. Not to mention the fact that you oversaw setting up other people to care for them in your absence. You may not have been a follower of his teachings, but Confucius would have respected your efforts.
And on that subject, it’s ironic that his homeland occasionally rejected his teachings in such violent and emphatic ways. Even with the founding of the Qin dynasty, Qin Shi Huang burned his books and buried his scholars alive (lopping their heads off once they were buried up to their necks). Much more recently, Mao’s Cultural Revolution had a campaign to eliminate the “Four Olds” of Chinese culture – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits – in which Confucianism was rejected for Maoism. From an outsider’s perspective, it might have looked like fixing something that wasn’t broken, but apparently that’s how you treat a native son. Filial piety ought to go both ways.
Which brings me to a couple of thoughts by others…
·Fathers [or Parents; Heb. 11:23], do not make your children angry, but raise them with the ·training [discipline] and ·teaching [instruction] of the Lord [Col. 3:21].
Ephesians 6:4, Expanded Bible
Always be nice to your children, because they’re the ones who’ll choose your rest home.
Phyllis Diller
These thoughts cross my mind, not just because of seeing our parents as they decline, not just from contemplating my own last days (if they should happen), but from watching society as a whole lately. After all, China isn’t the only country to throw babies out with bathwater; indeed, our situation seems to be a bit more literal than all that. For all that some people worry about the effects of depopulation – how is the next generation going to support us, when they are so few in comparison? – we seem determined to ensure that the trend will continue all the same.
Granted, Roe v. Wade has been overturned – and here’s where I feel I have the right to speak on the subject, despite being male, due to being adoptive; had the ruling passed a few years prior, I’d have wound up in a dumpster some time in late 1967 – but with the decision being handed down to the states, there are those that are extending the period in which a pregnancy can be terminated, all the way to when the child crowns. So much for the old mantra of “safe, legal and rare.” The governor signing this bill is surrounded by a crowd of cheering women, who I presume will not be tended to in their old age by their children, who will themselves wind up in dumpsters long before then.
Interestingly, in that same state, there is a trial going on now regarding a woman who, in the throes of postpartum depression (or possibly psychosis, although that is apparently not recognized as a diagnosis at present), decided why stop at birth? and strangled all three of her children after sending her husband out on an errand so he couldn’t stop her. I’ll set aside her case, though – there’s so much there that I couldn’t begin to unravel – to focus on the fact that she appears to have a legion (or would that be a “Legion”?) of fans who seem to thing that they would do the same thing in her situation, and consider her a hero. I suppose it’s a logical extension from one idea to the next; if a life is not worth living (although who decides that?), why let a trivial factor such as age be a barrier to resolving the situation?
Now, if King David had any insight about those beneath what we now refer to as ‘the age of accountability,’ it’s possible that you have encountered these souls where you are. Indeed, you may have encountered millions of them, who never had a chance, for all I know – which rather begs the question as to whether they’re better off to not have seen the world and been corrupted by it.
But those that celebrate their removal from the gene pool, well… they’ll get what they want, and then some. They’ll be free from the responsibility they don’t want; that of taking care of a child (which may even be for the best, considering what kind of parents they would be with an attitude like that). But come the end, who will take care of them? The ghosts of their past decisions? Worse yet, where will their unrepentant glee lead them after that?
I’ve tried to moderate my tone here, honey, but I suspect that these thoughts may cause some people offence; you and I would agree on this subject, but the wider world might not. It occurs to me that, while I have an account on BlueSky to disseminate these letters to some that might read over your shoulder, I should probably refrain from posting this letter there, lest I find myself banned from the site. It seems a shame, but such is the level of discourse these days, but I had to get this off my chest.
Meanwhile, I need to keep Daniel as happy and content as I know how, so that when the time comes, he’ll be more than willing to ensure that I get the best care possible in my dotage. Although it does beg the question as to who will take care of him; as ghosts ourselves by then, I don’t know that we’d be capable.
Letters to Rachel 