Aging: A Spiritual Journey, 1993–2010

Abstract

Though Elise was ten years younger than Kenneth, the last thing she expected was to outlive him by 17 years. Elise wrote in 1995 “The struggle goes on every day—spiritually—intellectually—socially”. The move from Boulder, CO to Wayland, MA in 1996 coincided with the timing of the shift from “through practice preaching” to “heavenward reaching” stage of Elise’s road map. As Elise’s journals record, this turned out to be more easily said than done. A “third way”—contemplative action, also seemed elusive. The New York Times served as a bellwether for whether practice preaching or heavenward reaching had the upper hand. All too often in my visits with Elise during this time I saw the bad news in the New York Times overcome the sense of well-being that the connection with nature gave her during her early morning walks. As her son I would have preferred to see less struggle,and part of my own journey was to learn to be supportive without imposing my own ideas as to what was best for her. Elise’s last five journals, starting in February, 1999, were labeled “Aging: A Spiritual Journey”. Elise said it well a few years earlier: “Aging is not for sissies” I’ve heard said. Now I understand that just plain courage is needed to plow thru dark times. Time and again, courage carried her through.