Economists like to use the prompt — solve for the equilibrium. Oversimplified, the phrase challenges the responder to find the point where everyone’s interests are met.
A memorial service is a kind of market. Dad had an explicit wish for one thing. Others would like to see something else. No one participant in this market is right, and no one is wrong — there are just different interests to consider. The goal of the market maker, the siblings, is to find a way to meet everyone’s interests with the least amount of waste (hurt feelings, anger, resentment, lifelong grudges, and wrecked families).
Within 72 hours cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, kids, passerby, and maybe ne’er-do-well pepper me with questions like — when is the funeral? who is invited? when will the burial be? can they attend?
These people all mean well, and I love them. They want and need closure. They want to participate. They want to help. They want to show support. I love it! Truly. I just don’t understand it.
A chaplain came to me to offer their condolences. I asked them, how much for two?
Perhaps I am cynical, or maybe I’m just over it. What is the utility of a condolence?
Usually, the condolence includes something like “I’m so sorry for your loss.” But then I think, “what did you do to be sorry?” Also, isn’t a bit presumptuous to believe I’ve lost something?
Death gave me a great perspective and a deep sense of freedom.
The doctor I visit prescribes me blood pressure medication; my blood pressure is high when the doctor’s office takes measurements.
When measurements are taken, the nurse asks me to rest my arm on my leg. The measurements are taken after in the morning after a cup of coffee. Usually my arm is dangling next to my side. Additionally, healthcare and the system it belongs to challenges my patience. It’s no wonder that my blood pressure is elevated, 138/68 in the office. The doctor is concerned, and contemplates increasing the blood pressure medication.
The nurse explained to me that mucous builds up in the lungs. And when that build up happens, people can sound like a coffee percolator when they are in the process of dying. In the past, they used to clear out the mucous, but the lungs would just produce more. Now, they give a medicine to make the music dry up on its own.
When I arrived at the facility, in the afternoon, Dad was alone in bed. I sat next to him. His eyes opened up for me. He looked at me, we made eye contact. His eyes, appeared to have little-to-no life left in them. Time appeared to stand still as we fixed our gaze on each other. Then I noticed his left eye begin to veer off course, my Dad attempted to point at his eye as it veered. The eye veers because the muscles are not holding it in place.
Dad arrived at AngelsGrace hospice unit by ambulance. I wasn’t there for the arrival. When I arrived, he was in a bed wearing the yellow shirt.
His eyes mostly closed. He held a cross in his hand given by his sister. He began to moan. The moan changed pitches, but I place it at B below middle C. He would make a fist and waive it. The moan became louder.
Dad sat in a chair wearing a yellow collared short sleeve shirt, green and navy plaid pajama bottoms, and navy and white plaid flannel-like buttoned down sweater. Both arms on arm rests of the EZ chair. Legs crossed. He wore grey socks, and tan slippers. Eyes closed.
As he sat, two people came in — one white and one black — both kind faces, young. They wore navy-grey jackets bearing the Bell ambulance logo. Their coats, I’m not sure of the material, but they swooshed — A LOT. Lots of swooshing. Like a light coat you might wear for windy weather rubbing against itself.
SubwayTakes posted an interview discussing the Beatles. I understood the core idea to be — you can’t have just one favorite Beatle, you end up needing all 4. The sound existed the way it did because all 4 Beatles were present — it wasn’t just one person’s show. They are the sum of their parts — they are a collective. Click here for the video.
Apparently, large brained humans — like ourselves — existed at least half a million years earlier than prevailing scientific consensus. Skulls were discovered in China. Click here for the BBC article.
There is always more capacity for more critical thinking. Open Culture presents Carl Sagan’s boloney detection kit — how to detect pseudoscience — and the video they link is quite good. link.From the article:[From Carl Sagan] “Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused, applied out of context, or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking… But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world — not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others… this kit is not some perfect solution to the world’s problems, but as it’s been utilized over the last few centuries… it has enabled us to create technological innovations and useful explanatory models of our world more quickly and effectively than ever before.” The walls of baloney may always be closing in on humanity, but if you follow Sagan’s advice, you can at least give yourself some breathing room.
I’m sensitive to sounds people make and the moments they make them.
When my sister gave birth to my nephew, I recorded his heart beat from the monitor. When I got an ultra sound on my arteries, I recorded the sound and asked about it. When I’m in the woods, I pay attention to the wind.
I’m especially sensitive to the sounds my Dad makes. I’m sensitive to his voice — its timbre, its frequency, phonation, all of it. And the other day I heard the sound of Dad receiving morphine.