Old Geezers Out to Lunch

Old Geezers Out to Lunch
The Geezers Emeritus through history: The Mathematician™, Dr. Golf™, The Professor™, and Mercurious™

Saturday, January 31, 2015

The Professor on the Rituals of Death

OK, folks, this is a somber and serious piece by the Professor....
—After along haitus, the Professor returns with a thoughtful discussion on matters of importance to the Geezer crowd—

One of the dubious “honors” bestowed on us by  accelerating Geezerdom is the opportunity to attend more funerals and memorial services than perhaps we would wish for if we had any control over such things.  

Of course I’m not the first to observe that death is one of the most inevitable and ever-present  components of a life well led. There is precious little any of us can do when faced with the passing of friends, family and colleagues.  But we do owe it to them to honor their life in some way. The question is how?  

Societies around the world and throughout the centuries have developed elaborate rituals around the dead, usually with a dual function: to assist the dead person’s transition from this life to whatever  phase  comes next; and to allow those who remain a means to start the transition from a world with the loved one to a world without.  It’s really quite an interesting area of anthropology, and I wish I knew more about it.  In the final analysis, death rituals—like so many practices in traditional cultures—can be viewed as  rites of passage.

America has not done well with any rights-of-passage lately.  As a university professor, I am surrounded every day by bright, talented, funny people who no more view  themselves as adults than I  view  myself as the Easter Bunny.  (And point of clarification: I do not—nor have I EVER—thought of myself as the Easter Bunny.)  Research over many years indicates that the average age at which our younger generations begin to regard themselves as adults was 20 just two decades ago, but is currently 27 years of age. So we’re not doing so well with the rite of passage to adulthood, it would seem. And that’s a relatively easy transition.  

How, then, are we doing with that rite of passage from this world to the next?  My recent experience has made me  question this more vigorously.

You see, over the last two months, I have attended four services to honor departed friends and colleagues; not one was a traditional funeral.  All of them occurred a number of weeks after the death in question (“convenience” was cited in each case); all of them were memorial services rather than funerals; all of them were described as a “celebration of life.”  (All of them, by the way, were perfectly lovely, and I would not have missed them.)  The question I have, though: : celebration of life is indeed in order—who could argue with that—but should it REPLACE the grieving, introspection and acknowledgement of our collective transience that characterizes a fulsome funereal service?

One of the Geezers—the Mathematician—likes to
periodically dress in drag to mourn his lost youth. 
I wonder: should the acknowledgement that a death has occurred and nothing will remain exactly the same again be put off for weeks to allow extended family and friend to conveniently work a date into their frantic schedules?  Should it be put on the back burner, or (perhaps worse) be ignored altogether in an effort to instead recreate and remember how wonderful the world was when the loved one was still here?  Have we started evolving from a fear of death (healthy or otherwise) to a state where we begin to IGNORE death?  (Celebrate the life, but don’t mention the suffering and bring everyone down!)

There is little doubt that the formal religious rituals that previously guided us through our most dramatic and challenging transitions in life (baptism, mar mitzvah/confirmation, wedding, funeral) have lost much or even most of their effectiveness in our increasingly secular culture.  But even secular rites of passage have diverged from acknowledging the fear and uncertainty of the unknown future toward a nostalgic look back at the wonderful, rose tinted (and controllable) past. 

Just look at high school graduation ceremonies which, in many cases, threaten to turn into a talent show with robes.  (A “celebration” of our wonderful children’s achievements rather than a ceremony to mark the commencement of the next, daunting phase of life.)  So if formal rituals and secular traditions are diminishing in their effectiveness, what are we to do as we face these moments of gut-wrenching transition?  I don’t know.  I suspect, though, that certain things might be worth considering:

• Death should be acknowledged—and promptly.  When a death to someone close occurs, we simply must take whatever time and mental space we can muster to deal with it.  Many studies of grief would agree with this.  But stopping our frantic lives is not only a good thing for us psychologically, it is a gesture of HONOR to the departed.  By putting off these issues for weeks—or even months—do we diminish, however inadvertently, the honor that is due?
 
To no one's surprise, this is how various
Geezer funerals will end some day. 

• Death is not convenient.  Who among us has not experienced the passing of someone close, but for some reason or another has been unable to pay their respects in person?  Such things will always happen; we do live in an era where people exist further and further away from each other in so many ways.  We do what we can; and sometimes that feels bad or inadequate.  But if, as a society, we begin to think of honoring our dead as a thing which can be scheduled into people’s lives conveniently, we run the danger that employers, judges, coaches—and we ourselves—will deny ourselves the permission to STOP and honor that which should be honored—immediately and emphatically.

-• Life is a mixture of dark and light, joy and sorrow, life and death.  Who would say that life should not be celebrated?  But dare we overlook the shadow which surrounds the wonderful moments of light we experience; the mortality which so intensifies each moment we seem to live fully; the death, and resulting grief, which is so inevitably linked to a vivid and active life well led? 

The Professor may not like it, but this indeed is
how we're sending him out, should he be the
first to meet the reaper. 
Thinking it through, the Victorians may have overdone it a bit with the wearing of black in emulation of Victoria’s flamboyant (and long-lasting) grieving of Prince Albert.  The Egyptians might have gone a bit over the top in terms of the structures they built to mark the passing of a ruler.  And even though I appreciate the dramatic gesture, I don’t want anyone torching my boat “Viking-style” to express collective anguish regarding my death—whether or not I’m aboard.

It seems to me the Irish have traditionally struck a nice balance with the celebratory, humor-filled  (and alcohol fueled) wake followed by the solemn Requiem Mass.  One of the more moving ceremonies I have participated in was a Jewish service, wherein the service occurred nearly immediately after the death, followed by the burial with which many of us—including two young sons of the deceased—assisted by placing shovelfuls of dirt upon the gradually disappearing coffin.  Is there a secular equivalent to this practice?  How can we develop a way to guide us through one of the most vexing rites of passage in a timely, fulsome way?  As the professor, I suppose I should have all the answers.  When it comes to marking death, though, I’m left with mostly questions.

  

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Geezers Are Still Alive in 2015

One Geezer's  New Year's hope:  May these two, and everything they
stand for, vanish from the earth for all time. 
The Geezers were brought to tears of emotion recently, as a few people have said they've actually missed seeing the ramblings of various Geezers on these pages over the last month or two. The reality is that we've been dealing with other things— family illnesses, work disruptions, business travel, etc—that have caused us to shirk our duty to the 4.65 million rabid regular readers of Old Geezers Out to Lunch. It's not that we've been jailed, or fallen ill, or have any other excuse other than middle-aged laziness.

We apologize, and want to reassure you that all Geezers are alive and well. And over the holidays we were also in frequent discussion with one another on a variety of subjects of critical social and psychological concern. While none of these discussions have yet yielded a fully conceived essay, rest assured that we haven't yet slipped into mental decrepitude and that we do continue to consider the important issues of our time with the unparalleled wisdom of the sages.

So for today, we'll simply give you a hodge-podge of recent topics one or more of the Geezers have been noodling on recently. Sooner or later, we'll get off the dime and actually discuss one or more of these at some length.

• So what gives with radical Islam?  Do they indeed have a death wish?  It's one thing to fight the good fight within the geographic boundaries of an Islamic nation—on some level, many of us can even sympathize with some of that anti-imperial sentiment.  But initiating attacks in London, Paris, Toronto etc.,  etc. seems like it only will ensure that genuine global anti-Islam xenophobia ensues. The strategy seems most likely to bring the utter downfall of Islam, not its triumph or even its survival. And while I really don't feel all that fond of French satirists (generally they're not very funny), in this case I actually find myself in philosophical support.  "Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed...."

Father Time: the original Geezer
• What is the reason that time seems to accelerate as we get older?  This has been a source of lengthy discussion recently among the core Geezers in recent days. We all seem to agree that the years seem to zip by with increasing speed the older we get...but why the hell is this so? Theories abound, certainty is nowhere at hand.

• What the heck is with all the wearable, self-absorbed technology?  Fit-Bits, Google Glasses, Apple Watches. Selfie photos produced and distributed by just about everybody under the sun. Is this another manifestation of our narcissistic times, or a necessary step along the road to becoming a man/machine cyborg species?

• How will the GOP pull themselves together? Yeah, they've retaken Congress, lock-stock and barrel. But they are still led by the orange-skinned John Boehner, who seems pretty unpopular even among fellow Republicans. And a recent NY Times discussed the fact that the presidential frontrunners—Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee, who have genuine reasonableness in their characters—are already in the process of re-selling their souls in order to get nominated. Do we really need another quivery Democrat in office? 'Cause that's where the GOP is taking us.  Not even I'm excited about that possibility, pinko liberal though I am.

• Will the Supreme Court show some intelligence this year?  At issue is the question of the rights of gay couples, and the attitude of states like Louisiana which still, despite all logic and evidence,  believe in their rights to hold modern-day Jim Crow laws now directed at gay people.  Honestly:  in the relatively short time that many states  have now changed their laws 180-degrees, absolutely no social catastrophe has befallen us, anywhere. This is not the most courageous Supreme Court though, so stay tuned for more creative spinelessness—if not on this issue, then on the various questions regarding reproductive rights in places like Texas.

• Will Congress continue to stick its collective nose up the rear-end of Big Money?  About the only good thing to come out of the 2008-2009 economic recession was the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Since then, Congress has pretty steadily offered its bare butt whenever the investment community has whined and asked for repeal of laws requiring it to behave, well, ethically. 2008 saw us pretty damned close to complete global meltdown, and another failure to heed the lessons won't just affect huge corporations. If you have any money at all tucked away in a 401k or other investment location, can you really afford to see 40-60% of it evaporate again because Big Money returns to its greedy ways?  This is why we need people like Elizabeth Warren. Very few people in Congress have the courage to hold Wall Street accountable to the people who actually support it.

That, and more, in the weeks and months to come.