At
age 65, it’s not unusual to think about the final chapter of one’s life. A retired pastor named Bill told my men's group last week that he feels his life has consisted of three
books—his life before his first marriage, his life during his first marriage,
and his life during his second marriage. Since his wife has Alzheimer's and is not expected to live very much longer, he feels he is now approaching the end of his
third book, and wonders if there will be another. I wondered the same thing
five years ago when my wife Kathleen of blessed memory died of cancer. We had made many beautiful plans to celebrate
our 20th wedding anniversary in the Quaker center where we met and
fell in love, but God had other plans. We never know when one chapter will end,
and if another chapter will begin.
I
just received a tap card for seniors recently, and it said, or seemed to say:
“Card holder expires June 6, 2024.” Actually it said that the card expires in
2024. But I couldn’t help wondering: will I outlast my tap card? I checked
online and discovered that white men my age usually live to be around 80.
That’s fifteen years from now. But of course I could be diagnosed with a fatal
illness tomorrow and discover I have only a few months or weeks in which to
write my last chapter.
I
have good health and don’t feel old. Emotionally, I feel I am around 30 and
look forward to a new life with my new wife Jill, who keeps me young. Yet I
can’t help thinking about my life’s final chapter. When it comes to my life
story, I don’t feel I am in complete control of the writing process. When I
wrote a novel a few years ago, it seemed as if the characters in the novel had
a life of their own and pretty much dictated what I wrote about them. This is
how I feel about my life story. I am writing it, as best I can, but ultimately,
it is being written by an Author much greater than myself. As a Christian, I
believe I am not really the author, but the co-author of my life.
The
psychologist Carl Jung believed that God writes our life story through dreams
and archetypes, bringing to light the hidden parts of ourselves, the shadow
side we often try to suppress. What we know and acknowledge about ourselves is
only a small part of who we are. The inner journey is what helps us to know
ourselves as whole people, not simply as holy people. As the Apostle Paul said,
“Now we know through a dark mirror, but someday we will know face-to-face.”
Knowing ourselves face-to-face can be very scary, and may take heroic effort,
but it’s worth it. The more we truly know ourselves, the more we are able to
love and live life fully.
I
first started to think about the last chapter of my life in my late thirties
when I faced a very serious career challenge. I needed to decide whether or not
to become a youth director for the Quakers. I agonized and prayed about this
decision, and found some help in a book by Stephen Covey called 7 Habits of Effective People. One of my favorite parts of the book was
called “Start with the end in mind.” He recommended that we write a mission
statement for our lives. He also recommended that we imagine our own funeral
and what is being said about us. He then went on to say that we should
determine what it is we want people to say about us and begin living
that way.
What
do you want people to say about you when you die? That your mission was
accomplished, that you were successful? Witty? Loving? Concerned about your
family and friends? An avid golfer, fisherman, stamp collector, rock n roll
fan, beer aficionado. Eager to save the world, promote peace? That you loved
beauty, or God forbid, money?
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| Kathleen wearing a head scarf given to her by a Muslim friend during her cancer journey |
My
wife Kathleen was a Methodist pastor who had counseled many people who were on
the verge of dying. She understood that for a Christian, dying is an
opportunity to witness to our faith. This she did beautifully.
When
I was in my thirties, and decided to become a Quaker, one of the reasons I
chose this faith was because I admired Quaker elders. They seemed so cool—so
full of life, so involved in good causes, and such good listeners. They became
my role models. I wanted to be like them when I became old. Now I am now their
age, I am grateful for all they taught me.
Among
my Quaker mentors were a couple named Joe and Teresina Havens. Terry was a
teacher of religion with the Ph.D. from Yale. Joe was a peace activist and a
psychologist. After retirement, he and his wife started a retreat center near
Amherst called Temenos. There they lived their Quaker faith by living simple
lives and organizing workshops.
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| Teresina and Joe (the elderly couple in white in the middle) leading a sacred dance at Temenos |
When
Terry died of cancer, Joe was suffering from Parkinson’s and he made a decision
to die consciously. He didn’t take any drugs. He simply stopped eating. He said,
“Many people in the world don’t have enough to eat and I have lived a full life
and am willing to die.” During his final fast, he was surrounded with friends
and family and he witnessed to his Buddhist Quaker faith by showing compassion
and concern for all.
This
led me to explore the practice of conscious dying, another way of saying: to
die like a Christian, or like a Quaker. What would it look like to die as a
Christian? In the past Quakers and others saw dying as an opportunity to leave
behind a final message, one’s last statement of faith. George Fox, the founder
of Quakerism, said: “All is well. The Seed of God reigns over all, and over
death itself…” The final words of Timothy Leary, who decided to die consciously
and publicly, were also memorable and true to the man he was: “Why not? Why not?
Why not?”
There
is a group called “Compassion and Choice” which is lobbying to provide people
the opportunity to die with dignity, that is, to take medications to end their
lives when it seems like life has become unendurably painful. My friend Ignacio
Castuela, a Methodist pastor, is part of this group and was recently quoted in
a column by Steve Lopez. Ignacio said he became an advocate for death with
dignity decades ago when he was a pastor in Hollywood during the AIDS epidemic.
“I was given the rare honor of being present when people made decisions to not
go the way of their friends who had horrible deaths.” Instead, some held farewell
parties in which their lives and values were celebrated.
I
personally am not comfortable with the idea of taking active steps to end one’s
life, but I respect those who make that decision if they follow their
conscience in doing so. I firmly believe that people should have the
opportunity to die with dignity, as God intended. When my mother had cancer and
was given only days to live, the doctor asked me if I wanted him to use “heroic
measures” to prolong my mother’s life a few days or weeks. I said no. As a
result, I had the rare honor of being present as my mother died. It was a
beautiful experience to be there as her spirit left her body and filled the
room with light and love. I am grateful that my mother died with dignity.
Another
person who helped me think about the last chapter of
Gene
was not only an activist and actress most of her life, she was also a mother
who raised 6 kids. In the 1960s, she was acting in and directing plays. She was
active in the anti-war movement. She started a counseling center. And then her
life fell apart. Her husband left her. One of her sons was arrested on a drug
charge. Her mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. And Gene had a nervous
breakdown. She was 50 years old.
This
became the turning point in her life. She spent three weeks in a mental institution and wrote a powerful book about her experience called "Inside the Glass Doors." She went to Pendle Hill, the Quaker
center, where I met my wife Kathleen, and spent a year on a spiritual retreat.
She traveled around the world to learn what people were doing to promote peace.
She got a degree in pastoral counseling. And her whole attitude towards peace
activism changed. She became aware of her inner conflicts and feelings, and
helped activists to become aware of their inner struggles. She started a program
called Compassionate Listening that influenced a Jewish woman named Leah Green
to start an organization by the same name. Using Gene’s techniques, Leah Green
taught Israelis and Palestinians how to hear each other stories and build trust
and understanding. I took part in a Compassionate Listening delegation that
went to Israel/Palestine in 2004 and it was a life-changing experience.
What
inspired me about Gene was her enthusiasm for life, which never left her as she
aged. At 80 she was still eager to listen and learn. Whenever I visited her,
she would pepper me with questions. She wanted to know what I thought, what I
felt, what mattered to me. She made me, and everything around her, feel important
and loved. One of the last article she wrote was called “Aging: A Time of New
Possibilities.” I’d like to share Gene’s final words:
I began to wonder what an elder
was supposed to do. Visit friends and family? Read novels? Write my memoirs? A
little of each is great—but that didn’t feel quite right to me. I began to
explore being an elder…
I suddenly flashed on a question
Jack Kornfield, Buddhist sage, had asked on one of his tapes. He said, more or
less, “At the end of your life the only question worth asking is, “Did I love
enough?” My internal answer was, “Of course I haven’t, and perhaps I never
will. But I can begin trying. Whatever happens, it will keep me well occupied
for the rest of my life.”
I have six grandchildren. I began
looking at the ways I loved them. I felt I could love them better, and
discovered my first step is to “let them be,” to accept them as they are, and
with gratitude.
Another thing I’ve learned
recently is that if someone offends or hurts me, I don’t need to make a scene.
I’ve long thought violence springs from unhealed wounds. If I’m really trying
to be a loving presence in others’ lives, and I can remember Laura Huxley’s
phrase, ‘You are not the target,’ I’ll be healing myself and something may
spill over.
Life is full of
not-knowing-how-to-love and finding new ways to act, to be, to respond, to
live. Since I think this may take several lifetimes, I can’t waste any more
time. The assignment is before me: I’m here to focus on being a warm, loving human
being…”
A
couple of years after writing these words, Gene came down with Alzheimer’s and was
placed in an Alzheimer’s facility. I visited her whenever I had a chance. Over
the next few years I watched her mind slowly disintegrate. She lost the ability
to remember and to speak but not the ability to love. Whenever I came to visit
her in her last days, she would smile and I would take her hands and look into
her beautiful blue eyes and tell her how much I loved her. We didn’t need
words. Those moments were pure love.
What
are my plans for the last chapter of my life? I plan to continue to live pretty
much as I am living now. I plan to work for peace—both inner peace and peace in
the world. I plan to enjoy my marriage to Jill and love her with all my heart.
I plan to work for justice and to be concerned about the “least of my brothers
and sisters.” I plan to do the inner work necessary to become a whole person,
to learn how to love and live life fully. I plan to travel and see as much as
the outer world as I can, as long as it doesn’t distract me from exploring the
inner world, which is just as important. I plan to have fun, and enjoy life’s
innocent pleasures—gardening, dancing, books, music, and silly jokes. When I
die, I hope people who knew me will say: Anthony was a good friend. I hope that
those who are hurting and homeless will say: Anthony was our friend. I cherish
the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, which is the basis of my Quaker faith:
“If you love, you are not my students or servants. You are my friend.” Those
are the words I’d like the final chapter of my life to embody.
Questions and quote to ponder:
- What would you like people to say about you at your memorial service?
- If you were to die tomorrow, what would you regret not having accomplished?
- If you had to give your life story a title, what would it be? What would be the title of the final chapter or your life?
- What qualities do you admire, and/or aspire to, in people who you consider elderly? What kind of elders influenced your life? How might you emulate them in some way?
- What is the heritage you are passing on to your children and to humanity by way of a story?
"What
is the greatest heritage we can leave? It is something that anyone can
accomplish, regardless of wealth, power or education. This heritage is a story.
A beautiful, inspiring story. The story of one's life, starting with some
difficulty or hardship, recounting the pains and struggles, and ending with the
conquest of the problem through belief, confidence and religion." – Chai
Kyu-Cher, a Korean Quaker whose face was horribly disfigured in a car accident.
He suffered horribly and his life nearly fell apart. Yet he was able to
transform this tragic disfigurement into a "legacy," a gift he
shares with audiences throughout Korea and the world, inspiring them to see
their challenges in a new light. See: http://laquaker.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-man-who-lost-his-face-true-story.html
