Tag Archives: spiritualism

Thinking about friends, death, and goals this month

The PolyBlog
June 24 2020

I have been thinking about friends, death and goals this past week, albeit not necessarily in that order. Our friend Jeremy passed away two weeks ago, a sudden death. An aortic aneurysm. One of those potentially “here one minute, gone the next” type medical events that can occur with no warning whatsoever. Inexplicable. It happened during the night while he was asleep. And today, June 24th, would have been his 50th birthday. This is not a pseudo eulogy or tribute to Jeremy, his story is not my story to tell, nor even attempt. I can only ever tell my story, and here are some of my thoughts and experiences from the last two weeks.

I don’t feel like I knew Jeremy as well as I should have or would have liked. I have been close friends with his wife for over 20 years, we met through work, I took a course from her father. I’m not the extroverted type to make and keep hundreds of friends, yet her and I have shared many a long night talking over the years. When Jeremy moved back to Ottawa, I was organizing the occasional “guys” nights for wings and ribs, and I got to know him better, as he would come out from time to time. We’d have a few laughs, talk about life, work, just some light fun for the night. We’ve also got together a few times as couples, etc.

But probably not often enough, apparently. Like most modern families, we all lead busy lives. Sometimes the schedule seems too full and you don’t make the time, thinking maybe we’ll get together one night next month. We would trade comments here and there on FaceBook, stay connected virtually, etc. And yet, even without having known him for much of his life, even without being best buds or anything, I find myself strongly impacted by the passing of a friend.

Since I feel no shame attached to tears, I readily admit that I cried when I heard the news. It didn’t seem like it could possibly be true. Jeremy died? Wait…that makes no sense, must be another Jeremy? Obviously not Aliza’s husband, that can’t be, they’ve been doing Lego together while in lockdown. They just went to Dow’s Lake to see tulips. It must be some cruel miscommunication. He wasn’t sick, was he? I saw nothing about him being sick, did I? The strange hops that brains make to deny unwelcome news.

But, no, it was terribly, horribly true. Nothing Covid-related, which people might “accept” as a random hand of fate but understandable, or a car accident, or a host of other things where your brain wants to somehow connect a rational explanation to the event and thereby help it process the news. Sudden inexplicable deaths of healthy 50-year-old men do not offer a pattern for my brain to easily accept. It probably also seemed even less real to me given that he was two years younger than me. Older is easier to fake-process; younger is not.

I was working the day I heard the news, an email from a mutual friend, and I had a lot of trouble concentrating afterwards. I was easily distracted, and often not even for things I could remember when I snapped back to the task at hand. Just with my mind gone for a moment. Or several moments.

After a death, I know most of us rely on rituals for both celebration and comfort. For everyone who knew him, the week after the news likely followed the normal patterns of shock, notifications, more shock. Of course, the rituals were, like everything else in our lives these days, transformed in a Covid world. A mutual friend summed it up nicely…”f***ing Covid”. We couldn’t all rush to our friend, his wife, and comfort her in person, no hugs could we offer, even knowing that nothing we offered would ease the pain, merely let her know we were pained by his loss and by her pain at his loss too.

The funeral by Zoom / Go Pro was odd but normal, unreal yet real at the same time, and I felt relatively fine during the service until my friend did her eulogy to mark his passing. Overall, I probably held it together less well than her, and when her voice wobbled near the end, I cracked and the tears came forth. I have done eulogies for my father and mother, lost it completely during my father’s and barely held it together for my mother’s. How she did it, I don’t know.

It also made me wonder horrible thoughts. Could I do one for my wife? Could I do one for my son? Would I even LET anyone else do that instead of me or would I feel it was my duty? I don’t know. There is a popular theory that doing the eulogy is a coping mechanism in and of itself, forcing your brain to accept the truth as you say the words out loud, as well as giving you something concrete to focus on. I understand the theory, and based on having done my parents’ eulogies, I think the theory was written by idiots who have never tried to eulogize someone.

My friend’s eulogy was brief, honest, raw, and brilliantly delivered. I felt honoured to hear it, to witness it, to see it, even if only virtually.

After the funeral, I took the rest of the day off work. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get any work done, as I had struggled the first day, and I wonder if it was partly an added “stress” on top of the Covid isolation that helped “break” me. Well, bend me I guess is a better term. I knew I needed to take the time and I did. Time to breathe. Time to think. Time to grieve a little.

Two days later, we attended his Shiva service by Zoom again, and I felt more or less “fine” until after the service, when people in the chat room started sharing little stories and remembrances. The rawness in their voices was hard to hear, but an important ritual, I felt, to share and be part of for our friend, for his wife, for his parents, and for us too. Up until my friend’s aunt spoke and her raw emotion wiped me out. I felt almost claustrophobic and had to leave the room, leaving Andrea to finish the chat portion. I was just completely overwhelmed.

A few days later, we did a Shiva dinner by Facetime with Aliza and our mutual friend Vivian, and we chatted amiably for two hours. An almost “fun time”, except for the cause, and a reminder that there is nothing stopping us from doing that with anyone anytime. Virtual dinner parties and chatting, even if you can’t be together in person. To be honest, I’ve thought about that a lot…we could have done those WITH Jeremy beforehand, we all had 12 weeks of isolation where we could have done those types of dinners. We did them with family, why not more with friends? But we didn’t. Busy lives, I guess, and we weren’t being “innovative” enough on the social side the same way we are with family and work. F***ing COVID, indeed.

As I said above, I am not trying to tell Jeremy’s story, but if anyone wants to read Jeremy’s obituary, it is published online:

https://www.hpmcgarry.ca/memorials/jeremy-goldstein/4234389/obituary.php

All deaths are personal

Obviously, I have been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about death and “what it all means”, as they say. One thing that keeps resonating with me is the idea that all deaths are personal. It’s such a multi-faceted phrase. Of course, for the deceased, it was uniquely personal…we all face death and experience death in our own way. Our own experiences and beliefs, our own rituals, our own circumstances.

I feel it is also uniquely personal for family and friends in that Jeremy represented something different to all of us.

And while it seems selfish, I feel most of us experience the death of others in uniquely personal ways too…not just our own beliefs and rituals, but in that we often think not simply of the loss of life, or the impact on his loved ones, but also selfishly, self-centredly, of the impact on ourselves.

It’s ironic, but shortly after learning of his death, I happened to catch a rerun of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s from the first season where Tasha Yar (one of the main characters) is killed during an away mission and Data (the android without emotion) hosts/organizes the memorial service. At its end, he asks the Captain if he “got it wrong” as he has never experienced the loss of a friend before and while he thought he would be thinking of her during the service, he found himself thinking of everything he would miss for him. So he wonders if he “got it wrong” somehow, while the Captain reassures him he got it “exactly right”.

I miss Jeremy’s laugh, knowing I won’t hear it again. His sense of humour, his obvious love for Aliza, his concern for others. He’s one of those guys you think of when someone talks about an “all-around, good guy”, the ones who improve your life just by being part of it. A mensch, as they said during the service.

And part of what affected me most, as it frequently does, is the narrative arc of someone’s life. For Jeremy and Aliza, it is a compelling story of early love, separation through time and distance, rediscovery, new beginnings, being together “at last”, getting married, getting his “new life” on track with work too, and the time they have enjoyed together in recent months while working from home.

It’s a strange way to think about it, a strange phrase unique to me and my own thoughts, but almost like “At last, he has his life where he wants it to be with most of the pieces figured out”. If it was a movie, Billy Crystal could play the lead and talk about either finding his “one thing” (after Jack Palance teaches him to herd cattle) or a co-lead with Meg Ryan where he gets to tell her that “when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

A compelling narrative arc that resonates with me strongly. One analogy I saw online is like earlier investments are now paying rewards into retirement and hopefully old age.

And yet.

I feel like Jeremy didn’t get to reap enough of what he sowed. And that saddens me beyond belief. Maybe it’s the personal side again, not just his loss or missed “opportunity” to grow old with Aliza, but thoughts of my own mortality.

So my thoughts turn to the “personal side” for me. Selfishly, naturally, strangely, realistically. If I step back for a moment, I see a larger arc at play. I feel like I too have been on a journey of discovery in my life. Finding a groove with my father (around 23 or so), figuring out what I wanted to do for work (around 24 or so), finding out who I wanted to be around age 29-34, figuring out the basis for an adult relationship with my mom (around age 32 or so), figuring out what I wanted in a relationship around age 33, getting married at age 40, becoming a dad at age 41.

Equally, I try to live my life with what I consider a “no regret mentality”. For example, with my dad, I knew when I went away to law school that there was a not-insignificant chance that I would end up coming home for a funeral. My father’s health was not necessarily sustainable, and things happen even when you’re in good health. So before I left, I made sure to tell both my parents that I loved them so there would be no chance of not having said it and then having one of them die on me. Each week, for both parents, I would say it before I hung up the phone. And while it was easy for my mom to hear and say, it took a while for my dad to be able to respond too. But he got there. So when he passed, while it was sad, I had no regrets. We “ended” on the best terms I had ever had with him.

It was different but similar for my relationship with my mother. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye on stuff, but I made sure that I loved her for who she was, not who I might have wanted her to be at any given time. And I didn’t alter who I was to please her or spite her or anything else. I worked hard to treat her not only as my mother, but as the woman who was born before the Great Depression, who lived through it, who helped raise her siblings, who lived through WWII and lost siblings overseas. The woman who worked retail early on, had eight pregnancies and six kids, who buried her grandparents and parents, and most of her siblings, who outlived her husband by 17 years and found her own way. I have no regrets about how we got along, and there is nothing I would change. Maybe little things here and there, sure, but those are “rounding errors” on a relationship.

And with most of those “elements” in place, I have a pretty good life and I like where it is headed. If I had a magic wand, I might play with certain things, sure, but overall, I’m pretty fortunate with everything. I have more blessings than I can count, and yet, I don’t feel like I’m done reaping the rewards either.

I’ve often wondered with my son if I should record “just in case” videos, and Jeremy’s death makes me wonder again. Something to leave for Jacob, an extra legacy to leave behind if I should die before he’s old enough to understand most of it. To pass along anything of wisdom or thoughts that might help him in difficult moments in his life. To download everything I possibly could from my brain to give to him. Except that isn’t what he needs.

He needs memories of us doing things together. Like Lego. Or video games. Or puzzles. Or simply talking.

But with the passing of Jeremy, there are other things on my “to do” list that seem to be yearning. Heck, some weren’t even on my to-do list.

Thinking about friendship and goals

I am an analytical introvert by nature, and over the last few years and with the impact of Covid, I have let myself self-isolate somewhat socially. I modified some online tests and advice to create a “social connectivity” test, which I wrote about earlier this week. (A social connectivity test/)

I was surprised that my “nodal” number was 8-9 nodes. I thought it would be about 5. My wife maintains about 30, not including family. All of them I have seen more than once in the last two years, and I have actually done things with them at least once. Sure, most of the time it was meal-related. I was also a bit “relieved” to see that all of those friendships are ones that will survive my retirement in a few years. A friend noted that they can also be nurtured too through reconnection to expand the list, which is totally true, but it was meant more as a snapshot in time.

So whether it is Covid or the passing of Jeremy, I feel like I need to make more effort than I have. I don’t know what it looks like, but I need to get away from being on the computer by myself and “reach out” more.

I also find myself wanting to make sure I reap the rewards more while I can. Maybe that’s more time with Jacob, I still need to figure that out a bit more perhaps for the summer. I know it isn’t more time at work, that’s for sure. But I have three active siblings that I need to reach out more to as well.

I don’t know if that’s the lesson I should be learning, there are lots to choose from I suppose. But it is what I have been thinking about for the last two weeks. I don’t believe in regrets, but I wish I had learned the rest of Jeremy’s story from him before he died.

When my parents died, I comforted myself with an image of them doing something, a virtual “heaven” if you will where you get to repeat a moment in time seemingly endlessly or which simply doesn’t repeat but never ends either. For my dad, it was getting ready for a busy summer at the lake. For my mother, it was looking forward to having family around. For Jeremy? I suspect it would be something related to his relationship “at last” with Aliza. An almost John Keats-ish “Ode on a Grecian Urn” moment like the one captured on the Urn, a moment in time of two lovers about to kiss but not yet there:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats went darker, I know Jeremy would go lighter. The gaiety, the expectation about to be realized. The reward for his life finally being about to be “complete” beside Aliza. For many, people would see that as a groom waiting for a bride at the end of an aisle, but to me, it comes way before that, before the planning, before the decisions and options, before even an engagement. A point when you both know, “This is it. This is the plan. This is really going to happen now.” That moment when the brain explodes at all the possibilities to come.

I don’t know that anyone else shares my view of a possible afterlife, but for me, I find those images strangely comforting. Hopeful even.

I miss you Jeremy. Happy birthday, mensch. I hope I can learn from your example and honour your memory.

A social connectivity test

The PolyBlog
June 22 2020

I am an analytical introvert by nature, and over the last few years, I have let myself become somewhat socially isolated, partly by choice, partly by laziness, partly by circumstance. The pandemic, of course, exacerbates that condition. Even without it, though, I tend not to reach out to people to go out and do things. I do my own thing, often online, or with my family. It’s “easy” to do nothing to arrange social events when you’re an analytical introvert. It’s my default mode.

With the impact of Covid, I’ve been reading a few posts online about social connectivity, and how for many people, their network has changed over the years as they aged. At one point, it was likely their class list at school. Or a sports team they were on. Maybe later it was an address book, or perhaps an email list or contact list. But in the same vein that Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and saw it expand, many people use their social media contacts as their “network” for friends. It is often a “social calendar” tool by default.

On one site, they had the equivalent of a “social connectivity” test and while it didn’t seem very scientific, and was just as likely to lead to spamming, I liked some of the ideas built into it and decided to use my FaceBook friends list as my data set to look back at my social “connectedness” in the last two years.

This isn’t a big data set as I am, as I said, an analytical introvert. I rarely “add” people as friends on Facebook lightly, and I’ve usually kept it to around 100 for most of the years I’ve used it. Recently, I’ve “let” it creep up a bit more and it nows stand at a whopping 126 people. Now, for the test of “social connectedness”, let’s triage those numbers.

If you want to play along, I recommend going to FB, clicking on your own profile, looking at your long list of FB friends, highlighting the whole list, and pasting it into an editor or email or notepad. Then, search and replace the word FRIENDS with “” (i.e., nothing) to get rid of it, and then do the same with the word “FRIEND” (they both show up twice for every entry, this just cleans things a bit). If you want to get really aggressive, you could eliminate multiple spaces and hard returns too, but not really worth it. When you’re done, you’ll have a long list of your FB friends with a bunch of extra spacing and formatting around them, but that’s okay, you’ll be editing soon enough. Alternatively, you could just go through the categories below to see the types of people you “eliminate”, and then just count the ones who still fit, just a lot harder to do that mentally.

A. Eliminate family members

Your family may be wonderful people, you may even be friends with them, but they are not “friends” in the normal sense. So they don’t “count” towards your social node total.

For me, twenty-eight people on the FB list are family. I see them sporadically, stay in touch, but for “my side” of the family, I usually see them once or maybe twice a year. I have a brother who I actually like (not all family members like each other, you know, it’s not a law) and he lives in town, but I still only see him maybe once or twice a year. I do better on Andrea’s side of the family, but there is a family cottage that everyone goes to regularly so it’s easier to see them then. Regardless, I have to take them off the potential “nodes” list.

B. Eliminate work-only friends

The research is mixed on this area, as many people’s identity is tied to their workplace and the people who are part of their crew. Teammates. Except it is a giant red flag for most social psychologists, not as definitively bad, but as an area that has to be triaged ruthlessly.

If they are “work friends” and you don’t do anything outside of work with them (no common hobbies, get-togethers, outings, online gaming, whatever), then they don’t count. Going for beers after work doesn’t count either if it was the whole team. And just to be really BRUTAL, you have to also eliminate anyone where you only see them in an “activity” context like church or volunteering, and you never do anything with them outside that context (it is just replacing work with non-paid work or a community friend). Same with sports teams. If you don’t socialize with them separately, and after game drinks doesn’t count, then they’re off. The one exception is if it is a friend who you joined that activity with i.e. you and a friend joined a book club, or a sports team, and so that is your “outing” together. You can still count them.

For me, this is a brutal purge. Thirty-five people on my list are “work friends” or “community friends” and while I like them enough to overcome my normal desire to keep my FB list small (hehehe), I’ve never done anything outside of work or that community with them. Maybe lunch at work. At most, we’ve chatted online occasionally. Just no real connection to trigger getting together except work or the community event, I suppose.

C. Eliminate accounts that are inactive, celebrities, commercial accounts, or internet-only friends

I thought this one seemed like a strange category until I started to read through some of the examples. And realized that I do have some.

Three of them are legacy FB accounts for friends who have died. Just the other day, I posted on one for her birthday, just noting for her family that I miss my friend. I didn’t know her real well, we met online a long time ago playing trivia. I never met her in person although I did meet her daughter once. Still miss her.

Ten more are various kinds of internet friends or friends of friends who I’ve met online for various personal and professional reasons, but I’ve never “done” anything with them. Most of them I’ve never even met. Another fourteen are people I met in person and whom I regularly interact with online, but I probably won’t see them anytime soon. We’re basically internet buddies, but that is about it, perhaps by mutual neglect. We’re friendly, hard to say we’re the type who do things together. Another three or so were commercial-style accounts of writers that I follow.

D. Eliminate any accounts of friends who do not live in the same city

Before you freak out to say, “But they’re my best friends!”, you are allowed to keep them in your “social bubble” for the test, but only if they can pass an extra test. Have you seen them in-person in the last two years? Doesn’t matter why not, doesn’t matter if they moved to Timbuktu, they are basically people you cannot call up on a moment’s notice and do something with, nor have you scheduled anything with them recently. You may reconnect, you may connect every four years, you may see them at reunions or funerals, but they don’t count for the test.

Well, crap. I have twenty-one people that we used to do stuff with who have all moved out of Ottawa in recent years, either temporarily or permanent, or they just simply live in other cities already. Some of them I would see if they lived in town, they were close enough friends that they were at our small wedding, but I haven’t seen them in person in the last two years. Sigh.

E. Triage what remains

The theory is that what remains is your “core” group of friends. They are not ALL automatically in your social connectedness bubble, they’re just your core group of likely nodes.

The second last triage is to first group any of them who are “couples”. If you regularly see them separately, you can count them separately, but if you almost always see them together, it is a single “social node”.

And the final triage? Similarly to D above, you eliminate ANYONE that you haven’t done something social with in the last two years. In-person. Not just a phone call, you actually have to have seen them in-person. If you want to adjust for COVID, go back 27 months. And sorry, major group events like weddings and funerals DO NOT COUNT. Group parties where you saw 20 people DO NOT COUNT. Or at least, they count, but only for 1 node (perhaps a couple).

F. Count how many nodes you have left

For me, it leaves about nine people in total, not including a few spouses that I’m not friends with on FB, and about 7-8 nodes. All of them I have seen in the last two years and actually did something with them. Most of the time it was meal-related, admittedly, but I’ll lie to myself and say that is purely to ease scheduling, everyone has to eat.

But you know what? I’m surprised it is that high. My original estimate was about four to five. When I analyse it more closely, I see why. 4-5 of the nodes are “me” nodes, and 4-5 are “inherited” nodes from my wife’s nodes. I get an extra little “bump” in my numbers by being married to someone more social than I.

If I am converting categories correctly, the normal scale is:

  • Analytical introverts (“blues”) –> 1-5 nodes;
  • Intuitive introverts (“greens”) –> 5-10 nodes (although if they count family, it often goes to 15, and longer duration interactions);
  • Analytical extroverts (“reds”) –> 10-20 nodes (they lose a lot in the work/community-only friends list);
  • Intuitive extroverts (“yellows”) –> 25+ per year (although many encounters are short, like coffee dates);

I have no idea if that list has any accuracy whatsoever. It’s using several sources together, not any one “pure” test. But I like the fact it is giving ranges for the types, not saying “everyone should have 22 nodes”. It recognizes that blues tend to have few, but that’s okay. If they have too many, they might get stressed, if they have too few, they’re isolated. Greens might be stressed if they only have 2-3 or more than 10; similarly for reds. Yellows can get depressed if they drop below 20. They just don’t get the positive energy to keep going, apparently. There is obviously more to it than that, since you could have 3 nodes that you have seen 20 times each this year or you could have 3 nodes you only saw once each in the last two years, averaging 8 months between interactions…a very different dynamic. I do tend to hibernate over the winter.

But I find the idea interesting as I near retirement, and that is often the source of the articles (helping people plan for retirement). Because many of those other categories will fall away, leaving your immediate social nodes.

I’m happy to see that all of my “core nodes” will indeed survive retirement. But I also need to nurture them too, to be grateful they are in my life, and the time we share.

Articles I Like: Dread accompanies me through life

The PolyBlog
February 24 2018

Firefox has this little feature when you pull up its built-in home page with a search engine box — just below the box is your recently viewed webpages, nothing unusual there, but between the search and history are three articles that Firefox thinks might be of interest to you. I have no idea if they are actually using an algorithm of the web history and past searches, or just curating interesting stories, but I often find one or more of the stories worthy of clicking. I figured initially that it was just clickbait, but most of the time, when I’ve actually clicked, the article has been worth the click.

Take for instance one from today. The article is written by a philosophy professor and revolves around anxiety. It starts with some powerful events — the death of his parents — that are not powerful in terms of trauma but in their normalcy. He then talks about how it impacted his sense of safety, life, religion even. His view of the universe. And then talks about his journey to understand anxiety from a personal, psychological, even existential perspective, informed by the works of philosophers and psychologists.

While it doesn’t end as strongly as it starts, and it veers into philosophy and psychology in ways that will bore a lot of people, it is a very compelling cerebral contemplation of anxiety. Here are some of my favourite highlights:

I had imagined that with my father’s death, the world had exacted its pound of flesh, a tax so terrible it would be levied only once. But in 14 years, death came calling again. One God – a child’s God, mythical and compassionate – died with my father; another – an adult’s God, a God of reasonableness, the one that ensured this world would not do excessively badly by you – died with my mother.

[…]

Prompted by the production of new traumas and losses in our lives, anxieties can interact and recombine like viruses to form newer ‘strains’ that course through us, surprising us with their ferocity and visceral feel. We should not expect our anxieties to remain the same as we age; by paying close attention to their nature, their ‘look and feel’, we can track changes in ourselves and our ‘table of values’.

I learned that I respond with anxiety to this world’s offerings. I’m a better person for this knowledge of myself.[…]My trajectory through the world is thus informed, at every step, by the anxieties that afflict me.

[…]

Our anxieties rush into the mental spaces we leave open, reminding us of all that can go terribly wrong.

Dread accompanies me through life but it is not without consolation | Aeon Essays

Gratitude for planetary conjunctions

The PolyBlog
January 15 2015

Gratitude entry #11…Today I am grateful for planetary conjunctions. At the moment, in the sky, Venus and Mercury appear about two inches apart if you hold your hand straight towards them and measure. I’ve never seen Mercury before, or rather never realized it if I did. And for the last couple of weeks, I’ve looked at dusk and saw nothing. Mind you, I’m only doing naked eye visuals, nothing with a telescope or anything. But tonight, as I drove home, Venus was very obvious straight ahead of me, and faintly to the right, I could see Mercury. Nice of Venus to provide a simple easy arrow to find it.

I’m hoping on Sunday maybe, or possibly even Friday night, I might get a chance to try for it with the telescope. I’d love to see Comet Lovejoy too, and Orion is pointing the way, but just haven’t nailed it yet.

That’s it for today…Onward in the journey…

Gratitude for a new recipe

The PolyBlog
January 13 2015

Gratitude entry #10…Today I am grateful for a new recipe for lasagna. No, I haven’t turned into Garfield. The lasagna was a vegetarian recipe that my wife found that uses the Epicure steamer. I had a long day at work, didn’t get home until late, had to heat it up after everyone else was long done and had left the kitchen, and it was really good. Even re-heated.

That’s it for today — just grateful for a good meal, something different than our norm. Onward in the journey…