general anesthetic

Years ago - - how many? - - well, it was 2008, so it was fifteen years ago, wasn't it - - I attended Credo, an eight day retreat event that the Episcopal Church offers by invitation to clergy in various categories - - mine was for clergy at or nearing retirement age. At the Time, I was already ten years retired from parish ministry (1998) but in my fourth year as part-time priest at St Thomas by the Sea Episcopal Church, Laguna Beach, Florida. My replacement was in place, a transitional deacon whom I worked with for the next year until April 2009, when Fr Steve called and invited me back to Holy Nativity to help him - - my third stint on staff as Priest Associate, part-time helper.

But that's too long an opening - - my memory and point is to recall a theme at Credo, which was to encourage and help a group of aging priests to start thinking positively about the surrendering, the giving up, of one's life as one has known and loved it for many years, as one moves to retirement. The shift into retirement can be devastating, even like a death; but managed deliberately, it can be a happy Time. The Credo session was purposed to help us make it positive for ourselves.

My first retirement was from the U S Navy, retiring in 1978 after twenty years as an active duty naval officer. I remember, at the reception after my retirement ceremony, a friend and colleague with whom I had shared two tours of duty over the years, John Irons, pulled Linda aside and told her to keep an eye on me, that I was going to miss the Navy and could sink into depression. In that case, the fact is that I've been retired from the Navy for over forty-five years, and I'm still waiting to miss it - - I had loved the first eleven years of my Navy career, but rather despised the last nine, and could hardly wait to retire and set myself free.

Don't take that as negative toward the Navy, for reasons that my brother, sister, and I would know, my personality is such that I dislike being under orders, with such intensity that it seeds an abiding hatred of authority. My life as a parish priest has been distant and independent, never touched except positively and helpfully with the bishops who've been overseer to me in the Episcopal Church. Found my niche and, overall, have been extremely happy for the past forty-three years since I entered theological seminary on my forty-fifth birthday! The authority has been kind, and the people have been easy to love.

Anyway, love, being "in love" where was I going with this?!

Oh, it's about endings, including from my readings and contemplations and experiences, and this week from the Comics, "Calvin and Hobbes" and another favorite, "For Better Or For Worse" it's been about death and about love. 

"My friends, life is short," but when one reaches my age and looks back on a long life, there's been a lot crammed in there, and most of it can be reassembled in one's mind, where, when all is said and done, is where reality is anyway, for each of us, in the mind. Calvin with Hobbes realizes that there's no explanation for life, indeed, apparently no reason. It just happens to us, for us, and "we haven't much Time." Elizabeth with her teacher learns that being in love comes with overwhelming intensity and then you wonder "What the hell was that all about, what was I ever thinking?" The teacher brings in my favorite metaphor, being under general anesthetic. All of which sort of wraps up the week for me.

Our rector is retiring - - it's a year in process, so the pain will be eased into, not a sudden shock. I am aging into whatever comes next, something or nothing, knowing that a generation or two from this morning it will be like Marcus Aurelius says, as if I had never been; and it doesn't matter, and if it did matter it's impossible to change, so it's really does not matter. So, Life is Short, and then what? 

Well, I know, because I've been there and come back to realize and contemplate. Deep general anesthesia takes one as close to death as it is possible to get; so close, in fact, that medical specialists are present during surgery to monitor continuously and make sure the patient isn't allowed to slip away. 

I've been under general anesthesia three Times that I remember: tonsillectomy, appendectomy, and open heart surgery. The third time, now more than twelve years ago, is my "teacher" in that I've had the sense to sort out what happened to me. Mind, I know I've said this here before, more than once, but lots is going on in my Time of life right now, and it's on my mind. Again, here's the deal:

The evening of January 23, 2011, facing open heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic early the following morning, I thought to plan my dreams for the Time I would be under deepest general anesthesia. They would be odd memories from my life. There would be a dream about lying on the beach at The Jetties with my best friend's girlfriend Laverne that May 1953 afternoon after I'd finished my last final exam at the end of our senior year at Bay High (Philip still had exams, but he knew that she and I were going to the beach together as a relaxing conclusion of one phase of life and beginning of the rest of our lives); a cherished Time because then the first, and looking back seventy years later the only Time I'd ever been and felt Free, totally and completely free, with everything finished, no obligations, no commitments, no responsibilities, no burdens on me; I would dream of it again. And there would be a dream about standing on the deck of the Jamestown Ferry in my sailor uniform, seeing Linda standing beside our dark green 1948 Dodge sedan, waiting for me as the Jamestown Ferry neared the pier; and we would head across the island and across the bridge toward the house Fr Damon had lent us, across the Bay in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. It was late summer, early fall 1957, the start of our married life together, I was twenty-two years old and very happy.

Those dreams were primed and ready to go the instant my anesthesia took over, and I was looking forward to going there.

But when I woke in Recovery the next day, nothing had happened. I had been nowhere, known nothing, realized nothing, there was no darkness, no absence of light, no nothing, no awareness, no watching from a distance, it was nothingness even beyond oblivion: I had not Been. I had been just as nonexistent as I was in all the ages before my conception, birth and life. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return" and I had been not even dust. I do not "buy" NDE, the near death experiences that so many people return from after dying on the operating table and that sort of experience, I believe they are experiences and memories of the brain fighting its own shutting down and dying, by releasing defensive mechanisms or chemicals that produce fantastic flashes. Rather, what I experienced, brought to mind again this week by Elizabeth's conversation with her teacher in "For Better Or For Worse" and telling Elizabeth that being in love is like a general anesthesia.

I know how it is. Elizabeth's teacher is right, more than once I've been in love, all consuming emotion that makes you totally oblivious of everything else around you, in Elizabeth's case, her awareness and enjoyment of close friends, that's what the current story is about in the Comic strip.  For me in extreme old age, it's all about a lesson and confirmation of Life Itself, that it really is short, and we really haven't much Time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. Death is where there is no pain, neither tears nor sighing nor sorrow. Beyond that, make of it whatever you will.

So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind. Which is really what it's all about. That's life's purpose; It isn't meaningless at all. It's about being quick to love.

RSF&PTL

T