What?  (Posted by Ron)

OK, this is another post about our new favorite television show, Modern Family.  Jay, always the frugal December takes Gloria, the hot May to view two above ground crypts that are only three slots down from a famous gangster.  The young wife, Gloria, is not a bit ready to deal with death and refuses to have the discussion.  The subject of Gloria remarrying after Jay dies also comes up.  Of course they assume Jay will die first.  After all, he is the December.

Back at home, Jay gives Gloria an empty coffee can to use to keep his ashes on the mantle.  His ulterior motive is that the “putz” that Gloria marries will have to stare at his ashes.  Yes, Modern Family is a comedy, but it is one of the most popular television shows, indicating to me that Gayle and I aren’t the only ones interested in May-December relationships.

We often get questions about the risks a younger partner takes when entering into an age-gap relationship.  Who will die first?  Will the younger partner have to take care of an aging partner who can no longer care for him/herself?  These are definitely legitimate questions that should be examined.  Not, however, as Jay did by taking Gloria to a cemetery.

There will be no coffee cans on the mantle in the home of Ron and Gayle.  Many years ago we had conversations about our deaths and how we would handle burial.  We both came to the conclusion that cremation made sense and that we wished to have our ashes sent over the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, one of the most beautiful places on earth.  The ashes of our friend Fred and several of our beloved pets have already taken that trip.  (It’s not exactly legal, by the way.)  Our trust documents have instructions for our burial.

Planning makes sense in any relationship.  It’s really no more important in an age-gap relationship that one in which the partners are close in age.  There are no guarantees who will leave this life first.  We’ve also planned for care as we age.  Neither of us wishes to be an unnecessary burden on the other so we’ve had long-term care insurance for several years.

Modern Family is fun to watch.  It points out more problems that solutions, however, so you have to pick and choose what you take away from it.  I love watching it because in many ways it is a microcosm of our own lives.  There won’t be coffee cans for us, though.  The Lower Falls beckon.

Posted by Gayle

I accidentally stumbled across this poem tonight. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t really an accident. Enjoy….

THE JOURNEY
Above the mountains
the Geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavensso you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something newin the ashes
of your life.
You are not leaving
You are arriving.

-David Whyte
from The House of Belonging

Those of you who read Earnest Talks know about Shorty and his health issues.  Freddie, our other Beagle, came first, though.  He was born on December 1, 2003.  Gayle found him at Beagle Rescue on-line in  November 2004.  We drove to Oklahoma City to pick him up on New Year’s Eve of that same year.  Little did we know the lessons he was about to teach us.

Freddie is a sweet, loving, smart little half Beagle and half Corgie who looks like a Beagle.  Unfortunately for him he was born into a family that raised and showed Corgies, not Beagles.  We believe that he probably didn’t get a great deal of human attention in his first year of life.  He was immediately afraid of us when we met him in a service station parking lot that day.  He cowered under Gayle’s legs in the car all of the way back home.  He met one of our friends and our two other dogs at the end of our driveway that first night.  He snapped at both dogs and wanted no part of David.

The next few months were an exercise in patience (or lack thereof) for both Gayle and me.  Freddie was frightened of almost everything.  When we let him out into the back yard he might not come back inside for days.  One night I found myself chasing him around the back yard, in the dark, trying to force him into the house (and you could say I was not still in my work clothes.)  I’ve been around Beagles all my life.  I’ve never been able to chase and catch one.  That night was no exception but in my anger and frustration I tried anyway.
Many times we were ready to take him back to Oklahoma City.  Ultimately we didn’t because we couldn’t.  We were already in love with his innate sweetness and intelligence.

We slowly became more patient.  We loved him when we could and let him be when that was what he wanted.  He spent a lot time in the corner of the living room behind my recliner.  Back then we had group therapy every Wednesday night in our living room.  We asked the members of the group if they would allow Freddie to join.  They agreed and he began a year long stint in therapy.  In the early days he attended in his crate, but over time he slowly became acclimated to humans. We also used techniques we were learning from the Dog Whisperer TV show and slowly but surely were able to win his trust.  He still is a bit human shy when you first meet him, but he has become a much loved member of our family.  The grandkids love him too.  You should see him eat Cheerios from between our 3 year old grandson’s toes!

So what did we learn?  Don’t hurry relationships. Practice consistency and patience. Don’t allow frustration to overshadow the good points of a relationship.  In our lives, when we meet and fall in love with someone we often want to dive right into the relationship.  Like Freddie, the harder we chase the more frustrated we get and the farther we may push the relationship away from us.  It’s like chasing a Beagle.  We want to catch that relationship so badly we totally forget all we’ve learned in life. Relationships aren’t Beagles but they sure can seem like one when we are chasing them.

In reality, there’s more to it than just legality!

(Posted by Ron)

I remember a time when I was about 15 years old and was with a few of my friends at a little league baseball game.  We weren’t there to play of course.  We were there to watch girls.  After all, I lived in a small town and there wasn’t a whole lot to do.  As we sat there a new girl walked past us.  None of us had seen her before and when we did our hormones started doing back flips.

She was what we would call today “a hottie.”  She was about 5′ 3″, very cute, and really built!  She obviously knew the effect she had on boys and was working it.  She was one of the cutest girls we had ever seen.  As we drooled and said all of the things we would like to do to her a guy behind us got our attention.  “Her family just moved into town,’ he said.  ‘She’s cute, but she’s only eleven years old.” Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know how to set and nurture your boundaries?

This the first installment of a series about boundaries. In it I hope to introduce you to our concept of boundaries. The first thing I did was to ask the internet to help me define boundaries. It’s not as simple as you might think. In fact, according to the magic of Google the list is almost endless. Here are a very few of the more interesting definitions:

Boundaries:

• According to worldnet.princeton.edu a boundary is “the line or plane indicating the limit or extent of something.” I kind of like that one since it includes limits.
• In en.wikipedia.org, as used in Topology (a made-up word for Geometry?) a boundary has something to do with “a subset S of a topological space X is the set of points which can be approa ched…” Th e remainder just gets worse but it reminded me of how confused many of us are about our boundaries so I included it.
• And this definition from dakotapathways.org says it like I think it should be said. A boundary “indicates a border or a limit.” A Limit, again! That’s what we all strive to develop in our lives from the first breath we draw until the last – Limits!

Read the rest of this entry »