Personal Story 🖋️

On not getting any elder

My father-in-law died a couple of weeks ago. My relationship with the old man was arms-length. He was a marine, a Vietnam veteran. I think he was equally intrigued, troubled, and amused by his son’s choice to import a wife from Eastern Europe (that is a story for another day).

He wrote a book, an autobiographical war story that is required literature for marine officers. If you’re in the market for a One-Day-in-The-Life-of-Ivan-Denisovich kind of novel, but set in Vietnam, here is the link.

My husband first introduced me to his family, shortly after (out of the blue) marrying me in 2008. I was young, hot, with a heavy Russian-ish accent and entitlement to be of interest.

That’s young grasshopper me, fresh off the boat.

My father-in-law, Mike, did not ask questions. His way of building relationships was old school. It seemed that his idea of connected communication was an attentively received uninterrupted monologue. My idea of getting to know each other, on the other hand, was banter. This disconnect, along with my distaste for unquestioned authority and the familiar irk I felt (and did my best to conceal) when old white men sat me down for sermon, hung heavily in the air when we tried to connect.

Some pics of Mike on our kitchen counter.

We never got to “talk”. When there was an opening to connect, I was too young and close-minded to actually listen to what he had to say. Time went on and as I matured and he got elder, we continued to orbit each other, spoke pleasantries about grandchildren and how’s business, our relationship cordial, but arms length. Now that he has passed, I find myself craving a sermon from a wise elder.

So I googled away my inquiry for a soulful elder and came upon Stephen Jenkinson. His life’s work? He spent decades as a kind of death doula for before he founded the School of Orphan Wisdom in Canada. I’m simultaneously listening and reading his book called Come of Age. Hearing the age in his voice and a thick Canadian accent is comforting. That is where the comfort ends though. The book is paradoxical. Jenkinson’s words and views are utterly hopeless, yet listening and reading them leaves me feeling, somehow, hopeful. Hopeful that in our own aging, if we slow down enough to ponder - How did it get like this? - that there is a pathway to elder-hood.

The book is exactly how I like my hopelessness of the world affairs served; prose laden with allegory so dense with nutritious thoughts that 10-15 minutes doses at a time is all I can (or should) digest.

I read the book and wonder what Mike would think of it. I find comfort in the voice of this elder lamenting the state of affairs. Things Mike might have thought and said if we ever got to “talk”. Or maybe he would not have, but memory is a fickle thing. Did you know memory subtly changes every time you recall it?

Will you read Come Of Age with me?

Maybe you too are grieving, for an elder, or an old person who you wish was your elder. Maybe your old person has not passed yet, but seems like they are gone, spending the rest of their earthside days in a memory care facility. Maybe you do not have an elder to call your own and you wish there was one to answer your questions and mend your aching heart. This book is a balm for my soul. Join me in reading it and be heartbroken together.

As a preview of what you might be in for, should you choose to volunteer to bear witness to a lament, to have your heart voluntarily broken and nursed back to wholeness.

Did I say that Jenkinson happens to also be a rapper of sort? Here is Jenkinson on SoundCloud rapping over some slinky jazz tunes: How the hell did it get this?

To get the book click on one of these links:
Listen on Spotify
Kindle via Amazon
Local Store via Bookshop

Let me know if you went for it. Considering a telegram book club to process together.

I’ll leave you with a couple of excerpts:

“Imagine that you are not old yet, not by the lengthening standards of the day, but from where you stand, you can see old coming on. […] The day will surely dawn when young people will come to you – as they have begun to come to me – and ask, what you did about the troubles, and whether you knew how bad it was, or whether you handed it to them a diminished world with a shrug of compassion fatigue and vacant wish of good luck, or whether you stood up for them. Until that day - you and I we must be - elders training.”

“I am making the case for elderhood, not for easy agedness. I’m doing so mostly by wondering what happened. Because something happened. Something happened to ancestors and elders and honour. There is work to be done and there is an old wisdom to be learned where there used to be the wisdom of old, and you can’t fix what you don’t understand. That’s where we are headed: to grevious wisdom. Let us see if we can bear the sound, the particular sound of no hand clapping. This is a plea and a plot for elders in training.”

- Stephen Jenkinson

Happy Memorial Day friend.

As always, my letters are an invitation to start a conversation: reply and share what is on your mind.

PS 1: We will be in north San Diego for Mike’s funeral next week. If you live there friend meet us at the beach. Or send me things to check out with kindergarteners in the Encinitas/Carlsbad area!
PS 2: If this is the first email you are getting from me, thanks for reading this far down! Hi, I’m Vanda. I recently switched newsletter platforms and I’ve learned that mysterious things happen between servers in the process.
If you wonder who I am, then you must be one of my students at Namaste Highland Park who checked send me emails box when they signed up for my class.
When changing email providers (from Squarespace to Beehiiv if you ask) the new one does “smart warming” where it, for whatever algorithm reason, sends emails from different servers to explore deliverability into your inbox. So if this is the first email that you’ve ever gotten from me, there might be a reason that algorithm Gods connected us. Maybe you need a psycho-somatic movement therapist. Here is my reintroduction letter from last year with the juicy details about my journey and why you might be interested in reading my letters.

No, thank you!? I get it, I too have random emails up the wazoo and have taken up boundaries lately - so click away:

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