The MRI...a scary and intimidating son of a gun  

"You may try to stand up someday soon and you may fall.  If this happens, you will need spinal cord surgery.  And believe me, you don't want spinal cord surgery.  It's far more risky than brain surgery.  If it gets to that, you may never walk again."

These were the words spoken to me in a serious and hushed tone by the neurosurgeon I had been sent to consult with by a local neurologist.  The somber surgeon wasn't done.  "I want you back in 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, etc. to do more MRI's.  We need to follow this thing."   I was stunned.  My then-husband and I walked out of the colorless office, and my well-meaning spouse exclaimed, "Well, that wasn't so bad was it?"

"Are you crazy?"  That wasn't good news!  I'm screwed!"

Back up a month or so.  It was an ordinary day and I was doing my routine fanatical workout of Stairmasters...a cruel and sadistic exercise machine.  I was under a lot of stress.  Four children under the age of seven plus a daily commute to a university an hour's drive away where I was pursuing a Master's degree in marriage and family therapy was more than filling my plate.  The frenetic pace of my days taking care of children, home and homework left me pent up and tense.

That Stairmasters machine, if I'm going to be really honest, was my punching bag.  I was ruthless to that machine?jumping on it and setting it at the highest level and going full force for an hour.  I swear that machine was my saving grace as I stood there with music blaring in my ears and sweat pouring down my body.    

One morning, I hopped off the machine having used and abused it for over an hour.  I felt exhilarated, but wait, what was that?  Tingling in my feet.  "Oh, I've over done it," I thought and I was quite sure the repetitive motion was the culprit for the tingling.

But the tingling was relentless in its' own way and wouldn't go away.  The sensation that felt like an on-going motor was ever present and I began to worry. The more I worried, the more the tingling spread, like poisonous tentacles reaching up my calves and past my thighs and into my hips.  I was a regular vibrator.

I tried to ignore the tingling but it was an attention whore and wouldn't go away.  Now, one thing you should know about me back then, back in those early days when I was raising four small children, is that there were moments, hours and days where I was prone to vague feelings of restlessness and anxiety.  I was happy with my life but there were dark shadowy thoughts that started to become pronouncements that something, perhaps a rare and random disease, would lay claim to my settled and predictable life.

In other words, I was neurotic as hell.

The annoying tingling in my toes didn't help my active imagination and I began to worry with full-time earnest.  WHAT IF it was MS, some slow progressive deterioration of the muscles disease, or god forbid, CANCER.  Some kind of TINGLING CANCER.

I would learn the hard way that going down the dark routes of the "What If's" are not friendly or supportive questions to ask oneself.  

I vacillated and thought I should stick with my gut and go with the obvious:  overuse of Stairmaster's.  Stop with the Stairmaster's and see a chiropractor.  I did that and asked the very stupid question to the chiropractor, "You don't think my tingling could be due to MS do you?"

Oh, I had forgotten the golden rule of medicine.  CYA! A cloud passed over that chiropractor's face and he suggested that I go to a neurologist "just to make sure it wasn't MS."  Damn!  I didn't like this road I was suddenly on, didn't like it one bit.  But there it was. He thought I should go to a neurologist.

Upon entering the neurologist's office, my heart went into overdrive. My father had died of a malignant brain tumor only months before, and the sterile and antiseptic smell and gray walls only brought back sad memories and a fatal diagnosis for my father.  Clearly, it was my turn.

The neurologist asked me to walk a straight line.  I promptly tumbled into the nearest wall.  "Hmmmmmmmmmm?" said the gray faced doctor.  "Oh, geez, I'm so clumsy when I get nervous.  I'm just all atwitter!"  My laughter met empty ears and I was told to take a seat pronto.

Memories of Sister Mary Superior, the one with the threatening ruler in her hand, came flooding back and I plopped with a thud on the nearest seat.

When I told him about my theory of the overuse of Stairmasters, he flicked his hand like he was swatting a mosquito.  “No, that’s not it.”  

He continued, “We need to do an MRI to rule out MS and ANYTHING ELSE."  Oh, I was screwed for sure.

3 MRI's were ordered in quick succession and I found myself spending hours in these torture chambers where I was put into some kind of warp time zone where nothing existed but that machine and me.

Yet deep in that sterile vacuum of time I kept thinking to myself, "What am I doing here?  I overdid the damn Stairmasters.  It has to be the overuse of the Stairmasters."

Oh, but that spoil the party machine found something in my spine.  And the neurologist seemed overjoyed.  "Aha!  We found a defect in your upper spine.  It's a genetic defect you were born with.  It's called a syrinx and you have one and you need to go see a neurosurgeon ASAP!"

Oh the mind is a powerful thing and hearing about that pesky little syrinx that apparently had been a part of me since birth set me into an emotional tailspin.

The last thing the neurosurgeon said to me before I left was, "See you in six weeks, but if you find that you fall down and you can't get up, call immediately!  With that, he guffawed at his own play on words and I thought, "Great, a neurosurgeon who recites commercials?this must be my lucky day."

The days that followed were filled with terror and hypersensitivity to every part of my body. Obsessive-compulsive worries of being paralyzed consumed my days.  I knew I had gone too far when in the middle of a family dinner, I burst into tears and exclaimed to my husband and small vulnerable children, "I'M GOING TO DIE OF A SPINAL CORD TUMOR!"  At the strong encouragement of my husband, this led me to the office of yet another doctor, this time a sane one, a psychotherapist, who gently told me my biggest problem was that I had allowed my life to being overtaken by ruminating thoughts.

And that's when the real journey began.  That point in time when you have to go inside, to your inner self, the one that knows the truth.  To the one that could guide me through the mazes of modern science and inner knowing.  That tender but firm therapist helped me to find my way back home, full circle really, and come back to the place where I could trust myself and not some cold-hearted machine or doctors on autopilot.

I went to a neuromuscular therapist for those overused leg and feet muscles, stayed away from Stairmasters and the tingling eventually went away.

As for the neurosurgeon and the appointment six weeks later, I never went back.

That was over twenty years ago and I've spent each spring, summer and fall riding my bike up steep hills and mountain passes?depending on these legs of mine and a spine that has a little hiccup in it.

And as terrifying as the whole experience was for me (and unfortunately my children!), it was a pivotal point in my life?that intersection of learning to trust my intuition, my gut and myself.

I'm still standing?after all this time.

(The salacious billboard in Times Square)

Last week when I was in New York City, I stayed in a hotel near Times Square. One of my favorite things about Times Square are the enormous, flashing and colorful billboards.  You can stand in the middle of the square and experience a surround sound of billboards.

One particular billboard stood out from all the rest.  It wasn't promoting a product, but a couple.  Filling most of the billboard was the image of an attractive and happy looking couple.  I assumed it was some romantic man proclaiming his love for his partner and wanting to spend some big bucks to share his joy with the world.

I was wrong.  Turning on the local news in my hotel room, I learned the facts.  Apparently, the woman in the billboard had been a woman scorned and this billboard was part of her revenge.  The revenge was directed at her lover of eight years who had left her to go back to his wife.

YaVaughnie Wilkins, the woman scorned and devastated because she claims she didn't know that the love of her life, highly visible and prominent Charles Phillips, current President of the software giant Oracle, was married.  (Had this woman never heard of the Internet or the notion of a doing a Google search?  Apparently not.)  While Wilkins remained in ignorant bliss and Charles was promising her happily ever after, thoughts of his wife and family wouldn't go away.  After eight and a half years, he left his girlfriend and went back home, back to his wife and children. He underestimated the disappointment of his mistress, who he hoped would disappear into the sunset.

She didn't.  And the billboard in Times Square was only the first of five billboards placed in cities like Atlanta and San Francisco.  Revenge doesn't come cheaply and Wilkins's revenge cost her close to $250,000 and a permanent big X on her chest warning any potential suitor that he better not have any wives, children or other lovers hidden in any closets. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

But revenge is not limited to women alone.  Research shows that men are much more prone to acts of revenge than women are.  Gender difference is not the focus of this post.  

The desire for revenge is as ancient as time and I'm sure all of us have stories or times in our lives where we acted a little less gracious, a little less civil when we were wounded, loved and then rejected.

In fact, to be brutally honest, there was a time in my life where I held a great amount of anger and resentment towards a man who had hurt our family deeply.  The details aren't important, but the hurt was real and palpable and there was no possibility for any kind of justice.  I would lay awake at night devising complicated and detailed ways of exacting revenge on this man, only to wake in the morning exhausted, anxious and chicken.  I also had the calm and irritating voice of rational thought reminding me that there would be no satisfaction in revenge.

I didn't listen.

One night I took myself out to dinner?. one of those solo dinners that fill you with delight and anticipation, like those rare evenings when you have the remote control all to yourself.  Shortly after my arrival, a large party was seated directly in back of me.  I soon realized that the party was in honor of the man, the man that led the double life.  The man that was a church deacon on Sunday, part-time family man and part-time man with dark deeds and addictions unbeknownst to those close to him.

Emboldened by the two or three glasses of wine I'd enjoyed, but sober to the core of the pores in my bones, I approached the table.  The table that was celebrating and whooping it up.  I recognized some of the other people?people from my church past?people who had judged me during my divorce, people who had taken me off their social friend list.  But the revenge wasn't directed at them.  Perhaps that was just an added bonus.  I didn't think about it.  My focus was on the man with the open warm face and dark heart.

Everyone smiled, "Oh, Mary!  How long it's been since we've seen you!  What a surprise".  I barely noticed them; my eyes were intent on the eyes of the man, the man who was now nervously shifting in his chair.

I turned to him and pointed my finger in his direction, "You are a fake and a phony.  And you will be found out."  Gasps of disbelief were heard around the table.  "How dare you!"  One of the women said.  "What could he have ever possibly done to warrant this?"  I dismissed her with a wave of my hand replying,  "That's not important and it's not for me to say.  He knows exactly what I'm talking about."

And once again I redirected my gaze towards him, pointed my finger once again and said, "You are a fake and a phony.  And you will be found out."

I walked away and into my car, my heart pounding and mind racing.  What the hell did I just do?  I've never done anything like that in my life.  I immediately called my ex-husband to tell him what I did.  His praise and endorsement of my actions were reinforcement of my rude outburst.

I drove home feeling good, a sense of relief.  I felt proud of myself.  And yet still, there was no real satisfaction, no true reward.  Later, I learned that after I left, the man shook his head and with a tone of compassion, shared with the others how he had heard I had gone a little crazy after my divorce, that I wasn't stable, etc. etc. blah blah blah.  I knew this would happen and I didn't care what those people thought.  I did what I felt I needed to do at the time. Period.

I saw that billboard again in Times Square the next evening, and as I looked at the face of the woman on the billboard, the woman scorned, the woman angry,  I thought, "I'm really not all that different from her am I?  I want to be seen, I want to be heard, I want to be noticed.  I don't want to be lied to.  I don't want to be hurt."

It's been said that resentment is "like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."  I know this to be inevitably true and an excellent goal to strive for?to lose all sense of resentment or need for revenge.  To learn true compassion, even towards those who make it ridiculously difficult to do so.

But it’s also been said that revenge is sweet.  We're only human and sometimes, like Billboard Lady and myself, the momentary feeling of triumph and control, make the acts of revenge just a little bit sweeter, a little more palatable, if only for the briefest of moments.

*Note:  The man did eventually get found out?not because of my outburst; although it most certainly watered the plants of doubt his wife had been experiencing for a long time.  The couple is now divorced and my friendship with her has been rekindled.  The man continues to live in his denials and his addictions, without the benefit of house and hearth to lick his unknown wounds.  And that I find, truly sad.

? 2002 by Brigette Lacombe

 "I'm 60, and I'm playing the romantic lead!  Bette Davis is rolling over in her grave!"  These are the words of Meryl Streep as she graces the cover of the current January Vanity Fair issue.  

Boarding a plane headed for warmer climates, I held the magazine greedily in anticipation of reading the article.  I've got half a decade before I reach that milestone, but I was excited to read more.  I have often heard the complaints of women 50 on up of this phenomenon known to all older women?the phenomenon of suddenly becoming invisible, discarded, ignored and not taken seriously.  Our own Lea Lane shares about this beautifully in her post, Becoming Invisible.

Streep herself admits to telling her husband when she was 38, "Well, it's over."  She knew at the time that any woman approaching 40 in the entertainment industry was well on her way to being washed up.

Fortunately for her and us, it was the furthest thing from the truth.

In "It's Complicated",  Streep's character has a fling with her ex-husband and at one point describes herself as a slut while her girlfriends squeal in delight.  In the theater, I found myself doing the same thing.

"Yeah, you go girl!"  Not that I was excited about any woman calling herself a slut, but it was just so juicy delicious to see a woman of Streep's age enjoying her sensuousness and her sexuality.

It should also be noted that the very talent Nancy Meyers directed “It’s Complicated” and I’m quite sure she was also partly responsible for the success of this smart intelligent film.    

Mike Nichols, the well known director, says, "Streep broke the glass ceiling of an older woman being a big star?it has never, never happened before."

Well I say it's about damn time!

Did you know that woman age 45 and over are the largest consumer-spending group?  We spend over ONE TRILLION dollars a year so it's high time we are taken more than seriously.

We're all familiar with the annoying phrases, "40 is the new 20" and "50 is the new 30".  Whatever.  Reality is reality.  When I first heard those phrases, I'll admit that I liked them, they were seductive.  They boosted my ego and kept the nagging fear of aging at bay.  Yet deep down inside me, I knew that I certainly didn't need reading glasses in my 20's or a colonoscopy in my 30's. And what about all the wisdom gained by the marches of time?  I'd never give that up to go back to those days.

Gail Sheehy (author of "Passages") put it well when she recently said, "The 60's aren't the new 40's?the 60's are the NEW 60's!"  As women, we get to decide what the new 40's, 50's, 60's and beyond look like, not some 20-something advertising kid in a downtown Manhattan office.

I am not my mother's daughter.

When my mother was my age, she had long confined herself to a life of domesticity and passivity.  To be honest, I think she was just plain worn out?her choices had long ago been taken by a church who forbade her from using birth control and a culture where women like Donna Reed and June Cleaver were idolized for being dutiful wives and mothers.

Her exercise was playing solitaire, bridge and waiting for my father to take her away when he was done with an exhilarating and productive day.

As for me, my 40's and beyond has been a Renaissance time.   I've learned to rock climb, fall passionately in love, ride my bike up crazy long winding steep hills (I kicked a fifteen year old boy's ass up one of those hills this summer and I will admit I've been grinning ever since), accelerate my professional career and laugh like a kid on a daily basis.

The older I get, the more curious I am becoming.  I want to know about EVERYTHING.  I don't ever want to retire.  I want to push myself, my body, my mental limits.

A popular advertising slogan in the 1960's proclaimed, "You've Come a Long Way Baby!"  Unfortunately it was promoting Virginia Slims, a cigarette aimed towards younger women and was responsible for a rapid increase in smoking among teenage girls.  If they didn't kick the habit, chances are they've kicked the bucket.  

Meanwhile, Meryl Streep may well be paving the way for the rest of us who truly have come a long way baby.

As for me, I'm not slowing down any time soon.  So what if I just joined AARP (gulp)?I'm not proud and there are some damn good discounts available.  So what if I have to check the age box that is right next to DEATH?  These box people need to add a few more if they want to keep up with the new longevity of human beings.  So what if I have to have a zillion reading glasses in every corner of my home, car and office?  So what if a woman my age recently asked me, "Mary, why do you dress so ‘young‘?are you in denial of your age?"  

Whateuuuver.

I'm not going down easily, I'll tell you that much.  Now please excuse me while I get ready for my hang gliding lesson.  When it comes to aging, as far as I'm concerned, the sky is the limit.

*Note:  I will admit to taking some literary license when I referred to the hang gliding lesson.  No way in hell you're ever gonna get me to do that, but then again?. you never know.  The mind is a powerful thing and time and wisdom have taught me, "Never say never."

(CAT FIGHT!  OH HOW WE LOVE A CAT FIGHT!)  

I had a fitful and restless sleep last night.  I tossed and turned?images of angry women, bitter women accusing other angry and bitter women of all sorts of devious and manipulative acts.

"She's a bitch!"

"She's crazy, hormonal and psychotic"

"She's nuts, conniving, manipulative?and she hates me!    

Women hating other women seems to be as old as time itself.  

In fact, in this early pre-dawn morning I came to this stunning and sober conclusion:

Women are more misogynistic than men.  

Yeah you heard me right.  Women are more misogynistic than men.

I said it!  Somebody had to say it!

And I am guilty of it, by God.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's true.  

I must be honest when I admit to you that since I was a young girl I've been wary of women.  Junior high school was a particularly painful time.  I was teased mercilessly about my appearance, my lack of any kind of thing that resembled a chest.  "There she goes?a carpenter's dream?flat as a board!  Oh Mary, a pirate's dream?a sunken chest!"

Insensitive hormonal pimply-faced boys did not level these hurtful words at me.  They were hurled at me with the velocity of a fast curve ball by girls?mean girls?the mean girls that were popular, good looking and had actual breasts at that tender age?they were my tormenters and accusers.

And no offense to my four sisters, but there was some catty crap going on in those childhood years and they and I have the scars on our arms to prove it.  Literally.

When I went off to the wilds of college, I made sure to stay 200 yards away from any sorority house.  I will admit I always had a built in prejudice for sororities, home to many a mean girl (see what I mean?I'm just as guilty!).  I couldn't stand watching the girlfriends I loved rushing for these sororities only to be met with the big Red Reject because they weren't pretty enough, didn't have the right clothes, the right smile.  

The Miss America pageant has always made me burn.  Even as a young girl I was incensed that women be judged based solely on their looks, "poise and grace".  Gag me with a spoon.  

My own liberal hippy dippy natural Boulder was home to child beauty pageant contestant Jon Benet Ramsey, the terribly misfortune girl who was murdered in her own bedroom right before Christmas.  The outpouring of hatred and judgment towards the mother who had put her daughter in these pageants was evidence enough to many that surely she was the one who killed her daughter!

Women constantly pit themselves against other women.  Pro-life women vs. pro-choice women, stay-at-home mothers vs. working mothers, Republican women vs. Democrat women?on and on and on.

And while we're talking politics, let me confess yet another misogynistic sin of mine.  Show me a picture of Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michele Bachmann, or Carrie Prejean and I want to go postal, like UZI postal.  I suddenly get filled with a burst of testosterone and I get images in my head of bitch slapping them to the point of drawing blood?. and lots of it!  And I get pleasure out of this image!

It's true?I'm just being brutally honest.

Don't get me wrong.  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck make me seriously mad.  No doubt about that.  But I don't have the visceral vitriolic response like I do with the women I named?. not even close.  What's up with that?

(As much as I can’t stand the politics of Sarah Palin, this type of blatant sexism has got to stop)  

And while I'm baring all here, judge me as you should, but for many years I never liked Hillary Clinton...and I'm a democrat and a woman!  Honestly, I can't even give you a legitimate reason as to why that was.  During the election last year, I was at dinner with some good friends and the topic of Hillary Clinton came up.

At the mention of her name, I scrunched my nose and said, "Ugggh, I just don't like her at all.  Not one little bit."

When a friend asked me why, I was mortified to realize I didn't have one legitimate reason.  Not a one.  I just "didn't like her looks".  Misogyny at its worst.

Pregnant women who have been polled consistently and overwhelming say that they would prefer a boy over a girl because they are "easier"!   And now for another humiliating confession.  Due to my mistrust of women, when my former and I decided to start a family, I wanted three of four sons.  I was adamant that I didn't want girls.

After happily and smugly having two sons, I was pregnant with my third child.  Women would come up to me and coo like love birds and say, "Oh, are you hoping for a little girl?  They are so sweet, special and precious."  To which I would quickly and rudely respond, "HELL NO!  I WANT ALL BOYS.  BOYS ARE EASIER."

Shame, shame, shame on me.  And thank God I didn't get any bad Karma which I so richly deserved because the universe disregarded my blatant sexism and gave me two beautiful smart independent amazing daughters who, like my sons, love me with all their hearts.  I just tear up at the thought of those amazing creatures.

Which reminds me of the classic Mother-Daughter relationship presumed to be fraught with conflict for years and years until the daughter finally has a child of her own.  This supposed tenuous relationship is the fodder for many a book and talk show discussion.

And what about those women who don't give a crap if a man has a wedding band on his left finger and small children waiting for him at home?  As long as he has a penis and a wallet (and let's face it, it's the wallet that takes priority), he's fair game!  There's a hell of a lot of those women running around.  Which reminds me, no one really blames the man.  But the woman?she's an immoral Home wrecker!  I'm getting so confused.

The reason for my fitful sleep was a website I came across last night?a website for mothers whose ex-husbands have a new wife?the dreaded stepmother!  Woe to the woman who has to call herself a stepmother!  Before you can even utter the words, "I do", if you are wife #2 and your new husband has children, you are evil!  Mythology and fairy tales promote this hatred of women who are strong enough to marry a man that is a package deal. Stepmothers have always been the easy targets, the go-to person to blame first.

A stepmother starts off her marriage in the red and it's almost impossible to climb her way out of that kind of inherited debt.  

But wait, then I found a website for stepmothers.  The forum board was nothing but never ending rants how each one of these women complained about their husband's ex-wife citing that these women were crazy psychotic bitches who had no concern for their own children.

It reminded me of the many stepmothers I've counseled over the years and it suddenly occurred to me that almost without exception, practically every stepmother I've worked with has described their husband's ex-wife as crazy.

CRAZY!

So let me get this straight?mothers are crazy, stepmothers are crazy.  That's a lot of women.  I mean, really, doesn't it just seem statistically impossible that all these women are crazy?

What is the reason for this?  Is it ancestrally passed on since the beginning of time when women needed to compete with one another for the attention of males so that they could propagate and be protected?  I'm no social researcher or anthropological expert.  What I do know is that it is insipid and deeply rooted into the innermost recesses of our psyches.

For a long time I've considered myself a feminist, but now I'm questioning myself.  Clearly I have some work to do.

So I made a commitment in the wee hours of the morning.  I'm starting with me?it's the only place to start.  I'm getting real conscious real quick.  I'm making a practice of being mindful of my thoughts, my words and my actions towards women and about women.  I'm taking the gigantic log out of my own eye before I try to take the splinter out of another's.  One woman at a time kind of thing.

I've often heard it said that if women ruled the world, there would be no wars, no rape, no torture, no hunger.  

Really?  Maybe I’m sleep deprived.  Call me a bitch and call me crazy.  But I'm skeptical?really really skeptical.

                                 (“I’m not a dirty old man, I’m a sexy senior citizen.“)

"Ding dong the dick is dead, dick is dead, dick is dead, ding dong the wicked dick is dead, hi ho, hi ho?."

Wanda Sykes, another brilliant philosopher and psychotherapist disguised as a comedian, sings this song when she talks about men, women, aging and sex.

My husband and I were watching her new HBO special comedy a couple of weeks ago.  When she got to the “dick is dead” segment of her routine, she was talking about older women who silently and secretly celebrate with glee when their husbands just can't get it up anymore.

After years of caretaking, nurturing, working, and providing, they are excited about the break.  Hey, some time for themselves!

When Sykes was singing the song, the women in the audience (and me) were laughing hysterically.  The men were silent.  I may have laughed a little too loudly for my husband's taste.   "Oh honey, she's just funny, no worries there, ha ha, no siree bob."

Chris Rock, my other favorite philosopher and marriage counselor in disguise, is quite candid about what men want.

"When a man offers to help a woman with anything, he's offering her dick.  Oh, can I help you with those groceries?  What a man is really saying is, "Would you like some dick?"  "Oh, can I help you clean the house, can I give you some dick?"  And so on and so on.

The men in the audience laughed hysterically when he said this.  The women were silent.  

Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus and perhaps those differences are clearest with it comes to sexual disparity.

Now, don't get your panties all in a wad. There are plenty of women who are raring to go until they take in their last breath (these women usually die young).  No, seriously, I for one, am one who wants to enjoy sexual intimacy with my husband well into the golden years.  

                                         (Viagra:  An unwelcome house guest?)  

Nowadays, the women whose husband's libidos seemed to have reached their shelf lives have short-lived celebrations.  They come home one day and Limpy Larry is suddenly Long-Lasting Laurence.  He's got a pill in his hand and a smile on his face.  The women excuse themselves quickly to call the doctor and ask for an anti-depressant.

Last night, I spent the evening with a group of fellow therapists.  One of them shared that a 78-year-old client had recently married her 87-year-old boyfriend.  Her presenting complaint:  Her new husband had a prescription with enough refills to last a lifetime and he wanted sex EVERY MORNING, seven days a week.   She was sick of it and didn't know what to do.

Since suicide/homicide wasn't a viable option, we were all putting our heads together (no pun intended) to come up with solutions.  

Thanks to the advances of pharmaceutical companies who are now wrecking havoc on people's sex lives, an active sex life can extend well into the dark corners of the local nursing home.

Fair is fair and the next medical breakthrough to come (no pun intended):  A female version of Viagra.

This obsessive need to deny aging (and believe me, I'm a big time fan) makes me wonder how far we will all go before we allow ourselves to gracefully succumb to the realities of aging.  Is there a way to bring sexuality into our latter years without the help of prescription drugs and unrealistic expectations?

Many women complain that their husbands will die 6-8 years before them.  Why?  Maybe it's Mother Nature's way to give them a break and provide them with some much needed time for themselves.  

                                                   (Whohee!  The dick is dead!)  

Why do you think there are so many ecstatic women traveling in packs like wolves with red hats on their heads and orgasmic looks on their faces?

Let the conversation begin?

My father died 21 years ago.  I had forgotten.   I'm down on death, so I don't remember dates like that.  One of my sisters reminded me.

Grief is a process that becomes a part of who we are and it never becomes something we're "over".  I was reluctant to stir it up.

But my sister’s call brought me back to the day of my father's death.  This was back in the day when I was a perky born-again Christian and church was as a regular as a bowel movement (there's a reason for this reference but you'll have to read on?.).

My father had a fantastic sense of humor and the sound of his laughter from the time he woke up to the time he fell asleep was as regular as?yes, you guessed it, a bowel movement.

Let me explain.  The day my father died, we all knew his death was imminent.  He had been suffering from the ravages of a terrorist cancer that had decided to claim territory in his brain.  I found this profoundly unfair, given that my father was one who enjoyed every minute of his life and started each day with a robust and joyful heart.

A thousand miles separated me from my father the day he died.  That night, at our church, there happened to be a prayer meeting for those who had loved ones who were suffering terminal illnesses.  On a whim, I decided to go to pray for my father.

In that small circle of pale and pious parishioners, I felt the sense and spirit of my father.

One of the pastors came to talk to me after the meeting.  He had a request.  A Young Life youth leader from Connecticut had had a terrible fall during a rock climb on one of the infamous Boulder Flatirons.  He had broken almost every bone in his body.  He was from Greenwich, Connecticut, the town I grew up in.  On top of that, I had been a Young Life leader in college.  Would I give him a quick visit on my way home?

Since those were the days I was always on a mission, I gladly accepted!

I went to the hospital and found his room.  I gently knocked on the door and then basically barged in.  I was a little uncomfortable not knowing him and all, but I strode in with confidence, blathering away, on and on, about how sorry I was he got so hurt, that we were from the same town, and I had been a Young Life leader.
I had dropped my purse and made myself at home.  I looked at him and his face looked rather uncomfortable.  Well, what can you expect with all those broken bones!

I didn't give him a chance, a space, some air?I just kept rambling on and on, figuring I was the best thing that had happened to him that day.

Suddenly, he put his hand up, in one of those "Stop Sign" motions.

"I don't mean to be rude," he said, "but quite frankly I was in the middle of having a bowel movement and I need you to leave."

Oh my gawd.  My face turned a bright brilliant red and I was completely and utterly mortified.  What an idiot!  How presumptuous I had been sauntering in there acting like the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ himself!

I don't know what I said.  I started going backwards out of that room, picking up my purse, bumping into a chair and slipping, stammering and stuttering out of that hospital room, apologizing over and over again.  

Cursing the pastor as I left the hospital, I made a quick escape to home.

I walked in and the phone rang.  It was my mother.  She had the voice of an angel.

"Your father passed away this evening, Mary.  I was singing to him about angels and better days as he sweetly and peacefully passed away.  He died with me by his side, and he died with a smile on his face."

Although I knew my father's death was imminent, I was shocked.  The finality.  The end.  The finish.  One can never gear up for that.

I got off the phone and then I had to laugh.  It was all so perfect given my father's great sense of humor and ability to laugh at life.

If that hospital guy hadn't had a bowel movement at that exact moment, I would have missed my mother's call.  I would have missed the pure and serene tone in her voice.  I would have missed her sense of peace and calm and release at knowing my father was no longer suffering.

Life is so many things?it is messy, dirty, earthy raw, and gut-wrenchingly visceral.  

If there is a God, I'm convinced that She has a great sense of humor.