Okay, back to the Steve Miller Band. Thanks for waiting—“time” to get to some wild existential manure (see what I did there? Being farm-appropriate again!).
Just over a year or so ago, I remember driving over Snoqualmie Pass to visit Dad, and while driving I was listening to a podcast featuring Stephen Jenkinson. Just as I was reaching the summit, he said something in the podcast that rocked my world. So much so, that I had to pull off the interstate at the Pass to write it down—such is the need when TRUTH surfaces and worlds rock.
Stay with me now. The futures we have aren’t the ones we think we have. In fact, we don’t have them at all.
We don’t live into the future. We live, moving forward, into the past.
You might need to read that again, maybe two or three times more. Really let it marinate. I had to.
Crazy, right? Sorry Steve Miller. To center this on Dad, because Dad was fully on my mind as I was driving on that clear and sunny summer day back in 2021, Dad is not living into the future (but neither are we, btw). Steve Miller got this wrong. Time is NOT “slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”
Really, stay with me here:
Time keeps on slippin’…into the past.
That’s the only place it can go.
Life, especially the lives of those souls and beings we hold dear, slips into the past. More specifically, OUR pasts. When you die, the only future you can ever hope to have will be in the “pasts” of those who come after you which, at those times, for them and for you, is the only thing you can share.
Because THAT is the place, and time, and realm… of memories.
Time moves forward into the past. THIS is what rocked my world. And so many things, for me, clicked into place.
And they are still clicking. More in a bit…
The thing the Steve Miller Band got right?
We are lucky to be able to see bald eagles on occasion here—and a short trip north to the Skagit river means we can see a whole convocation of eagles as they scavenge the river for salmon. I envision this verse of “Fly Like an Eagle” to mean a desire, and an invocation, to drop the burdens of life in order to fly free and majestically—just like eagles do. But not just “to anywhere,” to the sea—maybe one of my all time favorite places to be. This sea also functions, as it does in so many stories and myths in all human cultures, as a metaphor. The ocean provides for us one of the most tangible and awe-inspiring places we can fairly easily access in order to experience the immensity of existence. More than just looking up at the stars at night, which also inspires awe, being oceanside means you can actually FEEL awe: the coldness of water and the grittiness of sand; you can smell the uniqueness of ocean and taste its saltiness; and you can both hear and feel the rumble of the waves… to your bones. And then you can sit on the beach at glorious sunset and stare at the ocean’s horizon and never see a boundary. There are no boundaries when spirit carries you. (All that plus you could get an awesome bowl of clam chowder right after—if you’re not vegan that is. Not a bad deal at all. And I loved clam chowder!).
Eagles and oceans as metaphor.
There are no boundaries when you are Soul.
Once we abandon our diminishing bodies and brains through our physical death, our spirits carry “us,” whatever notion of us remains, like flying eagles to faraway seas. We are Soul after all, and to Soul we shall return. This is what the ancient mystics taught and what still remains in various cultures and belief systems (not just the religious—this has nothing to do with religion) around the world—including science when you include the imaginings from quantum physics, especially those from one well-known physicist:
~ Albert Einstein
“Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
“Widening circles….” Just like an eagle in flight.
Imagine the freedom and joy that will be! I want that for Dad.
And Dad doesn’t know he will.
Yet.
Back to earth.
Eldering 101:
There has only ever been this now. Anything not now, does not exist. Ironically, this includes the past, right? (We know the future doesn’t exist—ever: “Tomorrow never comes.”). We bring with us, to our now, only memories from the past. And memories are ephemeral, elastic, and translucent. There is nothing, no thing, from the past we can bring with us to this now. Because what existed in that now back then, doesn’t exist anymore—including you, including Dad. Because it is a bedrock, fundamental LAW of Nature and the Universe that: Everything Changes.
Zen proverb alert: “You can never set foot in the same river twice.”
Both you and the river have changed.
You are a different you then you were when you began reading this post a mere few minutes ago. And you are quite a different you from when you read last week’s part one. Don’t even get me started on how different you are now from when you were a kindergartener! (So, who are you, really?)
It’s all good though, because in this now, in THIS now, exists eternity. The only time we ever fully inhabit is an endless, recurring yet different, set of nows. Now is vertical time—a time outside of horizontal time. Now is transcendent. Now is real. And it’s the only thing that is.
“You can’t live at all, unless you can live fully now.” ~ Alan Watts
Okay, now back to Dad to tie all this together.
When Dad sheds his worldly incarnation, and his Soul regains flight just like Steve Miller himself desires, he’ll inhabit the eternity of our pasts, which can only be recalled in each and every one of our future nows, via our memories.
That’s where he will live on—in our persistent and imperfect memories that for one reason, or for countless others, will surface unexpectedly from some spark that kindles them. Reasons that, out of the blue, we will recall because…
…it’s Spring and the workers should be setting twine and we’ll remember Dad soaking bales of twine in water-filled cement pools (to soften the twine and make it more pliable) and showing us how it’s done by tying the top knots simultaneously with each hand in less than two seconds.
…or it’s summer and there’s irrigation to set and we’ll remember Dad’s mastery of shovels and irrigation tubes, and his immense forearms and calloused hands.
…or we are driving by a hop field and see a blue Ford tractor turning into a row and we’ll remember all the mishaps we had, and hop bines we accidentally ran over and brought down but never told Dad about, when we were driving tractor down endless and dusty rows of hop bines.
…or it’s early fall and harvest begins and we’ll remember Dad, and his tired solitary eyes, as he’s walking knee deep in the middle of a drying kiln room at midnight, through the drying hops, testing for moisture with only his finger tips.
…or it’s time for popping popcorn on the stove with butter in a covered pan and we’ll remember this is the only thing Dad could cook, but gosh was his buttered popcorn excellent!
…or it’s someone’s wedding and it’s time to dance; or time for raising dogs; or time for piddling around the shop when the farm work is done for the day or winter; or time for eating head cheese (wait…okay, maybe there ain’t ever a time for eating head cheese—but I digress), or vegan blueberry muffins (always time for that!); or drinking oatmilk lattes; or watching Jeopardy; or complaining about the Seahawks and wondering again where Russell Wilson went. And then wondering again.
At those times, we’ll remember a dancer, a dog lover, a “gotta find something to do ‘cuz I’m about to go crazy” winter farmer, a former head-cheese eater cum oatmilk drinking vegan, a bad Jeopardy player, and a hyper-critical 12th man (Go Hawks!).
Question: When does a person really die?
Answer: When they are no longer remembered. When pasts are never recalled. When all memory of them vanishes.
When Dad leaves behind his old and tired humanness, when his body dies, he’ll become something different. Right now, Dad or Grandpa or Uncle Wally or Wally is living somewhere other than where you are—specifically at Club Med Lenseigne in Lake Stevens, Washington. When Dad dies, that changes. His relationship to us becomes more personal and intimate—because Dad will be living, then, everywhere you are, inside you, and every-when when you remember him through the memories you have even if those memories were newly received through what you’ve read in these posts. The thing most personal to us, his family and friends, will be of the memories we have of him. Of his past. Of our shared pasts with him. Dad will live on through our memories.
Dad’s future is our past.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some Olders say this is actually their biggest fear as they move closer to their end days—not that they will experience pain there, in that liminal space, but that they will be forgotten.
It is then we need to remind ourselves they remain, still, flying spirited somewhere free, until some person in some future time and place, recalls some distant memory from the past, and plucks it into the “now,” through the act of remembering. And wondering…
Who am I? Where did I come from?
Who was Wally Lenseigne?
Answers to be found only in the now, but conjured up from the long ago.
There shall be found Elders, there. Within our own ancestral memories.
So we’ll be sure to tell Dad, as his spirit, his Soul, is about to be set free at the end of his autumn, and as his body enters winter: “we will never forget you.”
And then he’ll live on…into more of our future pasts. Just as he should. Just as Nature intended all along.
And what a wonderful time, after time, that too will be.
Hey, I have an idea: let’s call that time in Dad’s new life…Spring.
Dad in his newest “hug” from Kym.
“I’ll try to be around and about. But if I’m not, then you know that I’m behind your eyelids, and I’ll meet you there.” ~ Terence McKenn
T plus 103 days… and counting. Bet you never expected an existential lesson on the quantum physics of surrealistic time when you opened this post today! But that’s what you got—you can thank my Dad. And Steve Miller.
103 Days! On Tuesday of this past week, we celebrated Dad’s 100th day with us—with homemade vegan pumpkin spice cupcakes and cream cheese frosting!
For the record: he ate the whole thing!
…and still counting into the past.
Oh, by the way: Mr. Miller got it wrong, but Cyndi Lauper??? Ahhh, this is more like it!
I loved and love that quantum physicist Cyndi Lauper!
After my picture fades and darkness has
Turned to gray
Watching through windows
You're wondering if I'm okay
We can rest assured, Wally will be OK.