But what if you are not a sender or a receiver of one of the approximately one billion Valentines cards sent each year? [That number, from the Greeting Card Assoc., is second only to the estimated 2.5 billion cards sent for Xmas.]  How do you think and feel about  yourself in the narrative of  “what is love?”  

After 35 plus years as a Psychologist working with couples in therapy trying to recapture their love,  also as a mediator and divorce coach helping partners “uncouple” from love,  I’ve begun to think about the question “what is love?”  in  3 phases:

• Phase 1:  Love is blind:  limerence
• Phase 2:  Legends of love in transition
• Phase 3:  Love ‘til death do us part.  

Before I tell you my proposal for these 3 phases, I highlight  the history of the 3 Valentines whose name,  and themes,  echo through this day.  My point is that love is not just flowers and poems and chocolate and smiles in the dark and swept-off-your-feet hugs …. Love,  as you’ve discovered, is serious business.  Serious.  Business.  Both.  Not what you expected or experienced in Phase I when you “fell”  in love.   But I’m getting ahead of myself.  

SOME HISTORY.  THE 3 VALENTINES.  SERIOUS BUSINESS. 

History reveals murky facts behind the legends of Saint Valentine.  All 3 of them:  the Catholic Church has 3 different martyred saints named “Valentine” or “Valentinus.”  The most popular narrative is that he was a priest in 3rd century AD  Rome.  Or he may have been the Bishop of Interamna [modern Terni].   One legend is that Valentine refused to sacrifice to pagan gods.  Or, that he was killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons. While imprisoned, his prayers healed the jailor’s daughter’s blindness. Another story has him falling in love with her.  At any rate, the day he was executed, he signed a letter to her  “From your Valentine.”  

A more detailed narrative tells of Roman Emperor Claudias [Gothicus] II  pronouncing an edict that prohibited young men to marry.  This was based on the hypothesis that UNmarried soldiers fought better, since they were less afraid of what would happen to wives or families if they died.  Valentine thought this decree unjust, so he secretly performed marriage ceremonies.  Valentine was caught imprisoned, tortured, finally beheaded in 269AD… or 270AD… or 280AD.  A man named Asterius was either his judge or his jailor. Valentine laid his hands on [Asterius’ ] blind daughter’s eyes,  and the child’s vision was restored.  As a result, Asterius [and maybe his whole household] courageously became Christians.  

So getting married, especially as a Christian, in those early days of Christianity, was serious business.  It may have been less about love, and more about “dodging the draft” in the Emperor’s wars, since a young married man would be less likely to be conscripted into the army than an Unmarried one.  

Fertility and procreation was also serious business.   The pagan celebration of Lupercalia,  in mid-February, was dedicated to Faunus, the Roman God of Agriculture,  as well as to Rome’s founders Romulus and Remus.   One reference notes that in 496AD Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 to be St. Valentine’s Day to “Christianize” the pagan rituals.   By the Middle Ages, is was also believed that mid-February was a time in Europe when birds mated.   And so it was that written Valentines, as tokens of affection between lovers and friends, began to appear around 1400,  after which time Valentine became one of the most popular saints in England and France.

The point is, it took hundreds of years before several cultures viewed Valentine as a sympathetic, heroic,  and alas!  a romantic figure.  

3 LOVE PHASES.

Just as there are different stories about Saint Valentine,  and his Day,  so there are different stories about the questions: “what is love?”.  How do you get it? Deepen it? Keep it?  Here are some thoughts for you to ponder.

Phase 1:  Love is blind:  limerence.  Operas and poetry are famous for their impassioned expressions of limerence.   Defined in some dictionaries as the first 3 to 6 months of falling in love, and seeing only the idealized aspects of one’s new love.  Love-at-first-Sight… across a Crowded Room… of hormones popping… head in the clouds [or in the sand].  For the majority of couples, this time does not last too long.   Eventually,  novelty wears off.  Realities of personality traits clear through the fog of passion.  Differences in the Other become less Cute, and may trigger insensitivity, even conflict.   

Phase 2:  Legends of love in transition. Enter greater differentiations between Self and Other.

Just as there are at least 3 saints called Valentine,  there could be at least 3 stories of Love in Transition:  the Good, the Bad, and the Blah.   This transition may last many years, or forever. A couple  may or may not “cross the Rubicon” to Phase 3, a committed safe and secure relationship.  The divorce rate in the US tells us that about 50% of couples can not experience some [or all] of the following capacities which help anchor a deep loving friendship and romantic relationship.

• These capacities are within each individual,  a n d  get played out between partners:
• Hold safety between you, often as a transition “play” space.  
• Tolerate ambiguity.  Making meaning includes taking a perspective other than your own.
• See and keep Self-Other boundaries.  Includes tolerating the Other’s  separate reality [realities]
• Mourn the idealized unattainable parts [aspects] of Self & Other.  We loose aspects of ourselves as we grow & change [ esp. with age, we loose good looks, our body changes,  resources [emotional, financial] can shift.   Other side of this coin is accepting fallible [non-idealized] aspects of Self & Other.
• Balance INdependence [self-reliance, self-esteem …] of Self with DEpendence on the Other.

People are complex.  The world is complex.  These capacities are complex.  I believe that “enough” of these capacities need to be experienced and shared between the partners to get “across the Rubicon.” And that differs for each couple. 

Phase 3:  Love ‘til death do us part.  

This is a phase of commitment and resolution.  A secure committed relationship where trust, mutuality, respect reign.  Where values and meanings are shared and sustained.  

If you did not make it to this phase,  you are not alone.   Half the marriages in the US did not make it “across the Rubicon” either.   Many partners did not grow up in homes where they saw parents functioning in a secure committed way.   Where they saw their parents differ, even get angry, but then repair and soothe the other.   Some partners did not know their relationship was in trouble until it was too late.  Others did not find a competent [enough] couples therapist to guide them through the rough waters.  

OK.  This time you did not cross to the other side.  But you still can.  Keep at it.  You may still yet find your very own special Valentine. 

Ask yourself  3 groups of QUESTIONS.

1)  Do you know  yourself?  Know your partner?  Do you  r e a l l y  want to leave?                                             

I get it that you may feel exhausted with the power struggles, the criticisms.  The disagreements, or even screamings,  about every little thing.  That you feel lonely in bed at night,  with no reach out, no snuggle,  no warmth,  and thus no intimacy,  let alone sex.  These are good reasons to feel sad, disappointed, lonely,  anguished…. BUT! Not good enough reasons to separate/ divorce.  The above issues are all fixable IF you BOTH are willing to work at it.   SO …..

Ask yourself:  Am I reacting to my partner?   Do I notice the sunlight catching a wave in his/her hair? Remember that small smile?  Do I still appreciate his/her sense of humor,  .or practical groundedness?  Does my heart still skip a wee beat at the sound of his/her voice …or steps at the front door.   Or No.  That’s all gone.  [Or never was there.]  Be honest:  do you answer Yes to any of these questions?

2) Have you had a true partnership? Were you a “we”,  an “us”.   Or just two individuals co-habiting? 

Did you have a secure functioning relationship? but fell off that wagon into distrust  Did you make agreements and keep your word?  Secure attachment in a couple’s relationship is the hallmark of what we PACT [Psychobiologic Approach to Couples Therapy [1] ]  therapists consider our most important goal.  Having a true partnership, a “couple bubble”,  is being able to awaken your partner at 3am to be comforted after a nightmare. You have each other backs.  Your relationship highlights sensitivity, mutuality, and safety [above all else].

Are you saying that description is unfamiliar.  That you protect and take care of only yourself? with little trust that the other will take care of you.  You’ve likely been more critical, judgmental toward the other,  more negative than positive.  If you’ve been protecting Self, and attacking the Other, basically in defensive mode.  John Gottman’s [2] research outlines four toxic behaviors that flag a sinking relationship:  criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling,  and worst of all, contempt.  Bottom line:  How “partnered up” do you feel?

3) Have you tried everything? 

Have you worked for several months [not two or 3 sessions!] with an experienced couples therapist to find out a)  why you are in defensive mode,  how you got to the place of  Protect Me First/  Attack the Other?  b)  and what is  y o u r  part in that co-created space. No blame.  No shame.  But do you own your part in the relationship troubles? 

So, if you’ve honestly answered  these questions,  t h e n… you can genuinely say,  your reason for wanting to separate/divorce is for the only one real reason? to end the relationship.   The Decision to end is not a threat. Not a strategy to get him/her to change.  Or a punishment [e.g. for that affair, for being mean …].  Or to prove you are right about … whatever.  Or to draw attention to your pain… or to react to this or that issue.  Deciding to end is not said

in the heat of an argument, or  because you are exhausted and don’t know what else to do.

OK. You are calm. Rational.  You’re ready to decide.  You can now consider how to approach your partner:  do you wish to discuss a) taking a temporary break?  b)  separating  c) divorcing.  Because each is a more escalated more final step. 

“The Holidays”  are many.  This year’s celebrations run from Hanukah in early December to mid-January for Epiphany or Theophany [also known as Three Kings’ Day, or in Greek, The day of the Lights).  As the blog title indicates,  our western culture celebrates in diverse ways, with different names.   What and how we celebrate are similar.  But also have important differences   So I thought I’d be writing to you about a crucial concept – the ability to see multiple perspectives…. in the many holidays we celebrate, and the parallel differences in ourselves. 

MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES.  Many of us have a hard time seeing another person’s perspective.  If you are separated, or divorced, the issue of seeing, then acknowledging, even appreciating your partner’s viewpoint, when it differed from yours, may have been a contributing factor to your splitting up.  Frequent fights are often fueled by how we manage [or don’t] those  “irreconcilable differences’.  When I work as a Psychologist, or as a Divorce Consultant/Mediator,  I find myself often saying that seeing, acknowledging, appreciating another’s viewpoint does not mean submitting to it, or agreeing with it.  But noting it, knowing it, to the other is an important step in communication and caring.

Having these thoughts about the important of seeing, noting, alas tolerating, multiple perspectives led me to wonder how we tolerate one another’s differences in what and how we celebrate.  So I started to research the purpose and history of three popular Western holidays – Hanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa — and I was surprised to find that the details about each revealed more similarities than differences.  So if we can see and tolerate one another’s differences in how and what we celebrate, 

If we look more deeply, we may discover similarities inside our deeper viewpoints and differences.

So I propose, that by looking at differences among the three celebrations, Hanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa, some of their similarities will naturally emerge.

3 WESTERN HOLIDAYS: DIFFERENCES

HANUKAH.  celebrates two aspects of Jewish history:  a religious and political fight for freedom and a “miracle.”  First, it celebrates how the Maccabee family, Mattathias the Hasmonean, a rural Jewish priest, and his 5 sons, led a successful revolt 167-160 BCE to overthrow the Seleucid Empire and regain control of Jerusalem.

THE MIRACLE.  When the victorious Jews reclaimed and purified the Holy [Second] Temple, there was only enough sacred oil for the wicks of the menorah to burn for one day’s lighting.   Miraculously, the story goes, the wicks burned for 8 days. Hence, the name “Hanukah”means in Hebrew “to dedicate.”  It’s become known as the Feast of Dedication, or the Festival of Lights. 

CHRISTMAS’ evolution is deeply embedded in political social cultural history, mostly in Europe. So the darkest coldest days of mid-winter was a typical time to celebrate light and birth:  especially after the winter solstice [December in the Northern Hemisphere]. 

The worship of the Sun (Sol) [necessary for growing crops] was indigenous to the Romans, since the 8th century BC. The upper Roman classes celebrated the birthday of MIRTHA, the god of the “unconquerable sun” [Sol Invictus].  In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated YULE, where sparks from their huge log fires heralded soon-to-be-born pigs and calves.  The Germans honored the pagan god ODEN, who flew through the night sky to observe his people and decide who would live well and who would die.  The SATURNALIA festival in Rome, honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture marked the end of the planting season in December.

THE MIRACLE:  Both Matthew 1:18 and Luke 1:26 and 2:40 describe how Jesus was born to the Virgin Mary, assisted by her husband Joseph, but no date is mentioned.  The “Chronography of 354AD,”  an illustrated manuscript/calendar is the first literary reference to connect the pagan feast of Sol Invictus to Jesus’ birth on December 25 feast day. Its Part 6 notes:  “Birthday of the unconquered, games ordered, thirty races”…”Birth of Christ in Bethlehem, Judea.”   The December 25th date may have been chosen to correspond to the day nine months after early Christians believe Jesus was miraculously conceived.  Or possibly some sources say, Pope Julius I in the 4thc. chose December 25th to integrate Christian observances with the traditional pagan Saturnalia Festival.  By the middle ages, Christianity basically replaced pagan religious practices.

KWANZAA.  Jump ahead several centuries, and to the USA.  Maulana Karenga in 1965  created a specifically African-American holiday , Kwanzaa,  Swahili for “matunda ya kwanza,” meaning “first fruits of the harvest.”  At first, he suggested Kwanzaa as a “oppositional alternative” to Christmas.  But, by 1977,  he integrated its celebration with Christmas. 

The goal is to celebrate “Kawaida”, Swahili for tradition and reason, of the “best of African thought and practice” expressed through 7 principles [Nguzu Saba].  Celebrated on each of 7 days, they highlight self-determination in maintaining unity in the family, community, nation, and race; “To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.”

3 WESTERN HOLIDAYS: SIMILARITIES

It’s striking that all three celebrations emerged from a basic human need:  to survive, physically and spiritually, even in the face of struggle and hardship.  The sun, planting, and harvesting are central for human life and development.   An important reminder of this is celebrated in December, during the dark cold days of Northern Hemisphere winters. 

Another important theme is light, shedding light, literally and figuratively, as learning, knowing one’s history and passing it on to our children.  Struggle, and resistance to oppression, is mentioned or inferred in descriptions of all three holidays.   A great man stepped forward to lead at a crucial point.  There is also the “miracle“ of the Temple’s sacred oil lasting for 8 nights, and the “miracle“ of Jesus’ conception. A fundamental teaching is that all people are created in God’s image and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.   

And finally, values and principles either motivated,  or are the offspring,  of celebrating in a way that highlights family and community.   We depend upon one another and are crucial in one another’s lives, in spite of our differences. 

HOLIDAYS AND YOU, DIVORCED OR SEPARATED

Thus, we can see how celebrations emerged throughout history to be thankful for survival and to strengthen relationships in our communities.  I’ve been reminded in writing this blog that the similarities in our holidays are greater than our differences.  The same holds true in our relationships with people.  The similarities indeed may be stronger than our differences.  If we just looked for them.  So, you can choose to celebrate both differences and similarities.  Enjoy however you choose to celebrate your Holidays.    

4  GUIDELINES  to discussing the topic.   

1.  TIMING Is crucial here.
   1. By timing I’m not just talking about avoiding climbing into bed at 11pm and starting this conversation.   Or saying,  “Hey, we need to talk” as s/he is putting on his/her coat to take your daughter to soccer practice,  or heading to an important meeting with the boss.  We all know to avoid those times!   
   2.  Getting your partner on board to have “a difficult conversation” can be really useful.  E.g. You can ask:  “Are you willing to have a difficult conversation?   When’s a good time for you? “
   3.  I’m talking about neuroscience timing.  You’ve made the decision that you want out when your amygdala, your mid-brain’s emotion center in not in reactive OMG mode.  When the giraffe sees  [ or thinks he sees] a lion in the bushes,  he’s in flight/ flight/ freeze  defensive reactive mode.   OMB  I don’t wanna be eaten mode.   We Psychologists call it “amygdala highjack” mode.   

      Instead, you made your decision when you were calm and rational, when your frontal lobe, your  judgment center,  was fully “online” and operating clearly.  A quiet decision that was repeatedly the same, standing the test of time [more than a week !].   

2. EMPATHY  FIRST.  After you’ve figured out when is a good time for you both to talk, consider your partner’s feelings  Have a soft start.  Use  “I” statements.   [Sound familiar?  These are common guidelines from couples therapists. ]  E.g.  “I’m at the end of my rope.”  ….”We’ve had lots of issues, & I don’t think I can go on.  Where are you? Can we discuss what to do next? 

   If you know your partner well, you know his/ her history of separations, perhaps feeling in the past abandoned, left, even betrayed.   So you may have a good guess how s/he might respond to your introduction,   “Hey, We need to talk.”   [ If you do not know your partner well enough to make an educated guess about how s/he might feel pained or hurt,  then this lack of knowledge [and thus likely of empathy too]  may have contributed to your relationship difficulties.]

3.  DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES is a critical aspect of a Theory of Mind.  This is a “mentalizing” ability to attribute to your mental states,  such as beliefs, desires, motives, knowledge.  And by analogy, you attribute to others the same range of mental states.  You use this understanding all the time, both consciously and unconsciously, to explain and to predict others’ actions and feelings.  If we acknowledge that I have a mind, and you have a mind,  we are likely to differ in our beliefs, desires, motives  etc.  You might believe it’s important to go to your Aunt Millie’s for Sunday dinner, but I believe attending Suzi’s soccer game overrides that.   Partners disagree all the time about every bit of Stuff of Life.   Essential is HOW you disagree.   Especially whether to stay or to leave your relationship. 

   We know that you can’t stay married to someone who doesn’t want to be married to you.  In that context, it’s crucial to know,  and !  to accept that your partner is likely to have a perspective that differs from yours.  You don’t have to  l I k e  the difference:  but accepting and respecting his/her different perspective is a foundation to your discussion process. 

4.  TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.  No victims here.  No devils/ no angels. How many times have you heard that?  Lots probably.   Own your own stuff.  You can only change yourself,  not the other person.   Easy enough to say,  or to write.   But oh so hard to do !

In fact,  all of this is  Oh!  So hard to do!  All the more reason to be compassionate with yourself and your partner as you wend your way through this discussion.  Hopefully together.   

The PR for this holiday is so full of “family” rhetoric and images. But what does “family” mean? Especially when your family has been restructured. You may feel relieved to be out of a difficult marriage, but this family restructuring, as I’ll call it, may not feel good right now. Like carving the turkey before it’s cooked.

GRATITUDE

“Gratitude” is an abstract noun from the medieval Latin “gratitudo,” meaning thankfulness. History books trace this historic American Christian tradition to 1621 (or 1623 is some books) to a shared autumn feast between the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians. After the harvest crops were gathered, Governor William Bradford of the 1620 Pilgrim Colony, proclaimed: “All ye Pilgrims with your wives and little ones, do gather at the Meeting House, on the hill… there to listen to the pastor, and render Thanksgiving to the Almighty God for all His blessings.”

Individual colonies and states then celebrated days of Thanksgiving for the next two centuries. It finally became a national holiday when in 1863 President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed an annual National Day of Thanksgiving “on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.” I’d say that it was no accident that Lincoln reached for gratitude smack in the middle of that most terrible Civil War. Talk about a house divided, a family splitting up!

THANKS. FOR WHAT?

If you’re struggling with this question — for what to be thankful — let me offer you what may be a different approach to think about this. You’ve likely heard of the Positive Psychology movement. Don’t laugh. I too dismissed this theory at first, thinking it was about the frozen smiley faces you see on Disney World posters. It’s not. There is legitimate and strong research that convincingly shows, for example, that positive emotion predicts good features in life, such as a long healthy life and marital satisfaction.

1. Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D.* asked what sounded like a simple question: Does understanding and building happiness trump understanding and alleviating suffering? “People who are impoverished, depressed or suicidal, care about much more than the relief of their suffering. These persons care — sometimes desperately — about virtue, about purpose, about integrity, and about meaning. (Seligman, 2002, p. 6).
2. His seminal book reminds us of an earlier psychological distinction between feelings as “states,” momentary occurrences, and “traits,” longer term personality characteristics, positive or negative, which remain constant over time and in different contexts.
3. Good feeling and gratification result when we activate the positive characteristics of strengths and virtues, “among them valor, perspective, integrity, equality, loyalty.”
4. And positive emotions, such as “confidence, hope, and trust,” and positive institutions, such as “democracy, strong family, and free press” … “serve us best not when life is easy, but when life is difficult.” These buffer us against misfortune and help build resilience.

STRENGTHS & VIRTUES

Seligman believes that negative emotions dissipate when we involve ourselves in philanthropic acts; exercising kindnesses, in which we are totally engaged, result in the deepest gratification. Thus, engaging our strengths and virtues imbues our life with authenticity and a deep sense of well-being.

And so, I ask you. What kindnesses fully engage you? What are your values and virtues? Which are you most proud of? If you have kids, which of your strengths would you like them to see and to emulate? Five years, ten years from now, how would you like your kids to remember this holiday, this Thanksgiving, or many Thanksgivings? No, I’m not being Pollyannish. You really do have a choice. You can choose the positive road taken that reveals your strength(s) of character. Just as your family has restructured, you can restructure your approach to highlight your positive feelings.

A REMEMBRANCE

I’ve a vivid memory of one Thanksgiving when I first arrived in NYC for graduate school. A bunch of us decided to watch the Macy’s parade balloons blown up on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving Thursday. This laborious process takes place near the Natural History Museum in a courtyard you enter at Columbus Ave. and W. 79 St. A drizzly rain started and the wind was whipping up. The balloon handlers struggled with the heavy ropes to keep steady each huge balloon as it was filled with helium. They’d been inflating the balloons since 3 p.m. that afternoon and would likely work into the wee night hours.

When the parade took place on Thanksgiving morning, the previous night’s struggles were gone, and it was not evident that it had taken an entire year of preparation, including designing, modeling, cutting and assembling materials. Unless you knew, the boots on the ground were not evident either: 90 handlers required for each full-size balloon, about 2,000 handlers in all, with 200 dress fitters for the costumes, 400 kids, 300 float escorts, 900 clowns… I could go on. But you get the idea: that it may take you a good deal of preparation to be present in your best self. Inhabiting and using a Positive Psychology approach may be like a Macy’s Parade balloon requiring some (or much?) laborious preparation in order to float along with apparent ease, bringing a smile to child and adult alike. For your labors, may you both offer and harvest many kindnesses within your [restructured] family over these days of giving thanks.

*Reference: Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. (Simon & Schuster, 2002).

WHY DIVORCE NOW? We’ll be talking about how divorcing when you’re older raises more existential issues about what makes a happy and meaningful Life. But why would someone wait until her 60’s, 70’s,  even 80’s to divorce?  Many a Grayee will say s/he wants to make the most of  “what’s left of  her life”, and never mentions dying.   Not every Grayee is consciously aware that Death may be riding through the next town over,  or even loitering on their corner.  Or, who knows? At their door.   But we as professional need to be aware.   Like Alice falling down the Rabbit Hole,  as we age, relationships and decisions,  regrets and goals, can turn topsy turvey.

UNIQUE MOTIVATORS.  In our two-part workshop on Sat. afternoon Oct 3, Merri and I unbraid some underground meanings of why the number of Graying divorces has skyrocketed  — 1 in 10 in 1990,  now 1 in 4 in 2010.   We ask: why divorce now?”  at your age?!  What are the Grayee’s unique motivators?  We define the Narrative Arc in a person’s life.  Divorce is a detour, we propose,  which can be positive or negative.  We as professionals can help make that divorcee’s detour more positive when we understand the developmental tasks we all need to tackle to progress on to the next stage of our lives., and where the Grayee gets stuck. 

WHO IS THE GRAYING DIVORCEE?  We review how attachment and developmental issues shift as we age.  How divorce seems to enter a person’s Narrative Arc  at the juncture where s/he is struggling with specific developmental tasks.   How the awareness of Time Left,  and of one’s mortality, shifts everything. 

IN-TAKE TOOL.  Based on our research,  Merri and I  devised an  “55+” In-take tool which we offer to you in Workshop Part 2.  [You can also download it directly from my website, www.divorcecoachny.com,   go to the “Resources” page,  then to “Forms”. ] We worked hard on this tool, pulling together the theoretical ideas we present in Part 1.  The 2 cases put into practice our major point —  that we as professionals can make specific changes so we can better serve this graying population.

THE END.  And so here I was.  Writing up power point slides about how a Grayee’s divorce journey differs profoundly, existentially, from a younger person’s divorce journey.   Age matters.  Time matters.  Endings matter.  Mom and I had talked about how getting older sucks.  At least, many aspects of ageing are indeed painful.  And so she dies just as I’m writing about all this stuff.   Not only was death on my power point slides, but knocking at my door.  Striding in to my living room — hood scythe and all.  Striking my consciousness right between my eyeballs.  So I’m powerfully reminded to ask the next Grayee who walks in to my office,  as the Caterpillar asks Alice in her Wonderland:  “Who are youuuuuu?”