Confronting my death

It's occurring to me that death may be more difficult for the survivors than for the person who's died. As I've reflected on the death of the wife of a close friend, and then some more on a couple of old golf buddies from the neighborhood, I've realized my attitude toward my own pending death - no I'm not expecting it to be near-at-hand - has shifted sometime in recent years.

I don't mean by shifted that there has been some dramatic epiphany. I teased a younger golf buddy last week that old age doesn't arrive via an announcement. It's not like there's a ceremony with trumpets and a flourish! For me it's been more like a gradual acceptance, accompanied by an easing of the fear of death.

As I've worked to ease the pain of my friend and the people who constituted her community, I've had to confront the impact that one's death has on one's community. In this case the death was one of those horror deaths, unexpected, before-her-time, and violent. It left all of us who knew her, and him, impacted and struggling with the unfairness of it.

Today I was watching the morning news about a man in Kansas who went on a shooting rampage and killed several of his co-workers. The reporters succeeded in getting interviews with the loved ones of a couple of the victims, and as they shared their anguish, I realized it was very close to that experienced by my friend when he lost his wife.

Shortly thereafter the news was showing pictures of disasters from storms in the Pacific, where entire villages were wiped out by cyclones, and the survivors were receiving no aid due to the wide-spread nature of the storm and the isolation of these villages. More people living the shock of instant loss.

I recall thinking as I watched, that at any given moment there are likely to be thousands of people on this planet who are dying in unexpected circumstances each and every day, leaving behind tens of thousands of people who had to deal with the tragedy and consequences of those deaths.

It got me to thinking about my death. That's when I realized there was no fear about it. I can authentically say, if I were to unexpectedly die tomorrow I would be OK about it. I'm happy and fulfilled in the life I've lead. At the same time I began to think about the impact on my family and close friends, if it was sudden and tragic. It occurred to me it would be harder for them to accept than it is for me to contemplate. Of course! Once I'm dead, I don't really have anymore thoughts about it.

I could see that much of the sadness and grief we experience after an unexpected death, is not for the person who has passed. It's for those of us who have survived. It's not about the death, it's about the loss. And while there's a bit of that dynamic with an expected passing - as in old age death, or death from a long illness - it is greatly tempered by the lead time we have to prepare for the final occasion..That time to prepare seems key to the degree to which we are impacted. It seems to soften the grief. It seems to allow us to more clearly celebrate the life of the person who's passed and less necessarily deal with the loss in our own lives.

Another piece that's become clear to me is how much each of us, to a greater or lesser extent, is surrounded by a community of people who love us. It's not so apparent to us in our day-to-day existences, as we are focused on the business of survival. It's not there like a presence, even with our closest friends and family. It's almost as though if we are not confronted by it in some way - a spoken word, an act, a gesture, an acknowledgement of some kind - the background of love becomes transparent. It disappears.

Like ripples in a pond we each have communities of families, friends, and those who respect us, that emanate out into the world to impact hundreds or maybe thousands of others. Each direct relationship constitutes another whole set of relationships who though they may be one step removed are also impacted by the first circle. And the second circle begets a third and so on, out into the world.

In these moments therefore of unexpected deaths, the grief pours out into those circles, that community that is attached to and surrounding each of us, such that the entire community is impacted and needs to deal with that onslaught of suddenness, and sadness, and loss.

What I am wondering is how, during these moments of community grief, we can rise above the suffering to celebrate the life and contribution of our loved one. Cathartic if we can? Yes. Easy to do? No.

And how, before my own pending last moment, do I prepare my community to be able to celebrate our relationship and the time we have enjoyed together, so that the loved ones who survive me, can go about living their lives to their fullest?

And oh, by-the-way, we have a choice! We all have a choice. We can deny, avoid, or be numb to, the circles that constitute our community. It's easy. Just go on living with your head down, attending to your survival, and your community will disappear. Outta-sight-outta-mind.

We can also choose to confront, be concerned for/responsible for, the existence and import of our relationships. There are the villages that raised us, the communities that love, accept, and support us. There are the colleagues we work with and with whom we share purpose, the family that puts up with our idiosyncrasies, our religious and political families, our sports and adventure families; the people we drink with, dance with, laugh and cry with; the people who know and love the people we know and love, and so know of us and accept us as part of their world. And so on out, out personal ripples on the lakes of our lives.

Choosing to be responsible for our communities begets integrity. And in some circles it's called wisdom.

There's Hope On The Horizon

What's occurring to me as I listen through the noise and drama of U.S.our political discourse, are the signals as to where our collective psyche is heading. OK, maybe discourse is too polite a word. Still, as distressing as it can be to listen, it leaves me somewhat optimistic about our future. Some of you may, of course, think I've finally devolved far enough into old age, that my senility is showing. Just humor me.

It's occurred to me there is always an emerging redirection between the young and the old, in today's terms, between the baby-boomers, generation X, and the millennials (gen Y) so-to-speak. As our elders (now the baby-boomers) age, they seem to naturally drift more to the right, wanting to maintain the familiar - keeping things as they have been. And to be sure, it's a drift, as distinct from a conscious choice.

According to brain scientists, as we age, and more of our thinking has become hard-wired over the years, we want things to stay the same. Positive neuroplasticity gets more difficult and our negativity biases begin to drive the bus so-to-speak. According to experts, ""The brain continuously scans for bad news; as soon as it finds the bad news, it overly focuses on it."

"Negativity bias is really good for animals surviving in the wild. It's what Hanson calls the "eat lunch don’t be lunch" mentality. But these days, we aren't exactly running from predators, yet our brains are still functioning as if we're in the wild."1.

So drifting to a more conservative view of the way things ought to be (i.e. keep-things-the-same) makes coping in the moment appear desirable. Keeping things the way there have been seems to reduce the scariness that comes along with living. Almost all core value change is a surprise and seems threatening when we're older.

And it seems from my own experience that this shift begins to occur especially after aging into the early 60's; not for everyone mind you, just the critical mass. And with such large numbers of people in the baby-boomer and early gen X grouping, that majority adds up to a big opinion block.

Juxtapose that aging let's-stick-with-what-we-already-know attitude, against the newly forming beliefs of the young(er) generation(s), who have in their youth, naturally arrived at more socially accommodative thinking regarding the biggest social issues of the moment, and you may get a glimpse of the immediate disparity as well as the future that's in the wings and ready to unfold.

These attitude changes seem to come along about every 10-20 years or so, although the ubiquitous media environment we live in today seems to be speeding new attitude adoption more quickly across our young cultures, accelerating consensus in their "community". Back in the 60 and 70's, even with TV, it took a little longer for each new set of mores to formulate across the high school and college populations, and subsequently take root in those subsequent in-power communities.

Now no generation is in complete accord. Each generation brings along its own outliers. And each generation formulates what we could think of as the core values of its community. The power isn't in the attitudes of any single individual in any of these groupings, it's in the thought and leadership community they become as they age into their 40's and 50's and take defacto control of our culture what I'm calling here the in-power community..

Once an in-power community ages into their 40 and 50's they naturally embody and determine the core attitudes of our national social and economic discourse. Of course, they aren't one voice, but many. And they don't completely agree among themselves. Yet the core of what they do agree on, will have noticeably shifted when compared to the core agreements among their elders. And so each succeeding generation brings with it, a wave of new standards, ideas, and social and political agreements.

Today's teens and millennials are already settled on issues about which we are still arguing in our political debates and diatribe. They do not dispute global warming, but instead are focusing on what there is to be done about it. For them, it's personal. It's forecast to have a direct and dramatic impact on their lives and their ability to succeed. And so they are quite concerned about it and focused on it, despite the current political arguments about it.

Our next in-power generation is not concerned for getting rid of illegal immigrants.As far as they are concerned, those people are already here, and the children of those immigrants are already sitting next to them in school, or working next to them in their jobs; and so have already been accepted as belonging.

Our next in-power generation is increasingly tiring of religious righteousness. They are voting their tiredness by participating less in religious institutions. Current poling projections are that our national majority will claim no religious affiliation within the next two generations. What will happen to the tea party in the U.S. when our national majority is atheistic? Or maybe agnostic? Or maybe what we are currently calling "humanistic"?

Imagine a generation of 40 and 50 year-olds, the critical mass and leadership of whom, have already accepted full racial and religious integration, women's rights, LGBT and immigrant acceptance; along with an active commitment to countering global warming, and implementing public policies based on sustainability. If that attitude were in place today, would we be listening to these bazaar 2016 political conversations that assault us every day?

When I confront the available pointers toward the attitudes of the coming Z generation (my grandchildren) and beyond, the preceding is what I see coming. Current political, cultural and institutional resistance aside, this is the now forming core attitude of those who will be the in-power community in the U.S. and maybe the world, in another decade and beyond.
As I said in the title: There's hope on the horizon.


1. - Rick Hanson, neuropsychologist and author of the book Hardwiring Happiness

While I enjoy my dreams, sleeping is no longer fun

Last night as I climbed back into bed around 4:30 AM after visiting the lue, I automatically turned my electric blanket from 1 to 4 and rolled over on my left side. My left hand came up and pressed my right cheek off to the side toward my right ear so I could breath through my right nostril. Don't worry, it gets better.

You see, in my old age, sleeping has become a well orchestrated battle, going back, believe it or not to when I was three years old and got scarlet fever. Well that last piece anyway, is according to my mother, and a doctor I recall seeing when I was around 13.

I went to that doctor because I had a persisting blockage of my right sinus which left me in serious pain. He shoved some sort of gunk up my nose into my sinus which about sent me through the ceiling, but thankfully shortly thereafter, completely drained my sinus.

It seems my nasal passage, due to a twice-broken nose from playing sandlot baseball, was so narrow as to be almost closed. So whenever I came down with any virus related sickness, I was at risk for having that sinus cavity get infected due to a lack of proper drainage and air circulation. And oh, by-the-way my twice broken nose then grew to be substantially bigger than it would have ordinarily been according to that doctor. For you see in those days, when you broke your nose they didn't do anything to fix it. They just left it set and heal by itself. I know I've probably already told you more about my nose than you wanted to hear. However it's a critical piece of background for my seventy-five-year-old sleeping issue.

So back to bed. I like, or more truthfully am hard-wired to believe I like, to sleep with the windows open in cool or cold weather. Last night as the outside temperature tumbled into the teens, the lunacy of that hard wiring was obvious, even to an old curmudgeon like me.

Remember the electric blanket setting I mentioned earlier? Well last night a 4 setting wasn't enough. I had to go up to 7 on a scale of 10. And this while wearing a long shirt, long stretch yoga pants, great multi-colored striped socks, and a cotton beany! I looked like something out of an old scrooge cartoon. Lest you think I'm being a bit dramatic, I'm attaching a picture of my sleeping attire, taken this morning before I undressed to get dressed. Somehow getting-undressed-to-get-dressed seems like a silly routine, doesn't it?

The reason for the gloves, you see, is that I've discovered that my old-age-thinning-skin seems ever-so-much-more effected by touching cold surfaces at 4 AM.. And so I rolled over, after upping the electric blanket setting, and pulled a pair of cotton gloves out from underneath the pillow where I store them, and put them on. This wee hour maintenance was necessary because the back of my hands feel like they are burning whenever they touch the (freezing!) cold sheets that were supposed to be protecting me. Has my hard-wiring lunacy yet become apparent?

To understand some of the issue with my sleeping we need to digress to a bit of physics here. You see, over time I have engineered a whole system of sleeping between two sheets in a cold room. It begins with 1000 thread high sheen cotton sheets, which are both thicker and smoother, so that they provide a bit more insulation along with more slipperiness so they don't trap me when I roll from side-to-side during the night.

Along with the sheets, my winter garb is all in high-tec, slippery, stretch sorts of fabrics, smooth so-as-to foster rolling over without becoming tangled up in my sheets. I've discovered by experience over the years that normal cotton fabric nightwear doesn't work that way. It tends to scrape and tangle with cotton sheets. There are however two exceptions to my high-tec fabric rule: my beany (remember, I am bald and we lose 7 to 10% of our body heat through our heads y'all) and my gloves which are cotton. I have tried winter golf gloves and a stretch beany in the past, but they were either too sticky or didn't provide sufficient insulation.

Just one more piece of information about the bedroom scene. In the winter with the window open and the dry air, I must sleep with a humidifier, or eventually, begin to suffer nose bleeds from the dryness. This also necessitates using ear plus to drown out the humidifier sounds along with the invariable house wren that is fond of sitting outside of my bedroom window to so thoroughly announce the beginning of the day around 6 AM each morning

Still with me? Ok. So now you have all the background you need for me to finish the story of my nightly sleeping ordeal.

So here I am laying on my left side with my left hand holding my sinus open by pushing my right cheek away from my nose. Got that picture? Now my right arm starts to seek a position where it can rest without aggravating the pain that nightly emanates out of my right shoulder socket - this according to my friendly Duke doctor, being due the arthritis that has so happily taken root in the socket of my shoulder. So each time I start out lying on my left side, my right arm automatically goes into a-pain-free-comfortable-position-search-mode until after trying all options, it settles on one that if not pain-free, is at least less painful.

Lest you think, I am now happily off into slumber land, no such luck. You see, I can't stay in my left-side-beginning-this-sleep-cycle-position for a long time because - now just imagine yourself in this position - my left hand eventually goes to sleep! This of course, because it's being held in an elevated position to push on my right cheek. And eventually when my left hand invariably starts to tingle, I wake enough to execute one of those rollovers I've been talking about that require slippery sheets and nightwear, to end up lying on my right side with my right cheek being pulled back toward my right ear as it frictions against the pillow, so I can continue to breath out of my right nostril. And of course, if you think about it, I am now lying on my right arthritic shoulder, which immediately lets me know it is not happy about my position.

Throughout my tale of woe, you may be wondering, "well what about breathing through the left side of your nose?" And of course I do. However it's not apparent to me. It's become a psychological phobia, whenever I cannot breath through the right side of my nose. It's for sure I wouldn't make a good spy or anything where I might get captured and water-boarded. Because if that happened to me I'd give it all up before the first drop of water hit the fabric. In fact I'd start confessing just by having the towel (or whatever water-boarders use) put over my face. Do you think that qualifies as a phobia?

"Well Brian", you might ask, "why don't you just sleep on your back?" I'm not sure how much time you have, because that's another whole deal about snoring, and sleep apnea when I sleep on my back, and having to lose weight so as to deal with those issues, and not being able to hold my sinus cavity open when lying on my back, etc. All this by-the-way after finally having an operation to open my nasal passage about seven years back, which while providing a dramatic difference, didn't do enough to make breathing easy and natural.

So last night as I laid on my right side with my left hand massaging my right shoulder (it seems to help dissipate the pain) in an early morning stupor, it came to me. I need to share my nightly ordeal to see if it's just me, or if just maybe, there are other sufferers out there with whom I can commiserate.

I'm still searching for a pain-free, open-right-nasal-passage-position in which to sleep. However I'm resigned that it may never happen in my life time, which is accelerating toward its ending. Thanks to my Fitbit which records and so elegantly charts my nightly tossings and turnings I have a complete graphic display of my suffering every morning - which only seems to serve to exacerbate the ordeal. Happily, I've discovered our bodies and brains somehow seem to cope and so between my nightly excursions to the bathroom and my between-the-sheets-ordeals, I seem to manage to get somewhere between 7 and 8 hours of sleep within a 9 to 9 1/2 hour period in bed. Maybe as I get older I'll need to extend my in-bed time out to perhaps half a day.

I sincerely hope the rest of you have an easier time of it at night. And tonight as it's forecast to drop to around 10, I'm leaving the window closed.

Oh in case you're wondering, our orchids are growing just to the left of where I'm standing when I took my scrooge picture.

The LaSagesse Hotel

Having visited LaSagesse Hotel in St Davids parish in Grenada, under very trying circumstances, for myself, a very close friend, and the owners and staff at La Sagesse, I thought to capture here a sense of the spirit and extraordinary character of this place.

Nestled in a cove against LaSagesse Beach, facing south toward the Atlantic Ocean, on the eastern side of Grenada, perhaps 25 minutes and a hundred roaming turns from the airport in St. Georges this family operated hotel has been a favorite of Europeans since its founding approximately thirty years ago. It’s may actually not be a hundred turns but when you’re not used to quick-paced island driving on incredibly curvy roads, it seems like it, or maybe more if you count the swerving our driver (Boney) effortlessly executed to avoid potholes and other vehicles. Someday maybe Boney will actually count how many curves there are, since I asked him, “How many curves there were between the airport and the hotel?” And I also asked, “How many trips have you made taking people to and from LaSagesse in the 25 years he’s been making this drive?” A question to which he laughed out loud.

After 10 minutes of watching the ease with which Boney navigated through and around, I stopped reacting by trying to jamb on the brakes every so often and actually relaxed. It was clear I was safe and would arrive in one piece.

Boney is probably the first person, those staying at LaSagesse, will meet on their journey to the hotel, and is representative of the treat in store for one during their experience there; as I discovered when I suddenly visited to support a friend, who was staying at the hotel, and who had lost a loved one in a tragedy. 

La Sagesse is known as an boutique eco-hotel. It’s a small 12 room facility built out of a British “manor house” originally built and owned by British Lord Brownlow and operated as a banana plantation until it was attacked and looted during the communist takeover on the island beginning in 1979.

Locals then resented the plantations’ blockage of passage to the beach on which the manor home had been built as it was one of the nicest beaches in this part of Grenada and had been openly accessible to the population right up until the plantation blocked access.

A few years after the communist overthrow of the government in 1983, the US government sent troops to the island to oust the communist government after being implored to do so by other island governments in the region. A few readers may remember that the reason offered at the time, was ostensibly to free approximately 240 US students, who were attending St Georges medical school on the island.

Anyway sometime after the reestablishment of democratic government on Grenada, which by-the-way I was told by any number of local folks, they considered as a blessing for the island, their independence, and their current national psyche, Mike Moranski came visiting to Grenada casting about to find his future.

Now you need a bit of background on Mike as he qualifies as what I call a “character”, a character in the best sense of the word. Without going into too much detail, it seems Mike had lived a little before coming to Grenada. He’d been married and divorced, taught at the collegiate level in the U.S. and after his first divorce, traveled the world as a wandering explorer for a few years. While all that I recall is that he spent some decent time in India, and on a Kibbutz in Israel, I believe there were several other countries through which he traipsed during his walk-about.

So Mike is at once, an intelligent, educated, thoughtful, and funny man. Add to that his genuine enjoyment of people, his completely authentic humanity and caring nature, and you begin to get some measure of the man who has founded this little almost-secret favorite get-away nestled in this cove in southeast Grenada. Mike’s current – number 3 – wife, Lynn Kelly, I would add, shares the ubiquitous caring nature and enjoyment of people with Mike and the rest of the LaSagesse staff. Those who own and maintain this establishment are a big reason why guests come here.

I refer to LaSagesse as almost-secret-favorite-getaway because, although it is well-known on Grenada, it is not so in the larger noisy tourist vacation market, and certainly not in the U.S., which you could think of as unfortunate, or perhaps, as a condition that contributes to the special nature of this delightful little get-away.

I’m guessing that maybe half of the visitors who stay at LaSagesse are from the UK, at least, during my unexpected stay in late January 2016, it seemed, that was the case. There were also guests from other European countries staying there, from, I was told, Germany, France, and some of the Scandinavian countries.

My American friends were there almost by chance, having booked their stay for just two nights as a stop to a longer stay on a cocoa plantation elsewhere on Grenada. They had found LaSagesse’s web site after some substantial online searching and were attracted to its home grown cuisine and off-the-beaten-path location.

Now of course, LaSagesse didn’t just pop into being. Its twelve rooms came into existence over time in piecemeal fashion as Mike and his 2^nd wife, Nancy – a Grenadian – started by renting rooms in their manor home, the 2^nd floor of which they used (and still use) as their home. Over time, as a core of visitors found and repeat-visited, they added an addition here and a small building there, until they, and their regular staff, settled on twelve as the maximum number of rooms which they wished to provide whilst maintaining the family flavor of this establishment. And so thirty-some years later they thrive - through the ups and downs of Caribbean economies and vicissitudes of the region, including, not insignificantly, Hurricane Ivan in 1985.

I know it seems like I’m wandering around in my story, but I need to give you the fullness of this special little place from its history along with my personal experiences during six nights of what seemed like a lifetime there.

I came to LaSagesse on a moment’s notice responding to an anguished call to support a friend whose wife was tragically killed the 2^nd day of his and her visit to Grenada. I came with no knowledge or expectations of the people or the place, knowing only that once I arrived, “there would be a room for me”.

It took two tortured days to get there from my home in NC, not because it’s difficult to get there, but because I was booking last minute from Raleigh which had been almost closed down by a snow storm and because many of the flights going into Grenada were heavily booked with hundreds of US students headed down to begin their 2^nd semester at St. Georges University – a 6000 student university best known as a medical school. Oh, and did I say that my beloved “character” Mike, is also a faculty member at the university, teaching comparative religion and art history, and probably an assortment of other eclectic subjects in the humanities department? How could I have missed that?

My harrowing trip down, through Fort Lauderdale, then overnight in Trinidad, and finally into Grenada on the evening of the second day, was almost worth another article in itself. Ordinarily getting there is fairly direct, through any of several one-stop routes for most people. But when I finally arrived at the St. Georges airport my travel woes evaporated and I was welcomed into a completely unexpected experience.

Here I was arriving to hug, comfort, and support my dear friend through his grief, only to find Boney-the-driver consoling my friend when I exited the airport building. And while my purpose in being in Grenada seemed singular, that is, supporting my friend, I came unknowingly to my forthcoming and amazing experience with this La Sagesse “family”.

While I had expected to be met by my friend and immediately begin supportive conversations with him on the trip to whatever hotel we were going to in the dark at 10 PM at night, I did not expect to discover Boney-the-driver consoling my friend as they stood outside the airport waiting for me to exit through customs. 

And while our conversation in the van/bus as we headed to the hotel was focused on the events leading to my friend’s wife’s death and the implications that followed, there were a smattering of references to the LaSagesse Hotel sprinkled throughout his relating the recent events and his experiences to me. The references regarding the hotel, however weren’t to the facilities, but were more about the people who worked there, and the guests my friend had met in the four days since he’d arrived with his wife.

Upon arrival I was greeted by Mike and Lynn who immediately set about having some food brought to me, even though most of the staff had already finished serving the evening mean and left work. They had my bags taken to my room and set about making me feel like I was an old friend, while also telling me how things operated, and sharing their anguish regarding my friend’s tragedy. It certainly was NOT a normal, belly-up-to-the check-in-desk sort of experience. When I asked if they wanted my credit card numbers, they said, “Oh we’ll take care of all that later. Right now you just focus on (my friend) and what you need to do for him. If there’s anything you need from us, just let us know.”

When I eventually got to my room I was impressed by its cleanliness and an obvious not-hotelish sort of decor. I more felt like I had entered someone’s private bedroom. It just happened it was mine. There was no air-conditioning, although it seemed cool enough. There were lots of windows, all open, and all allowing a constant gentle sea breeze to flow through the room aided by an overhead fan over the queen sized bed. And did I mention the constant sound of gently breaking waves from somewhere nearby?

The next morning I arose around seven, finished unpacking and headed out to survey the facility and get some food. And bingo, as I walked around the manor house looking for the restaurant, there was Lynn headed back toward the house, telling me she had just made coffee at the restuarant, and I should go and have some.

Lynn also explained that all the food, the vegetables, the meats, the eggs and the fish served at La Sagesse was locally grown, raised, or caught on the island and bought from farmers and suppliers and farmers markets in the region, and fresh-cooked daily by their regular staff cooks. She said, “that’s why I’d be noticing daily changes to the menus as they reflected additions and deletions according to what was available during their daily shopping excursions.” It reminded a bit of the way it so often occurs in Italian and French villages.

I asked Lynn where I should go to register and check in and she said, “that had all been taken care of and I didn’t need to worry about it.” Sound odd? It did to me, but I didn’t challenge it and went off to find the coffee.

It didn’t take long before other guests began to trickle in to what I had delightfully discovered was a beach front restaurant, sitting not more than maybe 40 or 50 yards from the breaking waves rolling onto the a clean and beautiful LaSagesse Beach that stretched off in a horseshoe shape toward the south east.

Breakfast was the first that I realized I was in for a gastronomical treat, both in selection and in freshness. The service was both unobtrusive and attentive. And although I had only then begun to learn the names of the staff, it seemed they all knew me, or about me. And in fact throughout my stay, I never once received a check, or was asked for a credit card or a tip. Somehow the only experience I had was one of being completely taken care of.

As I went about attending to the welfare of my friend and the many pressing things that constantly needed his attention, I discovered over time, that the other guests, the staff and the owners of LaSagesse were also attending to taking care of both my friend in his grief, myself, and family uncle Hal who flew in to also support my friend, a day or so after I arrived.

As the three of us dealt with the aftermath of the tragedy and the legalities of it, I had the experience that the “hotel” surrounded and held us, not just as staff and servers, but as a close friend-back-home might do. Every day Mike and/or Lynn would visit our table to sit with us and talk, to tell us a little about themselves, and the history of LaSagesse and of Grenada. And of course Lynn would tell us what she had baked that morning for desert that evening.

Now I don’t want to make it sound like their visits were about proselytizing themselves or the hotel. It was more like sitting down for coffee or maybe and evening cocktail with a good friend. Nor do I want to make it seem like their visits with us were exclusive. I many times witnessed them doing the same with the other guests, both in their warm welcomes of new arrivals and in their attentiveness throughout the day.

Then there’s the environment. Normal daytime temperatures seemed to edge up into the mid to upper 80’s. There were almost daily tropical showers that would pop up from nowhere, wet everything down, and leave as fast as they came. It turns out the water supply for the hotel is from collected rain water, while the hot water is provided by solar heating.

The nicely groomed tropical grounds of the hotel are shared by the guests with two cats and two dogs, One of which, Ziggy-the-cat visited me in my room one morning to demonstrate her obvious fondness for me – or probably more truthfully for the scratching I was enjoying giving her behind her ears in order to hear her purr. And I mean a purr!

Aside from my fondness for cats, another of my liking's was satisfied when I discovered, growing from the palm trees planted next to the restaurant, a half dozen different species of tropical orchids – all there in full and glorious bloom, displaying their beautiful yellow and white and purple and red color mixtures – a feast for the eyes.

It wasn’t long before I was invited by Mike and a group of guests and local neighbors to join a morning swim in the ocean. This little group exercise is, weather permitting, an almost daily event, wandering off the beach a hundred or so yards, then sliding south along the beach for about 45 minutes to an hour of easy swimming and healthy exercise.

Now of course there’s a limit to what I can tell you about LaSagesse because most of the guests at the hotel, being there on “holiday” as the Brits say, means they had different concerns and activities than my friend, myself, and Uncle Hal. While I did get to do a half-day visit into St. Georges, the beautiful Caribbean waterfront capital of Grenada, as well as a quick tour of St Georges University, other guests were off on other tours, visiting other sites, and/or engaging in other walk-about’s.

Lynn would sometimes invite folks to come along with her in a morning hike up the hill behind the hotel to see the ocean views from up high, one-of-which I joined. It seems that in addition to running the hotel with her husband, Lynn is also training to do “another” marathon, and so, goes off on daily treks up and down the hills for maybe 8 or so miles each day.

I could labor on some more about my experience at LaSagesse, but I’ll end here with my departure, as I sat down with Mike to settle up my bill for the week. He went over the cost for my accommodations, showed me, and added up the restaurant checks for my meals for the week (the staff had identified me as “big Brian”) and totaled up my bill which he handed to me and said to give to the staff at the bar after I’d had my last meal, and they would take care of posting it to my credit card. Nothing stuffy about this checkout procedure.

Early the next morning Boney-the-driver, knocked on my door before 6 AM to be sure I was up and getting ready to drive to the airport to catch my flight home. On the way to the airport he told me his version of the history of LaSagesse and Mike, and his, and the staff’s, fondness for Mike and Lynn and what the hotel meant to them - this little local Grenadian community – not your ordinary taxi ride to the airport. The best way to describe it is to say "everything".

I guess you can tell by now, I'd absolutely recommend the LaSagesse Hotel in Grenada, only if however, you want a special non-typical experience at a  Caribbean “holiday” spot.

Welcome Home

Anne bought a special made coconut custard pie as a welcome home present for my return from Grenada. I asked her if she thinks I need fattening up? She said no, she thinks I look better than I have in a while, much to her surprise. Seems she expected that all the goings-on down in Grenada would take a toll on my well being. That got me to wondering. And you know the kinds of trouble I get into when I start to wonder.

What do events like what I've just been through and Brian M, and his Uncle Hal, and the people at La Sagesse, are still dealing with in Grenada, contribute to our lives? Anything? Is it possible that it in some way this has had a positive impact on me; and could well have a positive impact on Brian, and on the folks at La Sagesse Hotel?

Is there some not-so-obvious-positive in getting so dramatically and deeply related to other human beings? Could it be that I have been more impacted by the nature of them - their essential humanness - than by the tragedy we were all so touched by? Would I have been as open to being befriended by the other guests at the hotel and by the proprietors there. Or would I have in my smallness been thrown to deflect those offerings, those connections of love and regard so freely provided without concern for appearances or social  conventions? Yes, I think so.

As the week progressed I've found myself once again awakening to the the unbridled generosity of whole people are; and despite the grief of the events surrounding us all, the nurturing impact of feeling valued, loved and worthy. And I don't mean just me. I mean all of thiose touched by the event in time.

And so maybe Anne's perception has some truth. Maybe I just don't appear to be better. Maybe I/we are somehow all better for what these events have provided for us all. Just wondering.

Intense experience

I'm home from Grenada, noticing this morning how surreal the whole experience seems. I recall when reading here about Sandy Bechtold, Lynn Montgomerry and Paul Osimo's deaths, feeling sad for the loss of a friend, and for the loss their mates were experiencing. I realize now I really had no idea what it was like for the mates and the families.of those past friends. The difference in intensity is dramatic.

It struck me this morning, almost like a revelation, when I saw the "clean" sticky my Anne posts on the dishwasher to tell me it's time to empty it (that's one of the jobs, I've been assigned), "Oh. Yes. Life goes on, doesn't it?"

Seeing the news, hearing about the primary elections in Iowa when I got to the Grenada airport yesterday, talking with some folks from NC at the airport about our shared hopes for the Panthers in the Super Bowl, and walking in a kind of daze from gate 19 to gate 41 at the Miami airport between flights (my 3/4 miles of exercise for the day), all confronted me with, Life goes on, doesn't it?"

Being my real, as opposed to imaginary age, has never been so obvious or confronting. I don't have the physical or emotional stamina I expected to have through this and the reality of that really came home to roost, toward the end of my time with Brian M.

Brian has climbed up out of the deep dark hole of racking pain so he's able to grieve without being overwhelmed by it. He's still in Grenada, expecting to finish his testimony at the preliminary hearing on Friday, and hopefully, come home with Jess and her uncle on Saturday.

Not just this community of friends, but whole other communities in his life circle have emerged to provide their love and support. Not the least of them have been the people of Grenada, the authorities there, and the unbelievable owners, staff and guests at La Sagesse Hotel. If you want a Caribbean experience of being loved and honored as a guest, I recommend a vacation there.