Armageddon, PAP Machines, and Other Bedtime Stories

 There are seasons in life when the practical and the existential collide in the oddest places—like a hospital sleep lab, a mortality table, or a phone that won’t stop ringing because someone you love remembers the past more clearly than the present. What begins as a simple medical test can open a trapdoor into bigger questions: how we measure a life, how we outlive the people who shaped us, and how memory—our own and others’—keeps tugging us backward even as time keeps pushing us forward. This is a story about breathing, dreaming, aging, and the strange comfort of knowing that even the actuarial “house odds” can’t quite account for the human heart….AI

 

Tomorrow I’m spending the night in the hospital for a sleep study. I flunked the at‑home test—apparently I’m not breathing in the “safe zone.” My sleep doctor said I stop breathing or am breathing very shallow on an average of 64 times an hour. 30 times an hour is considered severe and over 60 times is considered life‑threatening. (And here I though I'd slept exceptionally well the night of the test.) Several times after surgery, anesthesiologists have told me I’m a shallow breather, so I’m not surprised to learn I sleep the same way. I’ll be getting one of the PAP machines—whichever kind the test tomorrow night determines I need. I just hope I can actually sleep in a hospital setting so they can get what they need.

On one hand, I’m looking forward to getting the machine, knowing I’m less likely to die in my sleep. On the other hand, it’s oddly empowering to know that if Armageddon breach our shores—perhaps in retaliation for us electing a president who brought his own version of Armageddon to so many other countries—I could simply refuse to use the machine, pulling my own plug so-to-speak, and cross my fingers I don't wake up. (Can you believe what the U.S. led oil embargo is doing to Cuba? Last I heard Mexico and China were both attempting to deliver ships full of desperately needed food and medical supplies, while our president seems to be waiting to sweep in like a vulture to pick the bones of the died.)

Back on topic: Thinking about sleep inevitably leads me to thinking about dreams. Will the machine affect my dream life? I dream of my husband so often that some mornings I don’t want to get out of bed, even when my bladder is telling me I'd better get up if I know what's good for me. He’s been gone fourteen years, but with his nightly visits it doesn’t feel that long. He was the best friend I ever had—and that includes my best female friend since kindergarten, who has been calling several times a day since her family moved her into memory care a few weeks ago.

She lives in another state, and before her move we touched bases maybe seven or eight times a year. From what I can tell, she has major short‑term memory issues, but her memories of our childhood friendship are still intact. It’s been fun to revisit our past antics with her. But I’ve had to start turning my phone off at night so her early‑morning calls don’t wake me. She’s called as many as seven times in a day, just like we did when we were kids, but now she doesn't remember talking to me earlier in the day. And I’m not sure if she remembers her husband who died a few months ago.

Memory is funny that way—what stays, what slips, what returns in dreams. Many widows (myself included) remember our spouses vividly, but we tend to put on rose‑colored glasses. Disagreements tend fade, and what remains are the character‑revealing moments: the times they stood by us or held us together during the hard times, the times we laughed, traveled, made love or simply sat together in companionable silence. Sunday mornings with newspapers and coffee were always special, even when the dog decided to lay down in the middle of the spread-out paper. At least that’s my experience. When I’m awake, I remind myself Don was nowhere near perfect. Even in my dreams he’s not Princess Charming rescuing me from my daytime woes. More often than not I’m chasing after him and our last dog, begging them not to leave just because I have to get up and pee.

And once you start thinking about the people you’ve lost, it’s hard not to think about how we'll eventually go. We’ve all read stories about spouses who die within hours or days of one another. Recently I saw a story about a man and his dog who died together. Their son found them side by side in a La‑Z‑Boy and thought they were sleeping; he even snapped a photo. Near the end of my dad’s life, I did the same thing—only I thought he was dead, but he wasn’t. He looked so peaceful, but so old, and his memory was unreliable. I remember thinking that if he had to die, doing it in his favorite chair with that peaceful expression was the way to go. When he finally did die in a hospice home the last thing he said was, “Am I there yet? Is this the Pearly Gates?” which made me laugh so hard I couldn’t stop. It was Christmas Eve at midnight and organ music was blasting from his roommate's TV. Aging has a way of turning these unexpected moments into mile markers.

When you get to my age every birthday is a mile marker and you can’t help wondering how and when you’ll start that journey into the Great Unknown. In my case, a young salesgirl once showed me the actuarial projections my continuum‑care facility ran on me before accepting my down payment. She wasn’t supposed to show them to potential residents and she may have lost her job for doing it. I had asked if she was absolutely sure I’d have enough money to live there, and she said, “Oh yes—see this mortality table? It estimates your life expectancy based on age, health and other factors. You’re going to live five years in independent living, two years in assisted living and two months in skilled nursing.”

In October I will have lived here five years, and don’t think that fact doesn’t weigh on me. The computer programs that make those actuarial projections keep the insurance industry thriving. In other words, the House always wins… unless it’s a Trump casino, which he managed to bankrupt along with a dozen other businesses. I just hope he doesn’t do the same with our country.

And now here I am, circling back to that sleep study. I’m wondering if they ordered a new mortality table that factored in a PAP machine, would it change anything? Will it help me beat the House odds? Or am I just grasping at straws? In the end, none of us really knows how long we get — we just keep breathing, dreaming and hoping the House doesn’t call in its chips before we've checked everything off our Bucket Lists. ©

The Great Wii Bowling Kerfuffle in Independent Living

Social dynamics in senior living communities can be surprisingly complex, especially when everyday activities spark unexpected debates. This post explores how a simple game of Wii bowling led to a four‑day discussion about class, background, and perception among residents in an independent living setting. Through a mix of humor and real‑life observation, it highlights how small misunderstandings can grow into larger conversations—and how easily a friendly activity can turn into a full‑blown kerfuffle. ….AI

Sometimes I feel like I’m living inside a sociology experiment. At least that’s how it felt last week when I got myself tangled in a four‑day…well, let’s call it a social snarl.

It started when our Life Enrichment Director put Nintendo’s Wii bowling on the schedule. Ten of us showed up, and we were having so much fun—cheering, laughing, carrying on—that people wandered in just to see what all the racket was about. Near the end of the game, our resident retired lawyer drifted in. When he learned it was bowling, he said, “I’ll bet Jean is the best bowler.”

By sheer fluke, I’d gotten five strikes in one game—three of them in the final frame when the points really add up. So he guessed right. I was the top scorer.

If you’re not familiar with Wii bowling, it’s a “popular motion‑controlled simulation game for the Nintendo Wii where players use the Wii Remote to mimic a real bowling motion, swinging their arm to roll the ball.” I haven’t bowled since the late 1960s, back in my man‑hunting days, when I was on a league that bowled at an alley with a bar, live music and a dance floor. It was a prime pick‑up spot, and it’s where I met my husband. But that’s a story I’ve already told in Tall Tales and Little Fish.

When The Lawyer left, someone asked, “Out of all of us, how did he guess Jean was the best bowler?”

“Easy,” I answered. “I’m the only person here with a blue‑collar background, and bowling is a middle‑class sport.”

Oh‑my‑god. You’d have thought I’d stripped my clothes off and was about to parade naked up and down the halls. Two ladies were especially shocked and would not let it go.

“Bowling is NOT a middle‑class sport!”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’ll bet he said that because you’re good at Mahjong.”

Mahjong? Bowling? How are those even in the same universe?

Then came the declaration: “We are all the same here. We don’t have classes.”

No, we are not all the same—but I didn’t say that. I also didn’t point out that people living here have been known to donate $1,000 to $5,000 a year to the Benevolent Fund that pays for the care and keeping of residents who run out of money. Or that some residents here take extended vacations, own second homes, buy new cars, or have wardrobes that could fund my grocery budget for a year. Meanwhile, I’m over here worrying that if I don’t watch my nickels and dimes I could be on the receiving end of that Benevolent Fund. And getting my surly face printed in their promotional material like a newly adopted shelter dog is not on my Bucket List.

I couldn’t tell whether they thought I’d insulted them, insulted the lawyer, or insulted myself. But for the next two days at lunch, the interrogation continued. Why did I think bowling is a middle‑class sport? Why, why, why? Others chimed in, but no one backed me up. Most people said, “I'm staying out of this one.”

Finally, I decided to do a deep dive using AI. I came up with two pages of credible information supporting my claim. I printed it out and slid it under my neighbor’s door, planning to catch the other woman later.

The next day, my neighbor greeted me with, “You win. I just never looked at things that way.”

I got to thinking: her husband was career Navy, and they lived all over the world. Maybe she really didn’t see that historically, bowling’s cost structure is geared toward the middle class. Rented shoes, rented balls, pay‑per‑game is far cheaper than golf, tennis, or skiing, which require expensive gear, lessons and often club memberships. And maybe she didn’t see a lot of American TV, where bowling was a middle‑class staple in programs like The Flintstones, Kingpin, The Big Lebowski and sitcoms like All in the Family while golf and tennis were portrayed as the domain of professionals and the well‑heeled.

Shortly after I delivered my research pages, the other woman slid her “research project” under my door: an old Ann Landers column defining class.

“Class never runs scared. Class has a sense of humor. Class knows that good manners are nothing more than a series of small, inconsequential sacrifices… Class can walk with kings and keep its virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.”

And suddenly I understood. Lady Two was equating 'middle class' with 'having no class' and thinking I was putting myself down. Meanwhile, I was simply calling a spade a spade when I labeled myself middle class. She’s probably one of the wealthiest people here but is easily rattled by any hint of controversy. She’s the reason we can’t bring up world affairs or politics. Yes, this tiny woman with the soft voice and her Let’s-Pretend-we-Live-in-Disneyland Retirement Plan sets the tone for the rest of us. Bless her heart, as the southerns say.

And there you have it: another “exciting” episode in the ongoing social experiment I’m labeling, The Four-day Kerfuffle in Independent Living. ©

Until Next Wednesday.

Photo at the top: This was taking in 1969 and I'm the one in the caramel-colored sweater. Until I dug out this photo I'd forgotten that our entire league was made up of left-handed bowlers.

Trying to Find Stillness in a World Determined to Shake It

Some weeks feel like a collision between the headlines and the heart, and this was one of them. Between a new war unfolding, a conversation group that didn’t want to have the conversation, and Jean’s attempt to study Buddhism without tripping over her own attachments, she realized her thoughts were staging a full‑scale mutiny. What follows isn’t a solution or a sermon — just a clear‑eyed walk through the contradictions, fears, and questions that have been crowding her head...AI

Spoiler Alert: This One Gets Serious. I can’t help it. I feel like I need to write about the following things because writing is the best way I can bring any clarity to my thoughts, and God only knows where my head is at half the time, if you know what I mean. If you don't, it's that feeling when so many contradictory thoughts are running laps in your brain that you’re afraid they’re going to break out into a blood sport to see which one gets top billing. 

I was with my Liberal Ladies Conversation Group last week and I thought, finally, I'd get to compare opinions about the war with other human beings. But the twelve of us sat around the table, talking about art and music and making plans to get together to make signs for the upcoming No Kings Protest on March 28th. Mind you, this was two days after 45/47 started his war with Iran, and yet no one was bringing it up. As the waiter was dropped off our checks I couldn't stand it any longer and I said, “So we’re not going to talk about the elephant in the room?”

Silence. Then it was as if Hans Brinker pulled his thumb out of the dike. Everyone started talking at once. And there was no consensus on why he did it. The theories flew:

• To distract from the Epstein files

• To line his son‑in‑law’s pockets when it comes time to rebuild the Middle East

• To line his own pockets when the rebuilding starts

• A secret deal with Israel 

• To create a pretext to halt the midterms

• To bring about a regime change 

Not one person mentioned the party‑line explanation, that the bombs were dropped to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Which I’m not buying. If that were the goal, why tear up the 2015 agreement that allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to aggressively monitor Iran and ensure they were reducing their enriched uranium stockpile by 98% on a timeline approved by five countries? Oops, I know the answer. It's because that agreement was brokered by the Obama administration. Ding, ding, ding! Give the lady a Kewpie doll.

Now we have eleven countries involved in a destructive war that Republicans insist “isn’t really a war,” which conveniently allowed them to vote against Congressional oversight. And is it naïve to think it won’t eventually reach our shores, likely in the form of cyberattacks? Yes, it's naïve. Here's another doll, of you!

Alongside all this political garbage vying for attention in my head is my study of Buddhism. I’ve been doing daily lessons with an app called The Karma Path since the end of the Walk for Peace. Each lesson is only 20 or 30 minutes, but they make you think. This isn’t my first time studying Buddhism seriously. If the third time is a charm, as the saying goes, this time I might actually stick with it and become a practicing Buddhist for the rest of my life.

Being old helps. Letting go of attachments should, in theory, be easier. In practice, it’s still my greatest challenge. I’m far too sentimental. But if I fail at that part of the Buddhist philosophy, death will eventually pry my creature comforts and memory‑vessels out of my hands anyway. I’m certainly not wealthy enough to build a pyramid and have slaves stockpile the tomb with all the things I hold near and dear.

Of course, it’s not just material things a Buddhist learns to release. It’s people. Expectations. The belief that someone else is responsible for our happiness (which is something I thought I'd learned a long time ago but clearly I didn't, judging by the wee little hurt feelings I wrote about in my last post). I’ve just begun studying meditation and the Noble Eightfold Path (the heart of Buddhism): right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right vision and right intention. And I'm batting 100% on The Karma Path's periodic quiz's.

What I don’t understand about any religion (and Buddhism doesn’t claim to be one) is how so many can be so certain their way is the only way—certain enough to go to war over ideology, century after century. In the Middle East, every peace plan ever put forth eventually falls apart over who controls the holy places. You’d think letting go of sentimental attachment over such small patches of earth would be a reasonable price to pay for lasting peace, says the lady who hasn't let go of her grade‑school report cards.

And then, to make this current war even more complicated, we have a commander telling U.S. troops that Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran” and that the bombings are the beginning of Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Christ. This is according to several sources including a HuffPost article titled Military Commander Tells Troops Bombing Iran Is ‘Part Of God’s Divine Plan’. We could have seen this coming when Pete Hegseth started hosting prayer meetings at the Pentagon and bringing in Christian Nationalists to lead them.

Unfortunately, no amount of meditation, no amount of looking the other way, no amount of sticking our fingers in our ears and singing “la la la!” is going to set our country back on a path where elected officials can be trusted to do the right thing for all the people, not just their buddies with the biggest wallets or the biggest sticks. It's going to take time and effort by all of us i.e. we need to study the crap out of those running for the midterms and beyond and never, ever miss an opportunity to vote.

So there you have it. The reasons why I say I don’t know where my head is half the time. And I suspect many people across the nation are having the same meltdown, judging by the massive impact the Walk for Peace monks have made as their movement builds quietly in the background of everything happening in Washington, D.C.

Maybe that’s the real story here — not the war, not the politics, but the silent truth that millions of us are trying to hold our center while the world keeps shifting under our feet. ©

Until Next Wednesday….

 Three Things to Release in Life
Shen Yu, Buddhist Monk 

Stop chasing other people, What is meant for you will stay without force.
Stop trying to return to the past. It exists only to teach, not to live in.
Let go of regret. It holds the mind in places you can no longer change.