Life, Death, and Love

Artist and writer Susan MacLeod observes the foibles, humor, and caring of life in a nursing home. There, she and her mother finally came to know each other.

Nursing homes may be the closest thing we in the West have to the charnel grounds of traditional Tibetan Buddhist culture, but with some important differences. In Tibet, charnel grounds are rocky, out-of-the-way places where people place their dead to decompose out in the open, and they visit them to be reminded of impermanence and the certainty of death. In the West,nursing homes are where we place our near-dead, and we don't want to visit them. In the West, we deny death, resist impermanence, and run like hell in the other direction to avoid the ugliness of extreme old age.

Most nursing home residents have reached a state where getting out of bed, going to the toilet alone, and seeing, hearing, and communicating are beyond their body. Their minds and memories have left them to one degree or another.

To the uninitiated, the frail and elderly are boring. They sometimes smell. And they're so very ponderous about everything. They can't keep up. Of course, we can't slow down.

My attitude was no different.

My mother and I did not have an open, loving relationship—more of a coldly respectful one with a bucket list of unspoken resentments and mistrust. Where she was a practical and competent conformist, I was an artistic and defiant dreamer, especially during my immature, nonconformist youth, when you could describe me as "difficult."

We clashed regularly, as she was always trying to make me fit into society as she knew it—making me learn to cook, sew, and type. I was angry she couldn't see me for who I was and what I could do—my drawing and my creative, albeit improbable, ideas. She saw no value in honing either of those attributes, and said so. In response, I took tantrums.

Even in my adult years, we mistrusted each other. I remember buying a wonderful new winter coat. When I showed it off to her, strutting like a fashion model, she looked me up and down, and said, "Well, I suppose you don't have much time to shop." Instantly, I was the wrong child making the wrong decisions.

In general, our communication was reduced to a polite distance, avoiding speaking the truths we felt about our unsatisfying relationship. She had learned to dislike herself at a young age and had taught me the same. Neither of us knew how to talk about hard emotions.

Our relationship changed when she entered a nursing home at age ninety-four. To be with her there was frightening and sad. I didn't want to go visit her every day, or even every second day. The nursing home was miles away from where I lived, and I dreaded seeing people so clearly at life's end. I wanted to pretend Mom was doing fine, that placing her there was as far as my obligations went.

Without my meditation practice, I don't think I could have gotten through it.

Repelling what we don't want is misguided. This is one of the first things I learned on my Buddhist path. The starting point of the path is suffering, and sickness, old age, and death require peaceful abiding, rather than hope, fear, or especially ignorance.

Unconsciously, my meditation practice began to express itself in everyday life and became present in this situation as well. Albeit reluctantly, I made my way to see Mom regularly. Like meditation, it took discipline. I was always uneasy, not knowing what to expect, how to act, what to do, what to say. I also carried an underlying anger that I was the sibling stuck doing it.

Despite all this, I knew it was important to remain open for Mom's sake, as at some level I loved her deeply, beyond the itch of aggravation. So I began to slow down to see what was really going on.

I started to communicate with Mom in the ways she wanted, not the ways I did. I recalled her interests, her habits, her conversations, and I catered to them. I brought her gifts such as small animated toys I found tacky but that made her laugh. Always bored with history, Mom's passion, I now read up on it to initiate conversations. I encouraged my daughter, living in London where Mom was born, to send postcards. Generously, she flooded Mom's mailbox with oversized cards featuring the Queen or tourist shots of double-decker buses and Big Ben. I taped them up on every free surface in Mom's room, and she would laugh and point gleefully at them. Our relationship was no longer about me and my tastes, comfort levels, or expectations of her.

It was far from easy. It was exhausting, in fact, to pay such attention, but with no other family there, it was necessary and indeed worth it. To my surprise, I gradually grew fonder and fonder of her and who she was at heart.

When I slowed down to be fully with Mom, I also saw more depth in the nursing home experience than I had expected. People who live in nursing homes are full of life. Beneath the restrictions of their diminishing physicality and cognition, their spirit is often strong; I know my mother's was. And the more I visited her, the stronger and more loving she became. She would break out in a joyful grin whenever she saw me walk down the corridor, a far cry from the critical look up and down or remark about my unruly hair that I was used to from her.

Her fellow residents began to show me who they were too. Rather than rush by them, speeding to get to my mother's room and its relative safety, I started to actually see them. I began to greet each one. I learned their names and something about them so we could converse regularly. We made jokes with each other. I would often find myself with a smile on my face looking across the dining room as I helped Mom eat, the complete opposite of the look of horror I first wore when sitting in that room.

Then I began drawing the residents. For me, it was a natural way of seeing who they were, of showing what I saw, of letting them speak for themselves, and of letting them show themselves. It brought such richness I even asked permission to go to a nursing home closer to my home to draw the residents there.

One of my favorite residents to draw was Suzanne. If the sadness of impermanence can make us depressed, Suzanne was having none of it. She was a wheelchair-bound solo Greek chorus of positive validation, and always had something encouraging to say. The director of nursing told me that Suzanne fully endorsed any new procedure or change in her treatment protocol with an enthusiastic, "Oh, yes!" Every day, Suzanne also made sure to compliment the staff, words expressing astonished praise at all they did for her and those around her.

Suzanne often spoke with deep affection about her late husband, whom she described as tall and brilliant, and would say how terribly she missed him. Once she said she had asked him how people could be so cruel and he replied, "Suzanne, I don't know. But we don't have to be."

Suzanne would become momentarily sad after talking about him, but recovered, sometimes with a wholehearted rendition of a favorite hymn in full voice.

Later, a friend and I volunteered to do large group drawings for the residents about local historic topics of interest to them. After our first drawing session, we asked the group if they wanted us to return. Suzanne, in the front row, replied cheerfully, "Oh, yes!" Then she paused, and said matter-of-factly, "Well, if we're still here. We die, you know."

The day came when I found her place in the dining room empty. I was sad and, believe it or not, shocked. She didn't seem to have death inside her.

Evelyn, who died at 107, was unafraid of the inevitable. She would say, "I don't know why He doesn't come and take me." Then she'd pause for effect and say, "Maybe He's waiting for me to improve!" Then she'd roar with laughter.

I have read this quote in my Buddhist studies: "Fear is the natural reaction to nearing the truth. It may all come down to fear of death. Or fear of tenderness. Smile at fear, make friends with it. When we look at fear with gentleness, it's not solid." Suzanne, Evelyn, and many other frail elderly people seem to know this, without having been formally taught it.

There are no social conventions in charnel grounds and there aren't many social filters among the elderly. Occasionally, I've been told off. My mother's tablemate took an almost instant dislike to me. "Oooohhh, aren't we lucky to have you here helping us," she'd say with a nasty, dripping sarcasm as I buttered her bread. In truth, I was feeling a little smug in my self-appointed role as Useful Kind Helper. It's possible she saw right through me and shoved my halo off. The phenomenal world is your guru. I was getting a little too comfortable at the charnel grounds.

Mom too became unconstrained in expressing the opinions she held strongly her whole life. She despised my idol Diana, the Princess of Wales, and would shut down any conversation involving her. She stated with loud ferocity more than once during the 2015 election in Canada, "I know who I'm not voting for." But she never spoke critically of me anymore (at least not to my face).

After a few years I felt the urge to make change in the broken long-term care system, to meet this world halfway and see what I could contribute. I joined the board of a nonprofit home. Unlike boards of financial institutions or children's hospitals, it's far from sexy to sit on a nonprofit nursing home board. Governance volunteers are usually members of religious orders or family members longing to give back, and political influence is scarce.

Being on this board, I see—and learn—patience and perseverance, because a better situation for the elderly likely won't come from the "system," despite our best lobbying. We've had differing opinions, but I've always witnessed tender hearts among the members who keenly feel for the elderly and their overworked and underpaid care staff. I once saw our chairperson sob during a public address at the annual general meeting after mentioning his wife had died in the nursing home three years before. The audience quietly mourned with him.

During the final weeks of Mom's life, each day I entered the nursing home it felt to me like walking straight into a fiery oven of inescapable, profound sadness. My mother was dying. In pain.

We had a few poignant conversations during that final time. Writhing in pain, she told me haltingly that she knew what was going on. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it. She shook her head, a determined "no." After a grating breath, she said, with effort among several pauses, "I know you love me…I don't know why you do…but it's…wonderful."

I hated seeing my mother dead.

When I walked in the room that last morning, after five years of visiting, I burst into reckless, uncontrollable sobs that came from a place deep, deep in my belly, a place I hadn't known was there.

Yet mere days later, her death simply felt right. Nothing wrong.

I have often thought that children are a connection to basic goodness. So too are the frail and elderly. Many are no longer afraid to be who they are, be it sad, rude, in pain, or terrified. I gained a humanity I didn't have before visiting nursing homes, and it was meditation that helped me expose this humanity and let it be there with me in my daily experience.

Fearless warriors live in nursing homes. And they deserve to be seen.

A Tale of Love and Heartbreak

It's tempting to say that with the death of Amos Oz this morning at the age of 79, an era in Israeli history has ended. After all, Oz was the preeminent writer of the first Israeli generation to come of age after statehood. He was 9 years old in 1948 when the State of Israel was created, and he spent a lifetime writing about its people, its politics, and its institutions. His was the early Israel of Labor Zionism, sabras, and kibbutzim; many of his books explored the complexities of kibbutz life, starting with his debut, Where the Jackals Howl, in 1965. That Israel, of course, began to disappear long ago, and today it survives primarily as a myth. The death of Oz confirms rather than announces its passing.

Yet the fact is that Oz was only able to become the fictional chronicler of that Israel because he was not really a native of it. On the contrary, as he revealed in his great memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, his actual upbringing was the opposite of the Zionist ideal in every respect. Far from being a son of the kibbutz, he was born to an intellectual, bookish family in a middle-class neighborhood in Jerusalem. Far from being a Labor Zionist, he was raised in a family whose politics were strongly right wing and Revisionist. Both tendencies coincided in the figure of his uncle, the renowned historian Joseph Klausner, whom Oz recalls in his memoir with pronounced irony and ambivalence. In addition to being a professor at Hebrew University, Joseph Klausner ran for president of the new state in 1949 as a representative of the Herut Party—the descendant of the prestate Irgun and the forerunner of the modern Likud.

For Oz, there was a close connection between the right-wing politics of men like his uncle—and of Menachem Begin, who cuts a comic figure in the memoir—and their bookishness. Nationalism, he suggests, is a fantasy of strength, and it appealed to weak people who lived in their minds, rather than in reality. The real Israel, the one he found on Kibbutz Hulda, was cherishable precisely because it was not an idea, but a fact, something achieved by real labor and compromise.

One of the most pointed stories in A Tale of Love and Darkness concerns the time the young Amos and his father tried to partake in the Zionist conquest of the Land of Israel, by planting a little patch of vegetable garden in their yard. Even this proved beyond their ability, however; the plants all died, and Oz's father had to sneak out, buy full-grown plants at a nursery, and place them in the garden, in order to keep his son from disappointment. The episode is meant to underscore that, even for Jews living in Palestine, Zionism could seem like a distant ideal—not to say an impossible aspiration, one whose achievement could only come about by cutting corners.

For Oz, leaving home at the age of 14 and joining Kibbutz Hulda, where he would spend the next several decades, was partly a reaction to his mother's suicide. But it was also a reaction against intellectuality and physical incompetence, which he sought to escape by plunging himself into the religion of work. Changing his name from Klausner to the Hebrew word for strength was a way of underscoring this transformation. It was as if he saw himself as a belated member of the Second Aliyah—the generation of idealistic Labor Zionist pioneers who came to Palestine before World War I and built the nucleus of the future state. Oz's parents fled Europe for Jerusalem, but it was up to him make aliyah all over again.

The contradiction between the reality of Israel and the myths of Zionism would remain a constant theme of Oz's work. One of the stories in his first book, "The Way of the Wind," concerns a young kibbutznik named Gideon who wilts under the strong personality of his father, one of the collective's founders. Hoping to finally win respect, he joins the paratroopers, the elite of the Israeli military. But when the time comes to jump from a plane near the kibbutz, Gideon's desire for attention leads him to pull his backup chute, so he will stand out from the other jumpers—with the result that he ends up hanging from a live power line, in deadly danger. It is a wonderfully concise parable of the plight of Oz's Israeli generation, forced to contend with a Zionist myth that both inspires and overwhelms them.

It was another interrogation of myth that first made Oz nationally known in Israel. After the Six-Day War, he was one of the moving forces behind The Seventh Day, a book of oral history that consisted of interviews with kibbutzniks who had fought in the war. They brooded about the contradiction between the high ideals of their upbringing and the brutality of war—and worried about the moral future of a Jewish state occupying a large Arab population. Oz was one of the founders of Peace Now, and a lifelong advocate for a two-state solution, for the same reason that he became a kibbutznik and a Labor Zionist in the first place—because of his respect for the reality of what Zionism had achieved, and his distrust of myths of strength and aggrandizement. Perhaps it took a master of fiction to understand that, in the end, it is the actual that is most precious.

After Robert Redford, could Clint Eastwood's retirement be next? 'I love what I do'

It's a pretty great year at the movies when a couple of legends like Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood are still entertaining crowds well into their 80s. Yet while Redford remarked that his latest, "The Old Man & the Gun," will likely be his acting swan song, Eastwood, 88, isn't hearing any of that retirement talk.

Asked if his interest in acting and directing is beginning to wane, Eastwood, whose new film "The Mule" is out Dec. 14, tells USA TODAY, "Maybe I just don't want a certain volume of work, but, no, it hasn't lessened. I love what I do."

In other words: Make his day, punk. He's not going anywhere.

"I'll probably keep on going. I feel good, but it depends on material. I probably wouldn't do something just because it was marginal – I have to kind of think it has some validity and has some relationship to today," says Eastwood, who mentions "Million Dollar Baby" and "Unforgiven" as two of his projects where "they're not necessarily problems of the day, but they have a certain dramatic appeal that is worth studying."

Eastwood is as efficient a filmmaker as ever: In a time when some directors take years to make a film, he prepped "The Mule" – in which he also stars an accidental drug courier for a Mexican cartel – in April and May before filming last summer and just putting the finishing touches on it earlier this month. He loves that he doesn't have dull moments in his career: "It has ups and downs, but it doesn't have a lot of monotony. When it gets monotonous, I think some people back away from it."

He does ponder why the prior generation of filmmakers he admired left the business early. "I wonder why Billy Wilder quit in his 60s, or did the business quit him? Or maybe he just didn't find enough good material," Eastwood says. "I knew Frank Capra in his later years socially a little bit and I always thought, ‘This guy is so bright. Why isn't he still doing it?' With a lot of other people, was it that their health went bad or did they just get bored with it? I often wonder, because I haven't gotten bored with it."

One aspect about performing in front of the camera that still appeals to him is the fact that he's always learning something. "In acting out somebody else's problems or adventures, it kind of brings out thoughts of how you would do it in real life or what your feelings would be about it to real life," Eastwood says.

He mentions his character in 2009's "Gran Torino," a racist Korean War vet who's negative about the world and other nationalities but ends up giving his life for his Asian immigrant neighbors. "Everybody thinks older people never learn anything – only school kids and young people," the filmmaker says. "Older people, if they keep their mind open, can be just as interested in improving and learning and new knowledge as they go along."

The law of attraction and how it affects your love life

I want a perfect partner! I want financial abundance! I want to be strong and healthy!

We all have desires. We want a life that is full and fulfilling.

The big question is: Are you a match to what you're looking for? If you want a partner who is kind, loving, caring, responsible and financially stable; go through your list and ask yourself: Am I kind, loving, caring and financially stable? The universe will deliver to you not what you want, but what you are.

Have you ever started the day annoyed with someone and found that the entire day was filled with annoying people or situations? The outer world is simply a reflection of your internal energy. Your internal energy is determined by your thoughts and beliefs.

If, when you were young, dad was always working and not around much; we form the belief that men are often absent. This belief creates a blueprint on a subconscious level about men.

Later in life you attract a man, feel a connection (because he matches your internal belief), get together and before long, he is frequently absent. If you're a man, living unconsciously, you would become like dad.

If, however, you choose to look at the role models in your life and question whether their behaviour was appropriate or not; you can now make a conscious choice to be a different person. You can choose to be present with your partner and family. This is conscious living and conscious choices.

So how much of your behaviour is driven by unconscious beliefs that you simply imbibed from other people? If you grew up believing in abundance – there is always plenty, then that belief serves you and doesn't need to be changed.

If you grew up surrounded by words and experiences of lack and poverty, and you're now experiencing lack and poverty, then you need to question these beliefs that are not supporting you; and consciously change it.

You start by looking at the abundance that already exists in the world. An abundance of air to breathe, nature is abundant; there are people with huge houses, fancy cars and thriving businesses.

The evidence of abundance is all around. As you begin to notice this and start believing that it is possible for you too, your internal picture changes and the world must reflect this change on the outside.

Guest Opinion: On Life and Love after 50 by Tom Blake

In the 24 years of writing newspaper columns about age 50-plus dating and relationships, there is a question for which I've never had a good answer.

What do unwed, older-than-50 couples call themselves?

I was reminded of that question last week by Mark Flannery of Fullerton, who emailed, "Donna and I have been together for eight and a half years. We were having lunch in Dana Point with Wally Horn and his partner of 30 years, Bobbi, and this question arose: ‘What do we call ourselves? Partners? Companions? Significant others? Boyfriend/girlfriend?'"

My partner Greta and I have been together for 20 years. We aren't married. I still find myself wondering how to introduce her. Often, "life partner" comes to mind. It's an OK term, but I still get a puzzled look from people who seem to be wondering what the heck a life partner is, or they think it's a lame explanation for why we aren't married.

Greta and I enjoy taking cruises. We always opt for open seating in the dining room, which means we are usually seated with different people every night. Frequently, table mates ask, "How long have you two been married?" Greta and I look at each other and one of us responds, "We've been together for 20 years."

It's easier to leave it that way than trying to explain that we are significant others or life partners or whatever we are calling ourselves at that moment.

When Greta and I would visit my mom in her retirement community in Santa Rosa, when we were out socially with Mom's friends, Mom would introduce Greta by saying, "This is Tom's Greta." That was her way of saying we were living together and not married, which she probably wasn't entirely thrilled about.

The fine folks at the Sea View Pharmacy in San Clemente know Greta and I aren't married. When I pick up my prescriptions there, they don't ask "Do you want your wife's prescriptions?" Instead, they ask, "Do you want Greta's prescriptions?"

In his email, Mark Flannery added, "Donna and I are a LAT (living apart together) couple. She is 69, still working, and lives in Irvine. I'm 71, retired and live in Fullerton. We go back and forth between the two cities a lot.

Our friend Wally is 84 and Bobbi is 75. They are both retired and have been together for almost 30 years. When we were talking about what to call ourselves, I floated an idea I've had for some time: "semispouse".

It received a favorable response from our foursome. It isn't perfect, but it seems to have qualities the other labels lack. The term is even included in the Urban Dictionary.

At first, I thought the "semispouse" term a little bizarre, visualizing a semi-truck driver with his wife riding with him in the cab.

I looked up the term in the Urban Dictionary. Its definition: "A significant other that plays the role of a spouse without being legally married."

And then I decided, when written, the term "semispouse" would look better with a hyphen inserted: semi-spouse.

While semi-spouse for unwed age 50 and older couples will work for now, still, I'm all ears to hear suggestions from readers for what to call mature unwed couples. Just don't call us, "Two old fogies living together."

Real life: I fell in love with the paperboy!

Melanie Tattersall, 41, from Chermside, QLD, shares her beautiful true life story;

I watched as Dad settled in to his favourite armchair and reached for his newspaper.

"Have I told you about my favourite paperboy, love?" he asked me.

"Yes, Dad," I smiled, rolling my eyes.

At 16, I couldn't remember an evening when Dad hadn't read the news.

It was his favourite pastime.

One of his fondest memories was of a boy that used to sell papers on the main road in Brisbane about 12 years earlier.

As soon as the boy spotted Dad's car, he'd dart across the intersection to make sure he delivered it before the lights changed.

"He was the best paperboy in town," Dad said. "I always gave him a tip."

He'd told me the story dozens of times.

Two years later, I moved in to a share house in Stafford, Queensland.

My mate Steve lived around the corner so I'd often pop over on weekends to hang out.

I was walking up the stairs to his house one day when I locked eyes with a good-looking bloke.

I felt giddy when Steve told me the guy, Paul, was his new flatmate.

"He's just split up with his girlfriend so he needs somewhere to live," he said.

Butterflies swirled in my stomach when Steve introduced us properly a week later.

Not only was Paul, 24, ridiculously handsome with his curly dark hair and olive skin, but he was down-to-earth and had a great sense of humour.

Given he'd just come out of a long-term relationship, I figured the last thing he wanted was a girlfriend!

One night, I was feeling brave after a few drinks when Steve offered to walk me home.

"I'd rather he did," I blurted out, nodding at Paul.

Thankfully, he agreed and we chatted and laughed all the way.

He looked shocked when we stopped outside my house.

"You won't believe this but I used to live here," he chuckled.

Turned out he'd rented my place the year before I moved in.

"What a coincidence," I laughed.

After that, the two of us became an item and moved in together the following year.

One day my uncles Andrew and Gareth popped round to visit.

They looked stunned when they laid eyes on Paul and he was just as shocked.

"It's you two!" he cried excitedly, shaking their hand. "I can't believe it."

Once they calmed down, they told me how they used to ride motorbikes and horses together in their teens.

Paul and I were thrilled when we welcomed our son, Corey, in to the world.

We went on to get married and had a daughter, Sophia.

We'd been together for 21 years, when one day we went to visit Dad and found him reading the paper in his chair.

"Have I ever told you about my favourite newspaper boy?" Dad asked us.

Not again, I thought.

I was about to stop him when Paul spoke up.

"I used to be a paperboy when I was 12," he said.

Watching them lock eyes, it was like they'd seen each other for the first time.

"It's you!" Dad cried, throwing an arm around Paul. "You were the best paperboy!"

I couldn't believe it.

My father had given my husband the tick of approval years before I'd even met him!

In fact, most of my family had.

Two years on, we still laugh about Paul being Dad's favourite.

We've had more coincidences in our 23-year relationship than most couples, but we think it's just a sign that we were meant to be.

Dad reckons so, too.

Julie Tan hits back after veteran actresses' spat casts spotlight on love life

A spat that erupted between veteran local actresses Pan Lingling and Hong Huifang on Monday has thrown former Mediacorp star Julie Tan's love life into the spotlight, prompting her to strike back against having her name dragged through the mud.

In an interview with Lianhe Wanbao published yesterday, the 25-year-old said: "My mother was heartbroken to see her daughter painted in such a negative light.

"No one deserves this kind of humiliation."

Hong, 58, recently severed ties with Pan, 49, via a lengthy WhatsApp text which was sent to around 50 of their mutual friends, highlighting three "thorns" which have plagued their friendship across two decades.

The breaking point came last month, when Pan allegedly commented on Hong's son, Calvert Tay, and his current relationship during a dinner with friends.

Tay, 18, was rumoured to be dating Tan.

According to the text, Pan recommended that Tay get vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases as a precaution, given Tan's string of past relationships - one of which was with a foreigner.

Tan, who is furthering her acting career in China after leaving Mediacorp last year, told Lianhe Wanbao that she spent the whole day in tears when news of the spat broke.

"To the one talking s*** about me, you know what, f*** you. I used to respect you cause you're a 'qian bei' (Chinese for senior), but now sorry lost all respect," she fired back on social media platform Instagram.

Tan has since clarified that she and Tay are friends but are not dating.

She also expressed her gratitude towards Hong for sharing the truth and giving her the chance to speak out against this act of bullying.

"Women are already unfairly treated by society when it comes to love - women with numerous past relationships are shamed, while men with numerous past relationships are praised," she told Lianhe Wanbao.

"As a woman yourself, why would you worsen the situation for other women?"

Tan admitted that she is not as lucky in love as Pan, who married her first boyfriend, former actor Huang Shinan.

"I had to go through various experiences in order to better understand myself and find the right person," she said.

"Still, this new generation is courageous enough to accept the consequence of their actions.

"Hopefully our seniors can serve as good examples to us, by taking responsibility for their words and actions too."

Pan reportedly apologised in a phone call to Tan's mother yesterday morning.

In her latest comments on the spat, Hong said it is "not a war, so there is no winner or loser".