A BLOG FOR MY ANCESTORS: aging

Thoughts on Aging and Wisdom

A few years ago, I asked my grandmother Helen Marie Goulé Smith what it felt like to almost be 100 years old. She replied with a chuckle and a twinkle in her eye, "Darling, I feel trapped sometimes. I still feel 20 years old inside. I feel like a young person inside a body that doesn't seem like mine anymore." Even though I know she was trying to find humor and connect with me as a younger person, her response terrified me. Aging is something that I have been rumbling with lately, especially as I have watched my parents age.

Helen boating in California, 1940's

Recently I visited my grandmother, Helen in the retirement home where she lives. As a family, we had celebrated her 100th birthday just days earlier. When I entered her room I saw that she was sleeping perpendicular on her bed with her legs hanging off the side. It was around 3:00 pm and too early for bedtime. When I first glanced into her dark bedroom and saw her laying this way, my stomach dropped. I thought she had passed away. She had collapsed onto the bed while her favorite Hawaiian music played loudly from her stereo. I turned the volume down and went over to stir her. I breathed a sigh of relief when she moved, smiled, and then closed her eyes again. We laughed about how she was laying on the bed the wrong way and I helped move her feet around and under the covers. Then she said in her grandmotherly way, "Everything will be alright, darling! Everything is going to be OK."

I crawled in next to her and spooned my sweet, frail grandma. I could hear her crying softly, but since her back was to me I could not see her face. This position allowed me to let my own tears flow freely and which to my surprise came so quickly and abundantly. As I laid there I wondered if she was sad because she missed grandpa or if she was frustrated from being caught between earth and heaven. She was sleeping more and the moments she was alert and cognitive required more of an effort. I am sure that her aging body was aching and that she was in pain. Then I wondered about my tears. I knew that I was mourning with her and I felt of her loneliness. She missed grandpa dearly. I missed him also. However, I think that I was also crying about the whole aging thing!

Helen and Harold Smith on their wedding day.

Growing old can be obviously painful and lonely at times. Yet, there is no way to stop the process so I have done a lot of soul searching lately on the subject. Our culture and the media seem to celebrate youthfulness in such a way that there tends to be some shame associated with looking older. As people mature into their 40's, it seems that society immediately looks for and discusses any physical signs of aging. Oftentimes a person's wisdom or life experiences are hardly ever mentioned or valued until their eulogy is written. I wish our society valued wisdom more than beauty.

I would like to grow old gracefully and I believe obtaining wisdom is part of that process. Otherwise one just becomes a wrinkled teenager. A person can grow older and not become wise. I believe wisdom is gained when a person continues learning while remaining humble and self-reflective.

While organizing and unpacking some boxes, I found a photo of my Grandmother Helen. It was taken by my daughter, McKenna when she was just 14 years old. She titled it, Beauty is Wisdom and entered it in a photo contest at school.

"Beauty is Wisdom" by McKenna Petty. The subject of her photo is her 95 year old great grandmother, Helen Smith.

I looked closely at the photo and my grandmother's face and how her wrinkles hugged her smile and wrapped around her bright eyes and I saw joy. I remember when the photo was taken in our front yard at the little Orem house. McKenna got up close to her great-grandma's face that day and started snapping away. While she took these photos, she told her how beautiful she was and lovely her skin was and how she wanted to show others what wisdom meant. Grandma was flattered and joyful and we all smiled in the sun together on that fall day just five years ago. My daughter appreciated how her grandmother's face had changed over time because she recognized the knowledge that she had gained in the process of aging. McKenna knew through family stories and time spent together, that her grandmother valued education and chose to study nursing before marrying grandpa.

Helen Goule, Nursing School Graduation Photo 1937

She had also heard the stories of about how Grandma Helen, as a young mother in the 1940's, worked night shifts at the hospital so that she could be with her children during the day while grandpa worked as an Electrician. McKenna knew in detail how Helen felt about and coped with the polio diagnosis of her small daughter, my mother Penney. Throughout our lives we have all heard our grandmother wisely say, "Don't worry, be happy!" as she has faithfully lived her life.

Penney Smith, polio survivor with her mother, Helen G. Smith

The morning after I found McKenna's photo of my grandmother and had been reminiscing about her 100 year long life, I came across the beautiful, heartfelt story of a mother who was gracefully preparing to die after battling cancer for two years. She was in her forties and ached for more time in her life. Her husband wrote of their life together and their faith and their family and it all brought tears to my eyes.

Seeing my grandmother's photo, pondering her life, and then reading this dying woman's story all in the same morning had a powerful effect on me. It made me think deeply about my feelings regarding aging and my lack of excitement about wrinkles, etc. I felt extremely humbled as I had this strong realization that growing old is luxury not afforded to many. And then I felt grateful because I felt a little wiser.

Grandma and Grandpa living it up on their Catalina Island Honeymoon, 1937

Grandpa and Grandma Smith loved life and were always up for an adventure!

12:26 PM
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A Chance to Say "I Love You", Again

adversity

I am sitting next to my father's hospital bed. The only sounds I can hear in his room is the beeping of machines, low whispers of medical personnel in the hall, and the ventilator which is pumping air into my father's weary body. It's hard to write or speak of how I feel below the surface without being overcome with emotion. I know that if I allow myself to speak fully about them, it would be impossible for me to be strong for my father and family right now. So, I will write instead.

I knew immediately when I heard my sister's voice on Wednesday morning that a tragedy had occurred and that something was wrong with my father. We had just left him on Monday afternoon. It was hard to say good-bye and bittersweet like always because we miss him and worry that he is lonely. We had just spent almost a week with him celebrating Thanksgiving and spending time together.

Bella had been his little shadow following him around on the farm as he tended to the rabbits, turkeys, and Stinkerbelle (his spoiled, peanut-butter loving pig), We played Balderdash late into the night numerous times, We laughed so hard at times we were crying and I truly believed my dad was going to pop a blood vessel he laughed so hard at the acronym definition of B.O.B. (The Brotherhood of Old Bastards). We ate Veyo pie every night and talked about visiting Aunt Diane in Whidbey Island, Washington. Dad talked about all the places in Canada he wanted to visit. We sat together twice and watched the The Cokeville Miracle. We cried while we watched and then spoke about our ancestors and loved ones on the other side and how we know they are with us and that they our guardian angels for us here on earth. Within moments his life changed, our lives changed, and now everything is different.

When my sister described the accident I wasn't sure if my father would survived it. I immediately dropped to my knees and started begging and praying that his life would be spared. I told God that I wasn't ready to let go of my Papa!

Afterwards, I felt guilty praying for what I wanted, especially after seeing him in the ICU and after the 6 hours it took to put his jaw back together. He had tubes going in and coming out of his body and he was highly sedated because of the amount of pain he was experiencing. His weary body struggling to breathe and yet because of the fact that he survived such trauma, he seem like a giant of strength to me. A man full of grit! Things haven't changed much in these few days except that they are bringing him out of sedation randomly throughout the day to check his vitals. We both dread and rejoice in these moments.

We dread the nausea that will soon overtake him once they turn the sedation down and he begins to move. All of this causes him to throw up which is extremely traumatic with his jaw is wired shut. It sets off alarms and everyone jumps up. Nurses rush in, someone starts suctioning, the bed is elevated, anti-nausea meds are administered, and we all pray that didn't aspirate anything. Then things calm down and we rejoice because in those brief moments we catch a glimpse of our papa again! We can only communicate by squeezing hands since his jaw is wired shut. We slowly say the alphabet and he squeezes our hand when we say the letter that he wants to use to spell a word and then one of us writes it down. It is a tedious process and takes many minutes to spell a 4-5 letter word. It is exhausting both physically and emotionally. Many times we would speak to fast or he would squeeze to late and we'd write the incorrect letters and then have to start all over again.

I will never forget that first message that he slowly communicated to us. It took at least 5 minutes of slowly reciting the alphabet, squeezing, and writing. It began with the letter I. Then the letters L, U, V.... We immediately figured out the rest of the sentence shouting it out loud in unison and then starting to both cry and laugh at the same time! I love you! His eyes were closed but he smiled with his lips to show that we had finally figured it our correctly. It was one of the sweetest moments that we had together by his bedside.

Such three simple words, "I love you" and how easy for us to say them daily under normal circumstances. I have learned that life can change in a moment and our opportunities to tell others that we love them may be gone. I am so glad for the moments we all had together over Thanksgiving. We shared so many memories and we said those words often to each other. I know that I would be struggling even more dealing with this experience if I hadn't just recently had that time with him.

May we all remember to continue saying those three simple words and to say them often! Not just to those in our lives that are the easiest to love, but to those who may need to hear it the most. May we reach out, forgive, and without any expectations of how it will be received, tell that someone that we love them today!

11:01 AM
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The Day I Found My Great Grandfather's Great Grandfather's Obituary!

aging

My great grandfather, Noel Henry Thornley Goulé was born January 16, 1886 in Malvern Wells, England. During his adult years, he was known as Harry T. Goulé. I have no idea why he preferred the name Harry over his given name Henry and it’s still a bit of a family mystery.

What I do know, is that Harry was extremely stubborn and could at first be quite intimidating and even scary-looking especially if he’d being woken from a deep sleep and his mouth was denture-free. Even after leaving England as a teenager, Harry still had a strong English accent throughout his life. He was proud of his English birth. He was proud of his French heritage and his Canadian/American dual citizenship. Harry was extremely proud of his education and his Pharmacology degree.

Harry T. standing in his pharmacy in Lucky Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada.

My grandfather had very unique eating preferences. He believed the organs (such as the heart, tripe, lungs, liver, etc.) of an animal were a delicacy. He thought it was disgusting to eat the muscle of an animal, such as the cut of a nice steak. He put MSG on everything he ate and kept it in a shaker, next to the salt and pepper on his kitchen table. He believed that one should always eat with the fork in the left hand and knife in the right, with the fork tines down. I always passed this test because I was left-handed. Thank goodness! He liked to read the dictionary and even though his hearing declined later in life, he was a pro at eavesdropping!

My great grandfather and I met when he was 95 and I was 13 years old. My family moved into my grandmother Helen's old house which came fully furnished with a great grandpa. He lived below us in a basement apartment. We spent some time living like this before grandpa got another apartment across town (I think things got a little too noisy for him after we moved in). Grandpa took pride at being so independent. He was infuriated when my grandmother insisted that he stop driving in his mid-nineties, so he went right out and purchased a large motorized tricycle. He became an icon in our small town running errands on his bike.

He was as articulate as he was ancient and it didn’t matter how grouchy he was, I was intrigued by him and he knew it. And since he couldn’t scare me away, he asked me to read to him. I believe his eyesight was the only one of his senses that began to decline later in life. His favorite book was titled, Intra Muros – My Dream of Heaven. We read that book more than once. He loved anything written about people who had near death experiences and had come back from the brink of death to describe what they had seen and heard. When I read to him these stories, I didn’t realize that I was also helping him prepare to die. I just thought he found the stories as interesting as I did. Grandpa enjoyed reading the dictionary with a large magnifying glass. Sometimes he would ask me to find a large or difficult word in the dictionary. Then I would read the word out loud and he would spell it for me. This was like a game to him. Sometimes I needed to give him the meaning of the word as a prompt. However, he never misspelled a word.

The only health issue that I remember my great-grandfather having was with his colon. I guess when your colon is almost 100 years old it has the right to be tired too. So, my grandfather had a portion of his colon removed and a colostomy bag attached to his belly. My grandmother and aunt, who were both nurses, helped him with this when needed. When they were out of town, the turn to help fell on another family member. I was far enough down on the list that I was never called on except one time, and when a disaster struck. It was 5:30 am and the phone rang and my very distraught great grandfather was on the other end explaining to me that the bag had fallen off in the night and was still detached and he needed me immediately. Well, this isn’t the way you want to be woken up when your 19 years old on a summer morning and I was pretty grouchy about having to be the one to go to grandpa at that time as I could only imagine what I was about to experience. When I entered his apartment and saw how emotional and upset he was about being seen in that type of situation, all the other feelings of resentment just disappeared. He had tried to clean most of it up himself and I remember feeling humbled imaging him trying to do so. As a worked on and around him, I just kept reassuring him that

I was fine and that it wasn’t that bad.

Now that over 20 years have passed, I cherish that experience with him as one of the most precious that we shared. It was also the hardest thing that I had ever done for someone up to that point in my life. It was raw, real, and uncomfortable. At first, I did it begrudgingly and felt obligated. I now understand that the whole situation was much harder on my proud independent grandfather who was forced to receive help in such a personal way. Any assistance I offered him on that summer morning was minuscule in comparison to the lessons I learned that day as a teenager: Lessons of love, service, compassion, humility and the eternal bond between generations of family.

Every time I saw my grandfather, I thought it would be the last time. He thought the same thing and so I asked for and received a few goodbye grandfather blessings before I would leave town for any extended amount of time. He would stand to pray and project his words clearly and slowly with a strong English accent. I know he used large and meaningful words because of his preoccupation with linguistics but I don’t specifically remember what he said in his blessings to me. However, I do remember how the words sounded and how I felt when he said them. I felt safe and important and loved. I felt like I carried a bit of my grandfather with me where ever I traveled and it made it easier to leave.

One time before I was leaving to travel back east, he grabbed my arm and pulled me close to his face and said, “I ain’t got no love for you!” I was a little taken back and wriggled from his grasp just a bit and looked right back into his blue eyes and said, “Well, grandpa I love you.” He peered back even more fiercely and repeated with emphasis this time, “I AIN’T got NO love for you!” I was a little worried this second time. First, because I thought that my grandfather was beginning to lose his mind. He was an articulate Englishman and had used the slang term “ain’t”. Secondly, I began to think that I had done something to upset him and I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I had done to offend him. He repeated the phrase a third time even more loudly. I responded again voice quivering, that I loved him no matter what he said. That’s when he started chuckling and with a twinkle in his eye said, “Darling, two negatives equal a positive. Ain’t and no cancel each other out and what I am saying is, I HAVE love for you!” I started relief-laughing and hugged him.

I was always so excited to see him when I’d return home. I’d enthusiastically lean over to hug him and he’d grumble something about still being around. He seemed a little more disappointed each time we were reunited. I knew it wasn’t personal. He was just tired and tired of saying good-bye. The last time we said good-bye, my great-grandfather was 105 years old. He passed away 2 years later and was the oldest man in Utah at the time.

Grandpa is being interviewed by the local news agency at Governor Bangerter's Centenarian Luncheon to celebrate all Utahans 100 years and older. I am on the far left.

My Grandfather loved to tell me stories. He mostly spoke of his childhood and those memories always seemed clearer to him than the last 50 years of his life. I loved the stories that he would tell of growing up in England and running through the English countryside make mischief, and living in boarding schools. I wish I would have recorded his stories, which are now faded memories that I have been trying to reconstruct through family research.

My great grandfather spoke about how his great grandfather escaped the French Revolution by slipping away in the dead of the night and rowing across the English Channel in a boat with his uncle, a Catholic monk. That story just about blew my mind.The mystery, the intrigue!

Harry and daughter Helen (my grandmother)

I was going through my grandmother’s papers this last summer. Harry’s daughter, Helen at 14 years wrote about her French heritage. She mentioned the name of this great grandfather who escaped France. She said that his name was Louis Etienne Goulé. It was the first time that I had heard his name so I Googled it, of course. I searched using Google Books rather typical a web search and to my amazement up popped an instant result. I had found Louis Etienne Goulé's obituary published in a society magazine titled, The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. XXVIII. It was a small paragraph of just 29 words that immediately connected me across generations and continents, to a childhood story and a great grandfather whose memory was just a whisper in my head. My eyes just overflowed with tears. It was 2:00 am and I sat there crying and downloading and saving and printing. It felt like a little miracle and it was completely unexpected.

Harry's Family - his mother Alice Mary on the far left and Henry (Louis Etienne's grandson) on the far right.

Oh, how I wish that I could sit down with my great grandfather Harry at his small kitchen table and show him this document. He would get out his giant magnifying glass and read each word, each syllable clearly and loudly. I can hear his voice now slowly reading, “Louis Etienne Goulé, native of Rouen, France, and late of the 17^th Light Dragoons”. Grandpa would explain the English Infantry of the 17^th Light Dragoons and their role in the English Colonization of India. We would both marvel at the fact that it took 168 years to find this out about his great grandfather and isn’t technology amazing! I’d pick his brain about his father and his grandfather (Henry and Louis Henry) and ask him if he had any more memories of his great grandfather Louis (I’d write it down and record it this time). Then we would talk about Rouen, France and how I want to learn French and travel there now. He’d offered me a liverwurst sandwich and instead I’d eat a stale sugar cookie from his jar. Then, when it was time to leave, I’d lean down and kiss him on the forehead and say, “Grandpa, I ain’t got no love for you!”