Eighty: Reasons To Live

Recently my Dad marked his twentieth wedding anniversary. The celebratory party packed a festive punch, with lots of family and friends coming from as far away as California, NYC, Chicago and BC. Young and old, all celebrants enjoyed the day, appeasing palates, filling bellies, meeting new people and lauding the happy couple for their matrimonial achievement.

Amy is Dad’s third wife (and he her second husband). This marriage is his longest, doubling the previous high-water mark. For me, these highlights speak to a couple things: one, that the celebrating couple have put in the requisite hours and effort to stay together (you can’t not work hard at it; no relationship worth keeping comes easily); and two, I guess it’s true what They say about age. Namely, that it brings experience, and of course experience fosters wisdom. I’m not convinced Dad would necessarily have succeeded in this marriage had he entered it earlier in life. It took the cumulative lessons of not only his previous marriages but other life experiences as well for him to finally find peace and happiness with a better half.

Like most people, Dad has learned as he’s aged. Through his failures and reinventions, he’s shown anyone willing to pay attention how to embrace age and experience as learning tools. He used to be a hothead and a showoff. Eventually accepting that those attributes get you nowhere, he gleaned new approaches to conflict resolution and dealing with success. Historically late for things, he started setting his clock ten, then fifteen minutes early. Previously a wreck when it came to finances, he learned how to better manage his money. (In all fairness, Amy is the financial wizard; so, really, he learned to let her manage their finances.)

I myself have begun to understand that age is nothing to fear, but rather something to embrace. I caught a particularly revealing glimpse of this truth at the anniversary celebration.

There are five cousins: my Dad, his sister Mary, his brother Bill, and their cousins John and Jim. With the exception of Mary (who’s ten years younger than Dad), all the others are around eighty years of age. A few years ago they started getting together one weekend every spring for a social outing. My Dad’s anniversary party gathering certainly qualified as one of those weekends; indeed, over several days in town, the quintet got together to catch up and reminisce and generally enjoy the company of the extended family they grew up with.

When I was younger, far younger, I thought eighty seemed positively ancient. Far beyond anyone’s best before date, far too late to start anything new or achieve anything of significance. I was afraid of eighty in the same way I was afraid of death.

But I’ve worked in a hospital long enough to know that eighty is by no means a death sentence, or even the beginning of the end. At work, I see a lot of sick and infirm people. Many, but not all, are north of eighty. I also see many octogenarians who present as youthful, spry and ambitious. Eighty, then, might be on the cusp of getting old. But it can still offer plenty of potential for life.

There are many ways to stave off age’s inevitable cruelties. The key seems to be to stay active—physically, mentally and especially socially. My Dad is living proof that you can survive retirement by staying active. He’s proof that even approaching eighty, you can find success and happiness, whether in marriage or anything else, so long as you believe it’s possible and work hard at it.

He’s also discovered two other qualities that go hand in hand with age and wisdom: confidence and serenity. The more you know, the more confident you feel about doing your thing, and the less you need to prove yourself, or to showboat. And the older you get, the more you realize what’s important, and the less you stress out about unimportant stuff. Over the years, I have seen firsthand Dad’s hotheadedness disappear, to be replaced by a much-welcomed serenity. I think, also, the more confidence you have, the less anxiety; and less anxiety allows more room for serenity.

And the cousins? Age be damned, they will continue to live their lives, meeting up once a year (or more, when celebrations permit) to catch up and reminisce. They will seek reasons to remain active, physically and mentally and especially socially. Heck, my Uncle Bill comes all the way from BC for these gatherings. As my Uncle John told Praveena and me, “When you’re retired, you look for excuses to get out of the house.” I took that as proof of the itch to keep living, to keep finding things to do.

One final note about the party: I saw the young cousins, my brothers’ and sister’s kids, getting to know each other and playing together throughout the day. It was a thrill to watch, like seeing the start of something new yet also the continuation of valuable tradition. I hope they continue nurturing their relationships throughout the years, hopefully well into their eighties. It will lead to a life of fun, joy and fulfillment, and a later-in-life urge to keep finding things to do, together and apart. Because that’s the not-so-secret secret to maintaining that insatiable itch to live, the closest thing we currently have to a fountain of youth, right?

Over The Hills And Far Away

My best friend texted me over the Victoria Day weekend to wish me a happy May 2-4 holiday, prefacing the text with a classic Zeppelin lyric: “Many times I’ve gazed along the open road.” I responded with “I am at a Tamil Catholic wedding. Talk about over the hills and far away!”

Yes, Praveena took me far from my comfort zone on Saturday, as she was a bridesmaid at her Tamil friend’s Catholic wedding in Brampton. I often found myself sitting there, staring in awe at things I didn’t understand. Yet while specific wedding traditions may change from culture to culture, the basics don’t. The key elements of any successful wedding are a pair of loving, willing participants and a good after-party. Fortunately, Saturday’s event offered both.

In true Canadian fashion, people of all colours were in attendance at the church: black, white, brown and yellow. I wondered if the church itself was of a Tamil Catholic denomination. The Tamil Catholic priest and Tamil-looking, red-and-white–gowned acolytes suggested as much, and the bird-decorated stained glass ceiling was something I’d never seen before. In the pews to the right of the aisle, the groom’s family sat, chanting in Tamil—Catholic words?—and fingering their rosaries. To the left sat the bridal contingent, including me. Several times I reflected on how hard the Christian proselytizers must’ve worked to brand convert the denizens of Tamil Nadu 2,000 years ago.

This wedding shared many similarities with most others I’d been to: the Jesus statues on the walls, the Bible readings, the classic vows exchanged by bride and groom, the priest’s declaration that the wedded couple raise their children according to the principles of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. But I’d never seen the groomsmen waiting for the bride in the aisle, with the groom standing closest to the altar. The Tamil Catholic priest speaking in lilting, heavily accented English (and occasionally Tamil) added another interesting flavour. And many women wore red wedding saris, lending an exotic visual flair to the proceedings.

Several Hindu traditions are incorporated into the Tamil Catholic wedding. Perhaps most notable is the marriage necklace. Similar in concept to the ring exchange (but not replacing it), the groom places around the bride’s neck a gold necklace (mangala sutra or “thali”), which the bride wears for life, identifying her as a married woman.

Held at a Brampton banquet hall later that evening, the reception embraced a collaboration of cultures. The menu foreshadowed as much, boasting a delectable buffet of Indian, Sri Lankan, Canadian and Chinese cuisines. When the wedding party entered the hall, with the bride running through a tunnel of people holding up sparklers, I dearly hoped a falling ember wouldn’t ignite the bridal dress. The couple’s mutual love and commitment were further symbolized when bride and groom each placed a flower garland around the other’s neck. And of course there was typical wedding stuff to augment the novelties: dance floor, open bar, silly games. Even a cotton candy maker was brought in to appease those with a midway-leaning sweet tooth. Everything was geared toward an outrageous but fitting celebration of life.

On more than one occasion I caught myself thinking about my own potential wedding. As the photo slide show depicted shots of the bride and groom, I instead imagined pictures of Praveena and me. I saw myself putting the thali around her neck, I envisioned both our parents sharing in the symbolic lighting of the holy lamp, I imagined each of us adorning the other with flower garlands.

Later in the evening, after Praveena had exchanged her pink bridesmaid dress for a purple-and green sari, I couldn’t stop gazing at her. I knew I wanted to share her culture and life. I knew I was lucky to be with someone so special. As if to confirm this, she soon revealed her hero side.

I was heading to the washroom out in the lobby when I saw a man on the floor with a few people gathered around him. Taking a closer look, I saw he was an older gentleman. I wondered if he was maybe passed out drunk or perhaps just resting. When someone mentioned blood, I went to get Praveena, who’s a doctor. While she assessed the situation, someone called 911. The man—an uncle on the groom’s side—had a pulse, but blood was now oozing onto the marble floor under his head.

By the time the paramedics arrived, Praveena had made sure he wasn’t in acute distress and put some towels under his head to cushion it and staunch the blood. The paramedics put him on a backboard and took him to hospital. Praveena would later surmise that he’d tried to lean against the wall, missed and went down, striking his head on the marble floor. Following up the next day, she’d find he’d been released from hospital, CT scan negative. Thus our weird, eye-opening day had a bit of a crazy ending. What’s a quintessentially Canadian celebration of life without a hint of mortality, eh?

Will Monsanto Go To Ground?

On the surface, the news that Monsanto soon may be dead and buried seems too good to be true. Indeed, German pharmaceutical and industrial chemical beast Bayer wants to buy out the American corporation for the immodest sum of $62 billion.

When I first heard the news, my heart filled with joy. To me, the pesticide- and seed-producing giant is more than just a massive, Hydra-like, comic-book-evil organization that doesn’t even bother trying to improve its public perception—specifically that it favours profit over human and environmental health. The very name “Monsanto” represents—to me—a real-life manifestation of every morally corrupt, monopolistic, money-grubbing, power-hungry company populating sci-fi movies of the last thirty years: Soylent Corporation, Cyberdyne Systems and Umbrella Corporation all wrapped up in one malignant entity.

Whether this bad reputation is earned is another story. Among its “achievements,” Monsanto basically perfected the GMO process. But contrary to what conspiracy theorists and anti-GMO factions will have us believe, evidence that GMO foods are unhealthy is inconclusive, and opinions on the subject are likely more emotional than fact-based. Nonetheless, Monsanto has managed to nurture the bad taste in the mouth left by GMO’s and the unholy stigma associated with its seed patents, if only due to newsworthy stories like its proclivities for swallowing up business competitors and suing small-scale farmers who wittingly or otherwise infringe on patent rights. The fact that it wields incredible corporate influence over government food policy assuages no fears. Who likes to see so much power concentrated in so few hands?

More recently, the debate over Monsanto’s signature weed killer product, Roundup, and the possible carcinogenicity of its active ingredient, glyphosate, has gotten very contentious indeed. I can just imagine a bunch of white-coated scientists standing in a tight circle around an unseen slugfest, chanting “Fight, fight, fight, fight!” With regards to GMO and glyphosate safety, why can’t both sides of these fights see eye to eye? For the intertwined sakes of human and environmental health, some agreement must occur between industry and anti-industry scientists, or at least between non-partisan parties. Mustn’t it? I mean, what’s the point of profit if you have no children to pass it on to once you’re gone?

Back to the possibility of a Monsanto buyout. It seems more of a glass-half-empty kind of good news. Because whatever Monsanto does to incur such acrimony—from anti-GMO and organic food activists, from environmentalists, from anti-corporate activists, from me—it certainly doesn’t operate in a vacuum. If or when Monsanto disappears down Bayer’s massive gullet, the German conglomerate will own a monopoly over the seed and industrial pesticide markets, and will surely do its best to perpetuate Monsanto’s destructive legacy. And I haven’t even mentioned Syngenta, the world’s largest seller of agricultural chemicals. If ever Monsanto as an entity ceases to exist, the evils perpetrated on this planet and its food-producing and -consuming denizens by massive corporations will doubtless continue.

The situation reminds me of that old Newfie joke, where the waiter asks the Newfie if he wants his large pizza cut into six or eight pieces. “Oh, six, please,” the Newfie says. “I couldn’t eat eight.” Whether six or eight pieces, a large pizza is still a large pizza. Bayer may sound better than Monsanto, but an agro-chemical company is still an agro-chemical company, perpetuating more environmental harm than good. (Incidentally, Bayer is the largest vendor of neonicotinoid insecticides, so the bee genocide will certainly continue.) Monsanto’s possible relegation to the land of dead companies (or at least to footnote status) is indeed too good to be true.