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No Religion has now overtaken Catholicism as the most popular religion. This was in the Wall Street Journal last week.  This an interesting fact as Holy Week begins. I don’t think many of the younger generations realize how important the Church was to us. Most of my extended family attended parochial schools. Most had at least some experience of being taught by nuns. When we were growing up it really was a badge of pride to be attending a Catholic school. We were so much better than the “publics”. When someone asked you where you lived, you didn’t tell them the neighborhood or town. You told them the parish you belonged to.

The religious holidays were really a part of life. There were individual ceremonies to mark your growth from baptism to first communion to confirmation. Every first Friday there was a special liturgy. There was a real honor to have the traveling statue of the Virgin Mary come to your house. The neighbors would come over and a group rosary would take place. If you moved into a new home, it was important to have the priest come over to bless the house. 1954 was designated as a “Marion “ year dedicated to the Virgin. In Chicago this was a very big deal. I remember there was a huge procession down Lake Shore Drive to Soldiers Field for a mass there.

There were also the religion classes where you had to memorize the Baltimore Catechism. There was no real room for argument about this. There   was right and there was wrong.

I think a lot of this started to change in the early 1960s.  A Vatican council was called to modernize the Church. Since then the Church has lost much of it’s power. The abuse scandals of the last 10-15 years have also hurt. However I think that as many of the people in my generation became better educated, we began to think for ourselves rather than have the clergy and religious do it for us.

This is both good and bad. The good is that we realize that our lives really are our responsibility. We need to take responsibility for the decisions we make and accept the consequences of those decisions. The bad is that we have lost some of our history.

We have now lived here for two years. When we moved we belonged to a fairly modern parish in Naperville. We enjoyed the liturgy there and the social activity. There seemed to be a real sense of community. Since we moved we have been attending the parish here. This diocese appears to be much more conservative. There are references to saints and relics and observances that were popular when I was in grade school. There is a definite effort to go back in time. I think that door is closed for me. I now question everything. I still go to Mass, but I now tend to fall asleep during the sermon. I told myself that this was because I had to listen to people professionally for so many years that it hard for me to listen to someone just talking.

The importance of some type of spiritual experience is still there for me. Now I question where it is and wonder if I can ever find it. It really is easy to criticize the Church. I can think of so many ways to do so. However I also realize that somewhere along the way I did lose something. I am not ready to discard everything and begin worshiping the sun or sacrificing virgins. I am not a total materialist. I just am not sure where the truth is.

The Old Testament and the New Testament often seem in opposition. The Jesus of the New Testament presents a loving, forgiving faith. The way this has been interpreted over the years is part of the problem. There is still an effort to say there is one right and many wrongs. I think there is a desire to go back to the memorization of the Baltimore Catechism.

I once had a very devout patient. He and his wife were members of an evangelical Church. They were very active in that Church. They didn’t trust society as a whole so they even home schooled their children. They were very unhappy yet they decided to stay together. The wife would verbalize that her husband was the leader of the family and she should subjugate herself to him. She would say this and yet continue to sabotage his relationship with their children on a regular basis. They would have sex because he wanted to and then she would try and make him feel guilty. Any recommendations or interventions I made almost had to be biblical according to their understanding of the bible.

I think I saw them five or six times. I recommended that they might be better working with their pastor or a Christian counselor. They didn’t want to change. I have often wondered what happened to them and what happened to their children. They could be very satisfied that they were bringing their children up in a religious home, but what message were they really giving. This is not just true of the Christian religions. I think any organized religion that insists on absolutes and negates individual responsibility creates the same difficulty.

There is a need in me and probably in all of us for some contact with a higher power whatever that might be. I don’t want to be like Diogenes and, rather than searching for an honest man, be continually searching for the true religion. I just want to have some belief that touches me and continues to help me heal.

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My father died when I was 20. I was asleep in my dorm room and a priest knocked on my door to tell me. He was very gentle and drove me to the hospital where my mother and sisters were waiting. I remember them asking me to go in to say goodbye. I walked in to see my father’s corpse.

I don’t think many of us picture our parent’s death. We think they will live forever just like we will. When Jacqueline Kennedy died there was an interview with her son where he said that you don’t really become an adult until your parents die. Over the years I have thought a lot about that. I don’t think that’s true. You become and adult when you become responsible for your life’s choices and the consequences that ensue.

I think before my father’s death my life was pretty well scripted out. I was in the seminary and it was my destiny to become the priest that my entire Irish extended family wanted. I don’t think I really thought much about it. I would see friends of mine leave the seminary and I felt sad at their loss. I didn’t think I would ever leave. I remember one of the chaplain priests that we had telling me that he thought I was just drifting without any real thought about the future.

After the funeral I went back and drifted some more. I finally decided to leave when I was a deacon, the last step before the priesthood. I was assigned to a parish that had three priests and was the bishop’s primary residence. It was a very busy place, but all thru the summer I was there, all I could think of was the incredible loneliness of the life. I remember telling my mother that I was going to leave. She was very supportive. It really wasn’t until recently that I found out how much she had cried when I left.

I moved back home for about eight months and then moved out with some friends. My decision to leave still haunted me. I really didn’t know what the future would hold. I began to date a very nice girl, but part of me felt guilty for doing that. I was not supposed to date. I even broke up with her because of this confusion that I felt.

I had let down not just my family, but also all my friends from the seminary and the entire Catholic Church. Thinking back on this time I don’t know how much of it was because of my self-centeredness, my immaturity, my naïveté about life, or the really limited and focused culture of the seminary. One day we were helping some friends move and I saw the girl I had been dating. We hadn’t seen each other for about four months. We began to talk and we went out to get a coke at a fast food restaurant and I proposed. I don’t think I had any real plans to do that, it really just happened. She said yes and we have been married for 46 years. After I asked her I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth, but they may have been the first real adult words I had ever spoken.

When do you become an adult? What does that really mean? I know that over the years I still at times wonder if I ever really grew up. Virginia Satir, one of the early pioneers of family therapy, wrote about this. She said that often when dealing with a difficult case she wondered when the real adult, the real therapist would come in the room.

This is not all negative. The importance of laughter, making jokes, and just playing is still part of my life. Adulthood is not always somber responsibility, but it is being responsible for the choices you make. I think there is always some event that triggers this. The event can be a death or something that no one else would even think important. It can be something tragic or something really trivial, but whatever it is, it is life changing. It might not even be recognizable until years later.

For many years after my father’s death I would have dreams that he was still alive. The dreams would be rather bizarre in that he came back and made everything right again. The dreams stopped after we got married. I don’t know if they were really encouraging me all along to take responsibility and make a life for myself. The past was over and couldn’t be redone. It was time to shape my own life.

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The wife of a physician friend of mine calls him an FIP now that he’s retired. When I asked what she meant, she said an FIP is “Formerly Important Person”. I was never an FIP, but I was an important voice in people’s lives. I never thought I would miss that. People would ask for my opinion on everything from operations, to their sex life and even if they should allow their daughter to go to prom. At the end when I decided to retire I was ready. I was tired of always being on call for my patient’s emergencies. Now I am starting to miss it. This week it will be six years since I left. Sometimes I think even my own family blows me off since “it’s just Dad, or it’s just Jim”. The passage of time has really had an effect on me in that I no longer feel as essential as I once did. I think this season did not help.

This winter was difficult. February was a very dreary month with snow and freezing rain and many cloudy wintery days. I didn’t go to the gym as much. In fact I think I took most of January and February off. I would swim, but didn’t run. . My cousin in Arizona helped a lot by inviting us out there. We went in mid March. This was the first time we had ever taken a winter vacation.  When we left it was a cloudy 37 degrees. We got off the plane to 73 degrees and sunny. This is the high season in Arizona. The weather is great. Spring breakers and baseball spring training all happen at the same time. My cousin and his wife were very generous and showed us much of the area. We went for a long walk in shorts and tee shirts every morning in the beautiful weather. We also had a chance to reconnect with some relatives on my father’s side. This was the first time we had seen them in 46 years. Just seeing them and hearing old family stories was important. I found out that my Dad’s father was physically and emotionally abusive to my Dad’s younger brother. This whole family story is constantly changing. My sister was in Arizona at the same time and we began talking about the family. We wondered what had happened to some of our cousins. We began to search and found out that one cousin and his wife had been dead for a number of years. Another cousin had died just two years ago and no one informed us.

I found his brother on Ancestry and wrote him. The family has lived in California for almost sixty years and really lost contact with the rest of us. He was glad to hear from me. He is 76 and still a practicing attorney. I may send him some stuff about our grandparents from Ireland. This whole experience got me to realize that our generation really is passing. We are all seniors now. This mortality thing really is getting more and more present. I think it’s easy to say live in the moment and focus on the present, but the reality is that the present is passing more and more each day.

I have another cousin in Arizona that we visited. She lives there in the winter and in Illinois and Michigan the rest of the year. She is 83 and still very vibrant and full of life. She used to babysit me and the male cousin who invited us to Arizona. She has many family stories and really is one of the last family history resources we have. She told us of a terrifying day when she was 11 years old. She had taken my cousin and I in a stroller to a store to buy us each a toy. On the way back she heard many sirens and found streets blocked off. This was the polio epidemic of the late 1940s. Everyone was terrified. She reports there were daily diagnoses and daily deaths announced at her school. The more she talked, the more I realized that each time has it’s own set of crises. Here I am in my seventies still trying to put some set of meaning on my life’s experience. On some days I can do this with no problems what so ever. Other days are more difficult. I think the deaths of cousins in my own generation has again made me focus on the real boundaries of life. There is a beginning and there is an end. I like to think of Mark Twain’s quote: “I know everybody dies, but I thought they would make an exception in my case. ”

There is no exception. I know my wife and other relatives continue to say I am in good health and should enjoy this time. Most days I can. I just think the cold shower of reality comes up occasionally and makes me realize that time is not endless.

This week our 8 y/o grandson stayed overnight with us. His imagination and energy still amaze us. Yesterday we visited my oldest son and played with our 18-month-old grand daughter. Today we will visit our other son and his 8-month-old daughter. They all have the wonder of discovery and joy and endless love. Right now they are the best medicine I can have for this winter disease. They really do light up my life.

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Christmas has never been the same since my sister’s sudden death eight years ago. I still remember the wonder we felt as children and I remember waking her up so we could sneak into the living room at 2 or 3 in the morning to see what Santa had left.

It does help to see my grandchildren and nieces and nephews have that same wonder, but I do miss my sister. She was the guardian of most of the family memories and my other sister and I often feel lost trying to remember family stories. The losses just seem more painful at Christmas because it is such a magical time of year. It is of course very materialistic. The Church always wants us to remember the “ reason for the season”. This is difficult with all of the pressure of the ads and the expectation that “this will be the best Christmas ever”. I think it helps to remember that this was really a pagan feast that the Church absorbed. The Winter Solstice was also a time of celebrating. Now almost all of the traditions of Christmas– Trees, Yule logs, Gifts , etc. have ties to those ancient feasts. The Christian churches want us to remember that Advent is the season to focus on the return of Christ. This is not what the media focuses on. All you hear is “sale, sale, bargain, bargain”. For me it helps to focus on this as a time of family celebration. The food, gifts, laughter all seems to be a sign of who we are. I think that is why this is such a bittersweet time. If you think about it, you really began your own self-definition in your family.The special events, birthdays, anniversaries,graduations, marriages,health issues of all your family members build your picture of what family was supposed to be. You carry on the values and traditions that you experienced there. As you grow older you have your own experiences, but the family imprint, good, or bad, will always be there. If you lose a family member thru death or alienation you really lose a part of yourself. You don’t have that person to talk to and say, “Remember when”.

The old proverb that “ Time Heals All Wounds” is true for the sharp pain that happens after the death, but the ache comes back and is always there. A sudden word, a certain smell, a special time of year, all bring back the memories and pain of loss. I once had a patient whose main issue was the drive-by death of her 19-year-old son that had happened 15 years before. She would have sudden migraines and overwhelming episodes of depression. She was very active in her Church, but had never been able to talk about it there. A real breakthrough for her occurred when she was finally able to talk about it with her fellow bible study members. She had a feeling of letting go and talked about the comfort they provided. Even that did not make the pain go away.

Another patient had trouble accepting the death of her four-year-old son. She would keep his room exactly the same as the day he died. She would continue to celebrate his birthday every year. She would drive by the school he would have attended and watch for the friends he would have had. She had another child, a daughter who was younger than the boy who died. She finally began to realize the effect this was having on her and began therapy. The day she packed up her son’s room was for her a real sign of acceptance. However this also didn’t make the pain go away.

The pain is always there and just becomes another part of life. We all have this marvelous ability to prioritize. As life goes on the pain can begin to slip into the background. However our brains are like giant hard drives and when the right trigger is pushed-be that a sound, a smell, or even a holiday, the memories come flooding back. The reality is that those losses are always with us,. As time goes on we adjust and we begin to get on with our lives as our loved ones would have wanted us too.

I know that we all go thru losses and that really is a part of life, but the general truth of this doesn’t help. So at sometime over the next two weeks I may even shed a tear as I think of those years we were all together. I hopefully will also have much laughter and love at the ones that still surround me. Merry Christmas. Remember what you had and treasure what you have.

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Sometimes I think I have lost the ability to be surprised by people and their motivations. This probably comes from the many years I spent listening to people and every sort of problem imaginable. From incest, to murder, to stealing candy bars, my patients would come in with all of their unresolved issues and try to work them out.

I think by the time I retired I was just tired of listening, but then something will happen that challenges this. In mid August we went on a Viking River Cruise thru Prague and southern Germany. A friend of mine had done it last year and recommended the trip. The cruise was beautiful and well worth it. We liked the whole experience. We met lots of new people and they were almost all in our age group. The typical age for this according to the cruise director is 60-75. There was one very independent 91 year old who had more energy than almost anyone on the ship. She does a cruise at least yearly. Every night we would have dinner with at least one new couple at our table of eight.

Besides the usual questions about occupation, location, and grandchildren, people became comfortable enough to really open up. I think the atmosphere and environment of the ship encouraged people to talk and share about their lives. I am still trying to understand this whole experience.

One couple in particular has really made me think. He and his girl friend sat at our table and we began to talk. Between the two of them they have 10 grandchildren, but the families really don’t mix. We asked how they met and he said that they met dancing the Tango. He is 68 and works in heating and air conditioning. He is thinking of retiring by the end of the year. She is 62 and has been a hospice nurse for over 25 years. He told us that he was a competitive roller skater for many years, but then hurt his knee. As he recovered he began looking for some other form of exercise. Just by chance he saw an ad about a class for learning the Tango. He took the class and it overwhelmed him. He became so involved with it that he would use his vacation time to go to Argentina to learn more. As he talked it was evident that this was one of the grand passions of his life. He met his girl friend at one of the classes and she liked the way he danced and talked. She told us she had been a widow for many years. She had dated occasionally, but nothing really serious until now.

The Tango apparently is culture unto itself. There is a specific way of moving and communicating. He said that he learned in Argentina that when you first met someone you wanted to dance with you didn’t speak. You stared intently at someone and if they stared back and nodded you would walk in a very specific way until the two could begin dancing. He told up that at this one class there were hundreds of couples and people began dancing without really being able to move very much because of lack of space. The Tango doesn’t require a lot of movement as much as it does the ability to communicate to your partner what you want to have them do. He told us that they had stepped back a little from the culture because they both loved to travel and this may become his new passion.

I think the reason I keep thinking about this is the realization that new passions and fascinations can enter your life at any time and at any age. I had been thinking that retirement meant a time of slowing down and contemplating the past and trying to reach that stage of “Ego Integrity vs. Despair”. Sometimes I thought this was really within my grasp, but now I do need to rethink.

When we decided to go on this trip we also planned on spending an extra week by ourselves in Paris. We had been there before and wanted go back and see more. One of the places we went to is the Pere LaChaise Cemetery. This is somewhat like Forest Lawn in Hollywood in that many famous people are buried there. The difference is that the French cemetery is almost 400 years old. I wanted to see Jim Morrison’s grave. His grave is one of the more visited along with Oscar Wilde’s. What struck me was that no matter how important or famous, all lives have a beginning and an end. I suppose you can sit and contemplate your life and what you have accomplished. One friend of mine had an image he shared of an old man sitting on his porch and cutting cheese. This sounds very peaceful, but it also sounds very limiting. Even in this last quarter of life new passions are still possible. I need to continue to be reminded of the importance of continuing to grow until the end. I might never learn the Tango, but maybe I can still learn to waltz.