My mother sometimes asked when she started looking old. I notice I look a lot more like her every day.
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One of my favorite walking activities involves shutting my eyes for as long as I can.  I choose sidewalks with grass on both sides, or smooth trails that are straight with no stones or potholes.  The experience of temporary blindness allows me to enter the environment with no focus, no distractions except for the wind and the sounds of the earth and sky.

This habit became the foundation for my study of Descartes who was famous for his break from God’s enlightenment with the aphorism, “I think, therefore I am.”  For this, the church burned his writings. In my courses in college, I pursued the question of who am I?  I ranged through Freud’s trifecta of ego, id, and superego, through Pavlov’s behavioral conditioning and the sciences of embryology and genetic heredity.

Most appealing were the discoveries of blindness that detailed how the blind, naturally or accidentally, created a world of their own.  One scientific exercise involved blinding one for five hours.  During that time, the person would not sit still, but would be involved in physical activity.

Perfect!  I asked a friend to chaperone me for the hours while we walked around the block prior to a hike through a nearby park.  I advised her not to touch me.  In an emergency, she could tell me to stop, turn, or backup.   I did not want her to ground me with her presence.

After adjusting the mask, I armed myself with a cane.  Off we went, like Hansel and Gretel into the dark.

During my stroll, I used my cane to brush away the branches from the bushes, and the leaves over my head. After a long period of time, I saw a wall being built stone by stone in front of me.  Curious, I approached as the wall began to surround me.  Due to my concern of being hemmed in, I pushed my cane into the wall.  It went through the wall.  And the wall stopped growing.  I turned around.  Walking back to the car, darkness fell.  Fortunately, I had lights on my shoe and a flashlight in my shirt pocket.

When we reached the car, my friend turned me around, took off my blindfold, and pointed to the path we had just traversed.  I was surprised it was not dark, but shocked to see that my stroll was on a wide road through the park without any bushes or overhanging branches.  There was no wall anywhere, and I did not have any lights on my shoes or shirt.  I asked if she had seen the bushes, the wall, or the lights.  “No.”

For me, this experiment revealed that there are many varieties and causes of who I am.  Descartes was correct for moving on beyond theological reasoning for he opened a path to many sites.

For those who die and then return to their life with tales of discovery of God, their deceased parents, their living children crying, I conclude that death is just another form of blindness.  We have no idea where we are going or if we will even return.  I like Ann Sexton’s death poem that kindly urges us to put on our slippers to walk into the darkness.

A big part of aging is coming to see it's not as bad as you thought it was when you were young.
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My parents barely knew one another when they married. They were coming out of WWII, both living with older sisters who were friends with each other, both aged 32. My father had dated a lot of women, but promised his now-deceased father that he would marry a Jewish woman.

My mother, who had low self-esteem, thought she would never marry, so was rather surprised when this handsome man paid attention to her. They met in February and married on June 16, 1946 in a small ceremony in my mother’s native Toledo, Ohio, attended only by their immediate family (with so many brothers and sisters, the gathering was not tiny). The lived in an apartment, then a small house in Detroit. My dad, with a partner, had a used car lot, which became a DeSoto dealership, and eventually, a Chrysler dealership.

My brother, Rick, came along in February, 1948 and I, in December, 1952 (they had given up trying; I was their surprise). Dad worked hard in retail – 6 days and 2 nights a week. Mom had lots of help around that small house – a full-time maid who cleaned and cooked. She did volunteer work for Jewish ladies’ organizations but was always home when we came home for lunch or after school. Things seemed to run smoothly during our days in Detroit. I was told by a cousin that she seemed full of life and fun in those days.

It all fell apart when we sold that small house, built a new one in Huntington Woods (just 2 1/2 miles outside the Detroit city limits) and Rick and I went to school in Royal Oak, in 1963. We had difficulty making new friends, the move was very difficult on our mother, who had a “nervous breakdown” and took to her bed for 6 weeks. Her sister, Stella, from Cleveland, came in to care for us. She and I fought over what I could wear (I was trying to wear what the other girls wore, but she thought I should dress in practical winter clothing and accused me of being spoiled). The tension around the house was palpable.

Slowly, Mother came back to living, but was never the same. She saw a psychiatrist she hated, and went only because the family forced her to. She resumed some of her household chores. Her family (to whom she would listen; my father didn’t know what to do) also didn’t know how to help. Her uncle, an internist, told her she HAD to see this psychiatrist, so she did, but an unwilling patient will not make progress.

We no longer had as much help. She now had to cook, even though we still had help with the cleaning and laundry. Rick went off to Brandeis in 1965 and I was alone with this erratic, needy woman.

In 1967, Dad suffered a severe business loss. His partner had wanted out of the partnership two years earlier; my dad agreed to buy him out over a long period. In 1967, the UAW went out on strike, Dad had no inventory to sell and wound up selling his dealership back to Chrysler at a loss, though he continued to pay off his partner until I was part-way through Brandeis (I believe he was finished with that obligation in 1972). He went to work for a cousin who owned a Buick dealership. I can’t imagine what that did to his pride or his psyche. We never talked about it, though I’m sure he was grateful for the job and income.

The cleaning lady now came one day a week and all other perks that came with owning one’s own business were gone. I think my mother found it humiliating and, rather than being supportive, would mock her husband. She had inherited some money from her father’s estate and now had to use that to pay the (small) mortgage on our home, unlike her sisters (one married to a lawyer, one to a doctor) who used their shares any way they chose. She had vicious fights with Dad in front of me. I couldn’t wait to leave for a university as far away as I could get.

Dad had been stationed in California during WWII, loved being there and always wanted to return, but Mother would have none of it. She didn’t want to be far from her family. Dad was aware of a retirement development (55 and older) being built in Laguna Hills called Leisure World. It was built in stages, had several golf courses and many other amenities, making it attractive for active older folks and my father was eager to buy a unit for their retirement, but one had to be there in person when units went on the market. Mom was having none of it. Dad had a niece stand in and got the right to buy one when it came up for sale. At this point, the Huntington Woods house was paid off. He took out a mortgage on that home to buy the Laguna Hills condo; a two-bedroom, two bath unit with a garage. He told Mother to hire a decorator and let her do whatever she wanted with it. It was his dream, but he wanted her to participate. She had a cousin who lived nearby and he had cousins and retired Temple friends in the complex. He thought it would be an ideal place to retire.

Mother gave him an amazing amount of crap at every step of the way, yet he persisted. It was finally built and decorated and they went out and spent a few weeks – and she enjoyed it! The weather was sublime, they had an excellent social life. There was a shuttle bus that ran to the grocery store, or into town for functions. But of course, Dad rented a car that trip, so he drove her around to see her cousin or friends. He was very social and entertained at the home. He’d barbecue and invite all sorts of people over. After all the grief she’d given him, she enjoyed being there. They went there several times over the next few years.

He approached retirement. He doubted he could spend 100% of his time with her. She was making more scenes in public; he couldn’t tolerate those, or all her belittling, in private and public. He made a deal with her. He told her to go to California for a month without him, while he continued to work. He thought, if only he could have a little peace, he could stand the rest. But she was fearful. She didn’t think she could survive without him. Her behavior became more erratic. In the winter of 1978, he finally had her committed to a mental hospital for a two week evaluation. She was furious. People SMOKED in there, and besides – she wasn’t CRAZY! He asked for help from her family. They said they didn’t know why he hadn’t done that long ago. He was sort of stunned. The state of mental health in the late 1970s wasn’t what it is today (nor were there anti-depressants like today) and there was still a huge stigma attached. Her siblings agreed that she needed help, but no one reached out to her, nor helped my father deal with the situation. She came home, having not been helped and even angrier.

He filed for divorce late in 1980. She didn’t believe it. He was told by his lawyer that he didn’t need to move out, so just stayed in the other bedroom, as he had for years. She found this confusing.

She contested the divorce. For a year. She decided she wanted that condo in California. The one she had given him so much crap about buying. He brought in an old family friend who wanted to buy the Huntington Woods house for her daughter and made a good offer. Mother screamed the woman out of the house. The friend never returned.

A real estate broker befriended my mother. All I heard about was “Carol”; “Carol told me this”, “Carol told me that”. My mother never understood that she was being used by this woman. My father moved in with his widowed sister-in-law.  My mother continued to fight the divorce. They both rang up serious legal fees.

Some years earlier, my father had set up a small irrevocable trust for my brother and me (neither of us knew about it). My mother now decided that she wanted the money in that trust too – money set aside for HER CHILDREN! This also infuriated my father. I have the divorce decree. My father annotated it for my brother and me; she wound up with considerably more money than he did, but he would never relinquish the California condo. Also, she had no claim to that small trust. He told her if she wanted it, she could pay his lawyer to break the trust. She persisted, my dad had to break the trust and pay her that money. To his dying day, he never paid the lawyer for that work. It was the first claim again his estate, which my brother paid.

After a year, and countless legal fees, my mother finally agreed to give up the claim on the California condo and the divorce decree was granted, ending a 35 year marriage. My dad moved to his beloved condo in California. He lived there a bit less than 9 years, dying at the age of 76 on January 3, 1990.

Meanwhile, the market in Detroit had turned and Mom’s “friend” Carol sold the Huntington Woods house for far less than the offer my mother had chased away a year earlier. My mother never heard from Carol again. Mom moved to a large apartment in a complex near her sister Ann, where she lived until the age of 82, when I moved her to a life care community 20 minutes from me in suburban Boston. She died 3 days before her 97th birthday in 2010, leaving a sizable estate that was split between my brother and me.

My parents saw each other once more: at Rick’s wedding. We spoke with each of them before the event, asking them to behave, which they did. We breathed a sigh of relief. Her one request for that day was that she and our father have one dance together, which they did. They always danced so well together.