 And welcome to my program, Elderhood, Aging Gracefully. My name is Larry Grimm, and I am grateful to be a part of Think Tech Hawaii and this wonderful opportunity to share with you the thinking that I have about Elderhood so that you can make this the most wonderful, the most real experience of your life. I am Larry Grimm Chaplain at Bristol Hospice here on Oahu, and I'm very proud to be a part of Bristol Hospice Hawaii because Bristol Hospice Hawaii lives their tagline embracing a reverence for life and even more so, I believe, lives out our mission which is to provide the highest quality of compassion and care for our terminal ill patients and their families across the island. We serve people in their homes, in their facilities, and we are highly skilled and highly resourced for the best kind of care that you could ask for, and you saw the website address there just a minute ago, bristolhospice-hawaii.com, and if you go there, you'll find all the information that you need as far as how to get more information or guidance on how to become, integrate that into your own life and your own family life. One of the other things that I do, though, is that I do online coaching. I do what I call personal life coaching, personal coaching for life and faith focusing on Elderhood, and what I'm doing in this program from time to time, from week to week, sharing with you the foundational thinking for my coaching experience, and in that foundational thinking, I have identified five spiritual tasks. What I've said is, you know, we have a childhood, we have adolescence, we have adulthood, now we have Elderhood, and when we look at Elderhood as a kind of stage of life, then we can identify, just as in other stages of our life, that there are certain tasks, tasks that are to be completed, that are part of the maturing process. I'm sure you've seen that, I'm sure you've seen that bumper sticker. Aging is mandatory, maturing is optional, and part of what I want to do is, engage my fellow folks in truly making it a maturing process that is real and wonderful for you. In my work with elderly people, elder people, and now I'm one of them, I have noticed that there are five tasks that present themselves to us, and these tasks can't be taken on intentionally, which I claim we do, but they definitely, it seems to me, arise. They rise up in our face, they arise in our lives, and we may be surprised by them sometimes. The first one that I've noted is grieving, and that's one that often can catch people by surprise. We grieve a lot because there's a lot of loss as we go. Somebody said, aging is a series of losses. I don't think it's just a series of losses, but certainly we can account for things that we've lost as we go through the aging process, and that does create grief, grief, and sadness, and sorrow, sometimes fear. It's important to identify what is happening in my life, in terms of inner life, in terms of great grieving, and give it some kind of vent, I think. Second thing is sorting out stories. We sort out our stuff, but we also sort out our stories. Every bit of stuff you have has a story attached to it, and some of them become very important stories in the elderhood. Now, you may pass on the stuff to a loved one, or you may donate it somewhere, but you keep the story, and the story is important to you because it is about an event that helps shape the person that you are today. That story you want to hold on to, you want to keep. And some of the stories are, in fact, what we need to process again and keep going. We bring up the spiritual tasks again, because the third one is forgiving. And I don't mean that this is responding to a religious imperative, but there seems to be this human need for forgiveness, to experience forgiveness, to offer forgiveness. And so we'll look at that today, a little bit later here, forgiving. Fourth one is preparation. There are external preparations that we make, certainly for getting everything in order, getting our household in order, in order for our departure, eventually. But there are also internal preparations that we make. How do you envision that life after life? We'll look at that a little more closely. And each one of those externals as well, we'll bring on to the show. I want to bring some of my co-workers at Bristol who have amazing resources to talk about those externals and how to prepare for places, to prepare for finances, and to give us a handle on what is available and what's necessary as we move through our elderhood. And then finally, letting go. Perhaps the most difficult of all, letting go. And we'll discuss that and we'll practice some of that as well in the showtime that we have. I say that elderhood can be lived in two different ways. One way, I'm reminded of living on the East Coast for a while, and I flew into Asheville, North Carolina. And Asheville is up in the mountains, of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Beautiful place, beautiful setting. But we came in at a time when there was a cloud cover, and the cloud cover was full of storms and storms. So we couldn't just go into land. The pilot came on and said, folks, we're going to circle around here until we find a place, a break in the storm, and then we'll go on down to land at the runway, the airport right below us. And so we went around, traveled around, cruised around for a while, and then he came on and said, we've got an opening, I'm going in. And it really was a fast descent, zoom down. It was kind of a white knuckle time, grabbing the handle, my hands on the seat, and landing safely at the airport. But man, what a descent. A lot of us live life like that in the elder years, our elderhood, so that we wait until there's that last crisis, or that imminent prod, that last prod to make us do something. And we have to respond to it, and I can help people make a response to that. The other idea, and possible thing to consider, so we can land like we come into Honolulu, Hawaii, the approach starts way out over the ocean. And the descent is gradual, and calm, and peaceful, and you're on the ground almost before you realize that you've made that entire descent and transition is quite easy. So I like to think that my coaching is best used for that kind of approach in elderhood, to make it real, to make it wonderful, to make it a gradual and wonderful and inclusive inclusive kind of landing, inclusive in that we get to include all the people that are important to us in the process of elderhood. And we'll have through this program some various looks at some resources that are able to support that descent, that landing, that beautiful, wonderful, long, long stretch. There's no reason to give up and say, oh, I'm going to go in for a landing and give up way back there. You keep it strong, sustained, and lots of good, wonderful things happening in the elderhood. So those are the ways that I look at elderhood, and I hope you'll join with me in thinking about your own in that way. You may have somebody in your life, some parent or grandparent, is going through that time of their life now, and you may be able to identify kind of how, which metaphor is more helpful for understanding what they're going through right now. We have 260,000, I think, 250 or 260,000 people over 65 residents of Hawaii, citizens of Hawaii. So elderhood is very much with us, very much a part of our everyday life, and very much a part of the culture in which we live here. And my coaching is not only for people close at hand, but of course, folks, because it's online, I can do coaching with people throughout the globe, which I'm happy to do. Forgiving is one of those spiritual tasks. And as I said, it's earlier, it's not a religious imperative. In other words, as a person, as a guide, as a coach, or as a chaplain, I'm not going in and saying, well, you got to forgive. It's important to do that. But rather, what we find is that people generate this desire for forgiveness from within. It just happens. It occurs. It comes up. And we've heard a lot about deathbed confessions, which are exemplary of this. I want to read a few of these, just a few stories. You can go online and find deathbed confessions. And there are many of them available. But here are a few. They're not glamorous. They're not renowned people. But certainly, everyone is somebody's experience and of importance to us. This one talks about a mother-in-law who worked at a nursing home. And so she'd seen many things. And there was one thing that stuck with her. A patient that was near death called her out for someone to listen, anybody, just to listen to her. And the patient decided to tell a story about how her father many, many years ago had been out drinking late and had driven home. And on the way home, a little person killed a little girl, probably three years old. And he and his friend grabbed at the body. She gave very specific details about where and when it happened. The girl was three years old and her father and his friends hit her body under the porch steps and never spoke of it again. And this person, the patient, had lived with the guilt of keeping that a secret, one of those family secrets, and felt horrible that that little girl's family would never know what had happened. And she just had to let somebody know about it. There's a kind of desire for cleansing, or absolution perhaps. Okay. There's another related to me by my mother before her passing. My great uncle, this one says, admitted that he had eliminated his first wife because he found her harming the neighbor kid who was five years old at the time. That's when he lived in Ireland. And a few years later moved to America, met another woman, lived a happy life. Everybody admired him and it was, were terribly shocked to find out that he had done this, but he was one of the kindest people they knew. He's told this story to someone and then three minutes later he died. I'm a medical student, had a female patient who was new to our practice, HIV positive. I needed to ask her how she got the virus and she tells me it was transmitted through intimate contact. And the only reason she got tested was because her partner three years last words to her in hospice was, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wanted to tell you forgive me. Pretty heavy stuff. What motivates people to do this? Well, it's something within that has to be cleansed, cleared out. We're going to have a brief break here of about a minute and then we'll return with some other look, another fresh look at forgiveness. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at one o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently I interviewed Alex Gempel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about human stories about law and life. Aloha. Hello, I'm Mufi Hanuman. I want to tell you about a great show that appears on Think Tech Hawaii. It's all about tourism. In fact, we call it Tourism 101, where we talk about the issues and challenges that faces our number one industry throughout the state. We'll have some interesting guests, very informative dialogue and allow you an opportunity to maybe learn a little bit more about why this industry is so important for our state. It's been great for us in the past. We need it today and especially going forward. That's Tourism 101 on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Hello. Welcome back. I'm Larry Grimm. Elderhood aging gracefully and part of our tasks, one of our tasks in elderhood is forgiving. Forgiving others, forgiving ourselves. It's interesting that forgiveness does not mean necessarily reconciliation. What I mean is when people reconcile, it's a relationship that's been broken. It may be two people, it may be quite a few people. It doesn't matter how many, but to be reconciled means that everyone wants to reconnect. They want to reestablish their relationship, their friendship. That takes work which may involve and undoubtedly will involve some forgiving of one another and forgiving of self. However, it's quite possible to forgive yourself and set yourself free by doing a unilateral forgiveness. Forgiveness is something that we can extend to people and to in the process release ourselves from the claim that that event or that guilt or that problem may have on us. Nirvana, it's kind of interesting. Nirvana, we have to think of as a place, but it's really not a place. Nirvana means, it means letting go. It means the release and forgiveness can be that kind of release as well. In fact, its original word has more to do with release and letting go than it does paying some kind of penalty or getting free of some kind of penalty. We in our Western way of thinking and Western Christianity have built a lot of our Christianity around judicial terms and forgiveness is used as a judicial term, which means that oftentimes that we're forgiven for something that we've committed, some offense that we've done. But the emotional experience is the experience of release of Nirvana of letting go. And some religions, the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, has a sacrament by which in a kind of rudimentary way, rudimentary, not rudimentary, but a ritualistic way, a person can feel this sort of release through the sacramental rite. The priest administers the sacrament, leads the person through a process of confession and a process of absolution or cleansing, cleansing the spirit. They've had that, the Catholic, Orthodox and Catholic churches have had that sacrament for many, many years, of course centuries, or 2000 years. Protestants don't do it so much in a sacramental way. Protestants do do it through listening. But mostly like I've said, this compulsion to seek forgiveness is something that is really rising up within. We've looked at a couple of stories of people who have made death bed confessions. And I want to share one more with you. When I was in hospice work in Denver, Colorado area, one of my patients was an AIDS patient. And this young man was really very depleted. He had lost the lower limb of his right leg. And he was nearing death very soon, we knew. I was in it with him one time and he said, Pastor, I need to repent. I said, okay. Is this a general repentance or something, a specific event? And he said, it was specific. I said, okay, did it involve a woman? He said, yep. I said, okay, okay. I set it up for him and his imagination. I said, now imagine she's here with you at the foot of the bed. You're looking at her. Do you see her? Yeah. Now imagine that you're telling her what you wanted to tell her. And you can say it out loud or keep it quiet, whichever you want. And I'll just stand here and wait for you to finish. So he told her, whenever it was, I'm not sure the details, but he then said, I want you to forgive me. Will you forgive me? Next I invited him and his imagination to become her. Stand at the foot of the bed and look at himself. And then say, what does she say to you? I said, he said, I forgive you. Then I invited him to come back into the bed, into himself. And I said, what did you hear? He said, I'm forgiven. And I asked, how do you feel now? And he said, put his hands like this. He said, like a weight, like a, like a boulder's been lifted off my shoulders. All he did was an internal, inner psychic experience of forgiveness. But it was real for him. And it was so real that he, too, within a few days released and let go and died. So it was something he just had to do before the end. And what I say is, we can wait until the last minute and do it out of the deathbed confession if you like. That's fine. But what about the value? Is there a value in starting way out here as we come into the landings, to the airport, as we prepare for the final approach and cleanse the plate, cleanse the pallet, cleanse everything in the process of aging gracefully. And that's what I would be happy to help you do. In fact, I would like to offer this. Now, this is unusual. I don't know if ThinkTech does this very often. But I would like to offer you a meditation on forgiveness. So kind of get situated somewhere, get your feet on a flat on the floor, and get into a position where you can hear well and you can close your eyes if you want. And I'm going to give you a guided meditation to take you through this kind of forgiveness experience, similar to what my friend did there at the hospice in Colorado. So take a breath, breathe in and then hold it a little bit, and then let it out. Breathe in, hold it, let it out. You want to forgive somebody for something that they did to you, or perhaps you want to ask forgiveness from somebody or something you did to them, or maybe it's even just for yourself that you want to ask forgiveness from yourself or something that you never did, that you intended to do, or that you did do that hurt others. So are you ready then to do that, to seek that forgiveness? I want you first to begin by imagining that person involved is in the room with you in another chair, standing with you, and you look at the person and you tell them in the very specific detail what this is about. Are you doing that? Give them some details, time and place, what transpired, how you felt about it at the time. Because you still have those feelings, but it's not hard to remember. It could be a brother, it could be a sister, it could be a mother or father, it could be a leader in a group or in a church or in some kind of team that you were in, and it's just something that's there constantly for you, and you want to, you want to get rid of it, you want to unburden yourself of this feeling. I am asking you to open your wounds to that person or the feeling of wounding them even, your guilt. Can you feel your stomach tighten a little bit perhaps? Are your shoulders raising up or your jaw tightening as your brow creasing? Where are you feeling the emotions in your body? Kind of locate that. So you're aware of it. When we forgive or when we receive forgiveness, we do it from a place of strength. It's not a place of weakness or surrender. It really is from a place of strength. So wherever you feel that in your body, I want you to, I encourage you to feel strength around that place as well. Don't crunch up and make an effort, but can you feel yourself letting go of it? Releasing and asking for forgiveness or extending to them forgiveness and letting the strength remain within you, centered within you in that place of calm. I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. There may be tears associated with this that will come up and surface. That's okay. That's okay. That's what life's about. So let the tears flow. Let them roll down like water if you need to. And respond to what is said then. You can put yourself in the other person's place and speak back to yourself and have a dialogue that can be rich and wonderful and certainly very surprising to you. Forgiveness is a great healer and you deserve, I want you to have every opportunity that you can to heal the things that are important to you. If you would like to do this in a coaching session or with coaching help online, please feel free to contact me at LarryG at live-connections.com. LarryG at live-connections.com and we'll proceed. I'll respond to your call or your email. Forgiveness is one of those five spiritual tasks. Perhaps today you've experienced both receiving forgiveness, offering forgiveness, nirvana, releasing and letting go. Again, I'd be happy to respond to your call. LarryG at live-connections.com. In a little bit of a housekeeping thing, Think Tech and I are making a shift in this program from Friday at two to Tuesday at two starting this next Tuesday. Tuesday at two Hawaii time, we'll be back and I'll be having more people to bring resources to the table to share with you on the seven or excuse me the five spiritual tasks of elderhood. Making it real and really very much, very much, I believe, making it wonderful. Thank you very much for joining me today and being a part of this and I look forward to seeing you again, my good neighbor. Tuesday at two Hawaii time. Aloha.