Ageing Update

This I know: Nobody else really cares about my ageing. This I also know: anyone who reads this blog is in the same process as I. So here are a few of my personal reflections and I really would be pleased to hear how you are doing.

First the good news: My body is okay. As long as I do my exercises and drink my two glasses of red wine a day things go pretty well. I have not been able to get my Dr. to actually officially prescribe those two glasses of red wine a day so Medicare does not reimburse me for my now 3-Buck Chuck. My golf drives get shorter and shorter. The other day I had to use a 5 iron to reach a green only 130 yards away and I can’t blame age for my lousy putting. Fortunately there are some things that my brain still handles okay. I recently was able to give a brief 3-point speech without having to consult my manuscript.

With age my concepts of God and my vision of reality keep getting expanded more and more.

Yet ageing is obvious, especially when I sit down at this darn computer. I screw up all the time, get frustrated every time I try to use this machine which I cannot get along without and which drives me to distraction when I use it and it doesn’t stop me from writing run-on sentences.

I keep forgetting numbers. Can’t even remember a house number that I had memorized when I had left my home. I left behind (so far not retrieved) my annual calendar which had not only my appointments but also my phone contacts, prescriptions,and computer passwords!

My lack of alertness bothers me especially after someone honks at me when I made a right turn on red in front of him or her. (I KNOW THIS COULD GET SERIOUS!)

I notice now that occasionally people show deference to me because to them I obviously appear as “ an old man”. I also notice that others now seek my opinion or consultation much less frequently and when I give my suggestions they seem to be ignored more often.

So I wake up each morning especially grateful that my wife Jane is patient with me, that she is the one who insisted that we move to this retirement community, that we can still afford the monthly payments (even after working for the church virtually my whole life), that I have a family which supports me even though we just cancelled the planned visit of all six of my sisters, two sisters-in-law and one brother because within 48 hours one had unexpected cancer surgery and another had to accompany a spouse to the hospital for urgent blood vessel work.

So that’s the word for today. I will put it in my calendar that next November I will again give an update provided I remember and/or don’t lose my calendar…and am still among the living.

Survivors of Torture

 I spent most of yesterday in jail. It was in the US Detention Center near the Mexican border. Thank God I was not a detainee. I was there, however, on behalf of a particular class of detainees, survivors of torture in other countries who are seeking asylum in the USA. There are at least 2,000 of these every year. (Probably as many as 5000,000 refugees in America were tortured prior to their arrival in the USA). They arrive having escaped torture in their home country, but not yet having all the papers to legally stay in the USA. Unfortunately, they are placed in the same prison with all others who are held for illegal entry or are waiting to be sent back to their country of origin.

I went there because I am on the Board of Directors of a local organization called Survivors of Torture, International. Our mission is to identify legitimate asylum seekers who were tortured in their home country, had to flee for their lives and are seeking a new life in America.

I am getting to know these brothers and sisters personally. Just this week: A woman from a Middle Eastern country. Her teen-aged son foolishly wrote a less than friendly note about his country’s leader in one of his computer tweets. He was identified, told that he was “dead”: He made it home. Fortunately his mother had the resources to buy a ticket for her son and herself to the USA (leaving behind her husband and other children). Of course, when she landed in the USA she did not have a visa. She was sent to a prison detention center; she to one, her 14 year old son to another!

Another survivor: Her family was pro–USA, but the real offence her father committed was to send this daughter to school. The Taliban stopped her on her way home from school, told her to drop out. She went back to school. She was stopped again. The persons who stopped her found she had an English as a second language textbook with her. They came to the house, took away her father and killed him. She is a Survivor seeking asylum in the USA.

There are stories like this every day. Survivors of Torture, Inc. (started with the assistance of a Wheat Ridge Ministries grant some ten years ago) assists these brothers and sisters get legal status, helps them find doctors who assist with their physical and psychological trauma. Sad disclosure: I have yet to meet an adult female asylum seeker who was NOT raped!

My efforts are feeble in the light of the need. I raise funds for the organization. I met with and wrote the Warden at the Detention Center expressing my thanks to him for protecting me from people who want to hurt America but also asking him to treat humanly those who are here because they believe the invitation on the Statue of liberty, “Give me your tired, your homeless, your tempest -tossed, those yearning to be free”. And I am working for Congress to pass legislation separating asylum seekers from suspected criminals like the gentleman of whom I heard yesterday. He was in Afghanistan assisting a USA helicopter force. He was threatened. He fled. When he got here he was handcuffed, incarcerated, treated like a violent criminal. Tough calls: but I want to be sure that I am on the side of those who are truly Survivors of Torture.