First let me say that I have discovered that all culture and religion is a form of group hypnosis or conditioning fostered directly and indirectly upon children from birth (and even before in the womb). However, without it, civilization, cultures and even religions could not exist.
So, looking at it this way it is completely irrelevant to objective reality whether any or all of any culture or religion or none of it actually has anything to do with objective reality. However, to those fully hypnotized by their culture and or religion and unable to see this, "Them's fightin' words!"
So, even though I can see this quite clearly, most of humanity cannot and therefore it is my duty and the duty of all those who like myself can see this to have compassion upon those who cannot see this as well. Because trying to force this liberation on all might just cause insanity and death in many. No. People who are brave enough must face this one by one alone in their own timing. And hopefully most will survive this encounter with the raw and basic truths of life.
So, I find myself once again facing this kind of conditioning from childhood. I was taught to believe by my parents that everyone would never die and stay young forever that were in my religion. I would say I was about 10 years of age before I realized that this was complete bullshit. How much either my father or my mother actually believed it it is hard to say. However, it was sort of like believing in Santa Claus in it's effect on me. Paradoxically, my parents told me that Santa Claus was made up by my age 5 because they didn't want any lies between us to haunt our relationship into adulthood. I was actually on one level very grateful for that, even though I still believe in the spirit of giving embodied by Santa Claus even today at age 62.
However, even though I tend to be very rational and logical in my thinking this childhood conditioning affects me in my emotions at times, especially when relatives and friends near death. I find myself over long periods of time when dealing with dying to be emotionally incapable of dealing with the long term stress of people I am close with slowly dying or really slowly dying as in senile dementia or alzheimers disease(since these two both are fatal diseases). These things over a long time I find I cannot deal with very well. I can deal with almost any emergency without losing my cool, but this only lasts at most for me 1 to 2 weeks, after that I find that women only have the type of stamina to deal with the really crazy aspects of someone close to them slowly dying. I think this is just the main difference between men and women. We tend to be good at different things. Viva la difference!
Lately, I found out that my best high school friend was left alone to die naked on the floor by his wife. She had been institutionalized in an insane asylum as a teenager, so even though she was beautiful and very intelligent (eventually got a master's degree) I considered her criminally insane always.
When in 2004 and 2005 my friend started into either senile dementia or alzheimers she started beating him up by breaking the silverware drawers over his head and knocking him unconscious. He called me for help and I took him to his sister's in Bakersfield so he could stay there but he was slowly devolving towards complete incompetence and childhood ways. He could not maintain his resolution to stay away from his wife that I knew would kill him if he went back to her eventually. When after a couple of days he demanded to go back to his wife I said to him, "Mike, I simply cannot be a party to watching you die like this. I won't even see you in person ever again." And I kept my word. So, even though I talked to him several times over the years on the phone I wouldn't be a party to watching his wife kill him.
Since he had not been declared "Non Compos mentis" or incompetent to handle his own affairs there was nothing either I or his sister could do at that point.
As I was heading towards Death Valley with my son(now 6 years later) I got a call on my new IPhone4 that he had been left naked and alone in Buellton, Ca. in his double wide trailer by his wife and was left to die but a neighbor had been suspicious eventually (within a week or two) and called an ambulance and the police. The county and state became his legal guardian and he was placed in an old folks home. What I find the most sad about all this is that he is only now 63. This began in his late 50s.
I have wanted to visit him now that he is in Bakersfield in a rest home and now that his sister has custody of him I find it very difficult to move forward with going to visit my friend. I'm haunted by just how impossible it was to watch my own mother in a dementia facility near me wind down through childhood personalities to being in a wheelchair and finally into a coma with a death rattle and then death.
So, I'm wondering about how useful this will be to go and visit my friend Mike in Bakersfield in a dementia care facility. I remember how destroyed I was dealing with my mother's slow descent into incompetence and death. I'm told my friend no longer can speak except "yes", "No" and "I love you". So this will be very difficult if I go visit my friend. Also, this is about a 5 hour or more drive each way, so I will likely have to stay in a hotel before I return home. I want to go say "Goodbye" to my friend but how useful will that actually be to him?" So, maybe just going and saying "Hi!" to him is the best. Because regular life doesn't even exist even for him. His life is very altered from any we shared as kids growing up and learning to surf and SCUBA dive and fly planes together now. He eventually got his jet engine certificate from Glendale College and joined the Air Force so he wouldn't be drafted as a front line soldier in the infantry and die like the 50,000 did my age and his in Viet Nam or the 250,000 that were wounded and got Purple Hearts in that War.
So, the war sort of separated us in some ways at that time as I couldn't find him after the war so we didn't really re-connect as friends until we were both in our late 40s. I found him online through I think it was yahoo around the time I almost died of a Heart virus. We went to Yosemite and hiked up to Vernal Falls together. At the time I wondered why he was so afraid of the cliff trail leading up to Vernal Falls in Yosemite. Later I realized he was already losing confidence even then and slipping into either Senile Dementia or Alzheimers. So just after I didn't die he started to. So even though I had a miracle he at the same time began to die from either alzheimer's or dementia. I find it hard to cope with my second good friend of childhood beginning to die. My third good friend from Childhood is now in Asia for several months with his girlfriend. I asked him if he was coming back. More than anything this just shows my own insecurity of losing my last childhood friend.
No, the world is not going to end. We all just have to live on and find a way to cope.
My conscious adult spiritual life began when I was 15 in the summer of 1963 and visited Yosemite with Mike, his mother and his sister. His mother and sister got Tomaine poisoning or food poisoning from eating tainted tuna fish and mayonaise in sandwiches left too long in the heat while driving. Neither Mike or I wanted a Tuna Fish sandwich so we were spared.
An Air Force Coreman who was a medical technician in the next campsite took care of Mike's mother and sister (age 17) while they slept in the back of their stationwagon so they didn't die. Everyone told us to literally go take a hike for the next week, and so we did. We climbed Vernal Falls, California Nevada Falls and had the most amazing nature experience and freedom of our entire lives. This began for me, my personal experience with God through nature. All my adult spiritual experiences began during this week of hiking and being completely free from any parent telling me or Mike what to do. It was a really amazing experience. It was a time of Firefalls and street racers in Yosemite. The atmosphere there at night was a lot like Hollywood blvd. in Hollywood at that time. During the days we would jump off of the stone bridges into the water and swim with all the other teenagers and 20 somethings or hike the amazing trails with the bear and deer and animals and birds everywhere. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and moved me to become a permanent outdoors person. I also trained my children to think this way too. It led eventually to traveling all over the world in many many different countries for me which also expanded my notions of what was real and what was actually possible here on earth.
Later my wife spoke with his sister and she told my wife that things had not gone well this week for either her or Mike. It seems that Mike is now not walking and is in a wheelchair so an ambulance had to be called to transport Mike to his doctor's office. Things just got worse because Mike's sister couldn't understand the Doctor because his accent was East Indian and she was not used to understanding this English accent though I would have because I have lived 4 months in India and Nepal in the past. Also, because of required breaks of the Ambulance driver they were left to wait in the cold at a bus stop and Mike became agitated and kept falling out of his wheelchair. It was likely "Transfer Trauma" which seriously affects all dementia patients whether they have alzheimers or dementia which are two separate but similar illnesses. Since it costs 400 a month to treat Alzheimers and there is nothing outside of diet to help dementia this is a very important consideration as we had my mother on Alzheimer's medicine for at least a year before we realized she had dementia instead. So, over $4000 in medicine's out of pocket later we found out.
At one point his sister got under him on the cement so he wouldn't be bloodied anymore. No medical personnel would help them because of liability but a good samaritan helped Mike up into his wheelchair once again. Both Mike and his sister were obviously very traumatized and very very cold from being outside in the present extreme low temperatures. MIke has developed a rash that I think is from non-allergenic detergent used in facilities to avoid infections and all the patients dying. There tends to be a lot of feces everywhere in these kinds of facilities as patients no longer understand what is going on so keeping things sterile enough for survival is always an ongoing problem. So keeping the patients regular bowl movement wise and keeping them from spreading the movements everywhere is an ongoing problem in dementia facilities. However, trying to keep a dementia patient at home in the U.S. can be liability wise impossible (at least with the present laws in the U.S). Because as the caregiver you become responsible for whatever they do. So, if when you aren't looking they walk out the door and in front of a car and die or people avoid them and all die in a car you are responsible for this. If they get a hold of matches and burn down your house, you are responsible for this etc. etc. etc.
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