Departures

Departures

    My brother left the other morning, ready for a return home after a two week visit with my mother.  It was a nice visit, not only for her but for all of us as he was here to witness her process through her normal life then urgent care then the emergency room and now her settling down with rehabilitation.  But for me, it was a time to catch up on brotherly things, to reflect back on times the two of us had spent growing up, as well as viewing where we were in our lives now.  And while watching the Olympics, he turned and asked me that if I could somehow become a star athlete in any event in the Olympics, which event would I choose.  I would have thought that I would have answered swimming (since I swim for exercise) but truthfully, I had tried many of the fast strokes and mad dashes that the athletes were displaying and realized just how exhausting and difficult those strokes were...so no to that.  But as with all of the sports, there was what likely seemed endless hours of training and running out of breath and sore muscles and that in the end, many of these prime athletes would watch their years of efforts dashed away in seconds, returning home in sixth or sixtieth place, heads likely held a bit low with no medal but yet still in far better ability and shape than 99% of the rest of the world.  In the end though, I couldn't think of a single event.

    Our talks through the days were more of a sibling-sibling talk, those talks sisters have or brothers have, talks which are closer than those with parents or with friends.  Stories between siblings can be shared more intimately perhaps because of a longer history together.  Parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents can sometimes laugh at events in your life that you have little recollection about;  but a sibling, now that's usually a shared journey.  So out of the blue, my brother followed that question with this, if I could go back and choose a different path what would it be and what change or changes would I make in my life?  And I thought, and thought, and again, realized that nothing came to mind.  And it was the same with him.  Certainly a minor move here or there but overall, our lives were just fine; somehow, we had been dealt a pretty good hand in life.  Okay, we weren't George Clooney or Warren Buffet, but our health, our family, our marriages and our overall stability had somehow turned out to be more than satisfactory. 

    We talked about our mother, now a month away from turning 91; and we talked about our aunt, who passed away at 94.  In between was an uncle and another aunt, both of whom had passed away at younger ages due to different medical problems.  So where did my brother and I fit in, we wondered?  A roll of the dice and we would live a long life or a roll of the dice and we'd be caught in a car spinning out of control?  Who knew?  Who could pretend to know?  Who were we and who did we want (or would have wanted) to be?  And through the midst of all this, the discussions we were having made me somehow think of two scientists, one a declared philosopher and the other a declared scientist.  They were (in said order) Henri Bergson and Albert Einstein, two debaters who argued about the same subject...time.  Einstein you likely know...but Bergson?  Okay so who would you say is this person, as written in a review of author Jimena Canales book in The London Review of Books: ...was a worldwide celebrity, ranked as a thinker alongside Plato, Socrates, Descartes and Kant...Lord Balfour read him with great care and attention; Teddy Roosevelt went so far as to write an article on his work.  People climbed ladders merely to catch a glimpse of (him) through the windows of university halls, and Parisian society figures sent their servants ahead to secure seats at his lectures. When he gave a talk at City College in New York in 1913, so many people turned up in the hope of hearing him that the Manhattan traffic was brought to a standstill. (it was Bergson)  Or this person: ...was a full-blooded carnivore: ‘Distinctly handsome, he broke hearts as a teenager, had a daughter out of wedlock (who was most probably given away), was accused of adultery by his first wife, went through a prolonged legal battle over divorce and alimony [which he needed the Nobel money to pay for], and collected more than a few amorous peccadilloes along the way.’ (it was Einstein).

    In the same issue came this in the personal ads from a female: This slim stunning writer divides her time between London and Venice.  A successful author, she has no interest in possessions or brands: for her it is all about experiences.  A keen traveller, she is fluent in Italian and exceptionally well read.  She lectures in London and Europe and has had countless papers published.  A very fit woman, she is currently attempting the Munros and loves wild swimming.  She is a warm, loving, sensual woman who had remained remarkably grounded and understated.  She has a wicked sense of humor...and is totally captivating.  And this from another: If you can tell me what links African sunsets, birdsong, swimming in warm seas, lily of the valley and chocolate -- maybe we could share them?  Who were all these people and what did they want to be?   Even those achieving fame (such as Bergson) seemed to want something else and somehow still came to be lost in the waves of history. 

    The talks with my brother were no different than most talks between siblings.  We recognized that some people have grown up as an only child, while others have perhaps had siblings but weren't close to them.  My brother and I realized that now, looking quite a ways back, we were indeed quite fortunate for decades later we could still talk of fun times and also of times to come; and now that so much time had passed, things had somehow turned out okay.  We were both content, not searching for more, just content.  In Canales' book, she writes that Einstein "obsessively searched for unity in the universe," while "Bergson, in contrast, claimed that the ultimate mark of the universe was just the opposite: never-ending change."  So it seemed with my brother and I.  Despite all the changes we had ended up discovering unity...and it was good.