Fire Conversations

I was sitting in front of a late summer fire when the woman next to me turned and said, “You know, it all changes when you are 70.”

I raise my eyebrows and nod for her to continue.

“No one talks about it. You know. No one talks about aging anymore or how to age — or that we even age.”

“No, they don’t.”

“But we do,” she looks off, smiling and contemplative. “We do. We do age. You know I started having dreams.”

“About what.”

“About regrets. Choices I made - or didn’t make — things that I am not pleased with; I have started waking in the middle of the night, seeing them. Do you think I am crazy?”

“No,” I answer honestly.

“And I had  — still have — a good life. I did well for myself in Academia, and then advanced in the business realm to. I haven’t wanted for much - “

“That’s an accomplishment.”

“Yes, it is. And I have lead a full life with community — my family, cultivated friends, cultivated a spiritual life, but you know my regrets are connected to work — a lot of people’s regrets are connected to work.”

“How so?” I prompt, curious. 

“Well you know you do things in the business world, you treat people in ways in the business world that you would never do in real life — you know. You don’t go by your own ethics; you have to do things in the work world, be a way, that you would never choose to be.”


I allow silence.


Eventually she offers, “You know they made me fire someone I didn’t want to fire and didn’t think should have been fired — I see his face in my dreams.” She looks at me, “You know you ruin someone, or at least a part of them, when you fire them like that. Never sat right with me.”

She brushes her forearm, lets her hand rest and says, “You know I believe these dreams are Spirit talking to me, telling me what I need to get right with to have a good death. Do you think I am crazy?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well you are too young to understand anything I am saying anyway.”

I chuckle, “That may be true, but I am glad I am hearing it anyway —even if I can only understand a sliver. People my age, and younger, need to hear what other genrations have to say — how else will we learn? How else will we prepare? Cross-Generations need to talk again, too much isolation,” I tell her. "That's one of our biggest problems today -- we are all isolated, instead of helping each other out."

“I didn’t think about that,” she says and we both stare into the fire.




To be continued…