Life Planning Love

We were sitting in our 60+ sharing circle on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, grey and raw and dreary, listlessly speaking of the need to downsize, to transition to a more manageable more safe more audible habitat. And wanting to hang onto our independent mobility, our cars, in most middle-class cases, as long as possible. We talked about proactive planning optimal independence, about eventually living with our kids, about potential confluence and conflicts of interest, about shrinking invulnerable distances between "someday, as far from today, as possible" and the lightning quickness of crushing physical and/or mental disability, non-communication ability, through accidents and aneurysms, unfortunate and therefore unplanned critical events. We did not talk about how we felt courageous and curious, brave and patient, afraid and angrily impatient about how mortal life is what continues only one day one uncritical moment at a time while planning for other loving things to unfold before "no longer sacred SomeTime as far away from secular today as physically AND mentally, naturally and spiritually, possible. I didn't notice, until later, we also didn't look at cooperatively-held unitarian plans for win/win health/wealth outcome optimization. The hypothetical possibility today is "someday" for mutual pre-planning cooperative downsizing and shared mobility challenges, resources, opportunities, risks, vulnerabilities, strengths, letting go by first grabbing hold of shared imaginations. We didn't talk about how much we didn't like the empty chairs, About how we miss, already, Kate and Betsy Jan and Sandy and what they are planning between shared now and autonomous then. Their unique and irreplaceable ways of planning and not planning pre-planning and re-planning life each day while continuing with other relationships other communications communions communities. I didn't talk about wanting to live with other singers and maybe even dancers, with others deeply committed to compassion for both mortal humans and immortal living Earth Hopefully, providing inviting habitats of warm cooperatively-owned and -managed accompaniment, creative improvisation, jazz rhythms, blues beats, Especially on raw phrases, dreary riffs, rain-drenched Tuesday jamming afternoons of richly audible gloom.