Hal Brown:  

Does anybody actually read this anymore? This may be the longest story ever put on Classmates. Like, anyone from my past is interested.... The latest news about my life is online in the blog I write for the two newspapers that cover most of the area south of Boston. There are three recent ones that tell about my decision to move to Portland, Oregon from Middleboro, Massachusetts after living here since 1992 - prior to that my late wife and I lived in Michigan. You can read the essays by going to The Brockton Enterprise website, at the top of the page click "blogs" and scroll down until you see "The Eclectic Digest." You can start with this, and if it piques your interest read the most recent ones: "From the Atlantic to the Pacific: A transition," (April 3, 2014), and finish with the most recent, "Moving, and moving on" (April 13, 2014). If you are in Portland and want to visit, call (503) 654 6581 and ask for me. Having reached my seventh birthday last month, I am thinking about making the third biggest physical and psyhological move of my life. At 17 I ventured off from a suburb of New York City to college in Michigan in 1961. Then I moved to my late wife, Betty's, hometown of Middleboro to be a cranberry grower in 1992. The first move didn't take much consideration. With my mediocre high school grades, being accepted on probation at Michigan State University based on my Merit Scholarship exam was a happy surprise. My mother had lamented not just my poor study habits in high school, but my absolute absence of any studying at all. When she worried that I'd never get accepted into college, I'd just tell her I'd join the Air Force and become a pilot. I shudder to think of Captain Brown, flying forays 30,000 feet over Vietnam at the controls of a B-52. The next move, here to Masshausttes, seemed right at the time. Betty, who I met in graduate school at Michigan State, and I were bored with our jobs. After earning her PhD in English she'd become a librarian. I ended up as the director of a community mental health center. Finally the yen for a big change grew, and the "back to the land" lure of becoming third generation cranberry growers was irresistible. We had a good 20 years here in Middleboro, each practicing our chosen profession - me a psychotherapist, and she the town reference librarian; with the enjoyable "sideline" of growing cranberries in our 300 acre "backyard." Then in 2010 my wife died at the age of 65 . For four years I’ve lived the lonely widower’s life, with my grief debilitating for at least a year and gradually diminishing after that. I continued to live in the unique post and beam house which my wife and I helped design. it overlooks the cranberry bogs which my wife and I farmed. It has 18 large south facing windows offering a beautiful view. But but a house does not make a home. I ended up with only one close friend left after our old couple friends fell out of my life. With no children, there's really nothing to keep me from moving on one last time. I love New England, but every place I go reminds me of good times with Betty, and I have come to the conclusion I won't be really happy here even if I meet another woman to share my life with. Here are some thoughts about what I’m considering. A dear female friend, a woman who worked for me decades ago, and who along with her (now divorced) husband became close couple friends with Betty and I, has been trying to persuade me to move to a continuing care retirement community facility. For two years she's extolled the many benefits of living in a community of like mind people, and aging alongside them. She has worked there as the counselor for 17 years and become a true gerontologist and a wise philosopher. She plans to retire there herself in as little as six months. Until recently I’d been very reluctant to consider such a living style change for myself. I never saw myself fitting into any kind of retirement community. I figured Betty and I would just grow old together and find enjoyable things to do as a couple or with a few married friends. This facility is one of those places where you move in, pay a hefty membership fee, and a monthly fee which covers just about every need you could have after that. You usually live independently at first. I'd live in a house detached from the sprawling up to (apron.) seven story high complex which has a gym, swimming pool, fitness center, grocery store, bank, post office, medical office, and other amenities. Then, if needs be, I can move to more and more assisted living, up to and including a health center which is pretty much like a nursing home. There are facilities like this around the country including some south of Boston and on Cape Cod. However, with no family and few friends here, I don’t feel any ties to New England. Moving also involves a ending a long and painful phase in my grief process. I’ve visited my friend several times before, and seen the facility and experienced what rainy Portland, and the rugged Pacific coast, is like. I like that Oregon is politically progressive and that assisted suicide is legal there as is medical marijuana. Should I decide to become a geriatric pot-head, recreational marijuana is legal a short drive away in Washington. This time I have finally decided to visit her and learn more about what it would be life to live there. I will spend a couple of nights at the facility as an official prospective resident. Their marketing person will be taking me around, showing me available pet friendly units, and having me dine with people they think I'd like, and vice versa. Then if I am seriously considering it, I will have a nitty gritty huber crunching sessions with their financial director. All of this comes to the foreground having just turned 70, a birthday I didn't anticipate as having any emotional impact. However, it has. I feel now it is a countdown to being 80, with each year slipping by quickly, and then one morning waking up and looking in the mirror as seeing a really elder face looking back at me. I see that making such a huge change is a recognition very deep down inside Betty is gone forever, and that this part of my life can never be approximated. I told my friend in Oregon that that I never developed roots, plural, in Massachusetts. I had one root, a very deep one, and that was Betty. I now feel I must construct something entirely new for my final years. This move, of I make it, is part of the reluctant acceptance of my own mortality. I will never know when something is going to happen to me physically or mentally that leads me to deteriorate very quickly. After all, I lost my wife of 40 years when she was only 65. I could have five good years, 10 good years, maybe even more. I could be a spry geezer at 85. Or not. Another important, and really vital realization I’ve come to is that I feel is that I can do quite well not having a woman lover in my life. Lord knows, I've given the online dating scene a chance, and discovered that I just can't shake this deep desire to find somebody very much like my wife. For those who knew her, you’d know how unlikely that is. So if that is the way it's going to be, that is the way it's going to be. ------------- From the Atlantic to the Pacific: A transition After my wife, Betty, died, I was nearly insane with debilitating grief. I felt like a raging perfect storm threatened to sweep me under. Indeed, for months I cried so hard I felt like I...Expand for more