Boomers

How to remember and honor those who have died from Covid-19

When we depart this life, must the stories of our existence fade within the passing of a few years? That has been the fate of billions of mortals who have preceded today’s living.

Since the beginning of human history around 50,000 B.C., 108 billion humans have been born. Just over seven billion are living now, or 6.5 percent of all those ever born are still breathing—a tiny fraction when we consider the meteoric growth of world population today.

How much do we know of the 101 billion humans who have preceded us? The majority are nameless, forgotten as if they never lived, merely dust in the wind.

Except for a relative handful of kings, queens, heroes, political leaders, scientists, artists, writers, intellectuals, athletes, and celebrities who have been held in perpetuity through their works or historical documentation by others, the clear majority of human stories have just perished. We know nothing of those masses who have lived and passed on. Most of us do not know anything about the lives and times of our great-great-great grandparents, if even their names.

The First Immortal

Five thousand years ago, in Mesopotamia, the ancient lands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers now called Iraq, something miraculous happened in the evolution of our species and its ceaseless battle against temporality. Humans discovered how to write.

Death could no longer silence people after departing their mortal bodies. The written word gave our species the power to reach through millennia and speak inside the heads of those living in the distant future.

Then something else happened, another miracle of self-preservation. Enheduanna, daughter of the first emperor in history, was also the first person known to sign her name to a literary creation.

She lived 4300 years ago, and her gift to humanity was the possibility of immortality that can be bestowed by the written word when assigned to a single visionary author. The writing was no longer nameless, codified thought but personal ownership in the future.

Enheduanna’s name means “Lady Ornament of the Sky.” For centuries after her death, the first author continued to set standards for culture, literature, liturgy hymns, poetry, and religion. Her legacy includes an extensive body of creative output, including forty-two poems, psalms, and prayers that have served as a template for poets, priests, and scribes throughout history.

We know that she existed at a certain point in time. We know what she dreamed. We are aware of her fearlessness and prescience. We know she was a great author, composer, poet, and High Priestess of the ancient Moon God Nanna at temples in the Mesopotamian city-states of Ur and Uruk (Iraq).

Enheduanna lives today, four-and-a-third millennia after she exhaled her final breath. She speaks to us through her creations—and when combined into a complete archive, we have her time capsule filled with revelations that we can contemplate at will.

Permanent Acclaim

A generation ago most unexceptional people, removed from the public eye, could not hope to persist beyond death, except perhaps as represented by a deteriorating marker bearing an irrelevant name, lost somewhere in a cemetery or mausoleum. Without notable personal achievements that would become written documents or audio or video recordings, it was not possible for the majority to survive beyond the grave.

With the advent of the digital age and the extraordinary power and memory of the internet, it is now possible for anyone to write and record their thoughts, dreams, and values for others to read, see, and hear—and with archival preservation, for thousands of years from now. Today, for the first time in human history, anybody can paddle beyond the grave, aiming for the distant shores of time.

Questions to contemplate about your “Immortality Narrative”

• Which of your life lessons are most important to share with your children or other young people in your life?
• Have you been inspired by classic children’s book characters, and, if so, which characters had the most impact on your views and values?
• Who would you most like to attend your last lecture and why are these people most important?
• If you were to be diagnosed with a terminal disease, such as pancreatic cancer, how would you prefer to spend your final months of “functional health,” if granted this time for closure? What would be your priorities?
• What tangible memories about you would you like to leave for future generations, and in what form would these memories be encapsulated? A book or other writing? A video? Artwork? A legacy website?

Excerpted from Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss by Brent Green, Copyright 2017. All Rights Reserved.

A beautiful hit song by Kansas, a progressive rock super-group, helps drive home the point of this blog post. Kerry Livgren, the song's writer and guitarist, was my high school classmate. Kerry has recently published his memoir entitled Miracles Out of Somewhere.

 

To order your copy of Questions of the Spirit, visit the book's Amazon page.

Dr. Mark Crooks, A 57-Year Cancer Survivor, A Life Dedicated to Showing Adults How to Age Well

Brent Green has written and published a biographical novel inspired by Dr. Mark Crooks, his long-time friend and fitness mentor, entitled: WARRIOR: The Life and Lessons of a Man Who Beat Cancer for 57 Years. His buddy died ten years ago, on July 8, 2010, and this is Brent's tribute to Mark and his lasting impact. 

Mark Crooks, PhD, an exercise physiologist, sports psychologist, fitness pioneer and daredevil, risked everything to survive five bouts of cancer spanning 57 years. 

The stony truck driver was exhausted following his overnight drive from Chicago to Kansas City. He had kept himself awake by drinking a thermos full of coffee and taking several No-Doz. His eyes burned from staring at dark, isolated highways. Even morning chatter on his radio did not perk him up for the final leg of his long haul to Salina, Kansas.

His eighteen-wheeler raced across the Paseo Bridge spanning the Missouri River. The weary driver ignored a crudely hand-lettered sign held by one of Dr. Mark Crooks’ assistants. The sign demanded: Slow Down, Jumper Ahead.

A warning sign about a jumper threatening to hurl himself into the angry Missouri should have been sufficient to cause any alert driver to pause. But the trucker could only think about the number of miles he must still drive to finish a tough haul to Salina. At that moment, he didn’t care if another idiot might be threatening a suicide jump.

Focused on the river below, Dr. Crooks stood outside the guardrail at the apex of the bridge, the roiling river ten stories below — the distance to impact easily sufficient to break his back and end his life. Several nearby assistants grasped the situation, understanding that this eighteen-wheeler would throw off sufficient wind draft to push the fitness expert out of a carefully practiced vertical pose and force an awkward angle that could snap his back. The truck’s diesel engine issued a throaty rumble, but Mark could not hear anyone’s warnings not to jump.

Instead, he gazed into the choppy, brown water below, envisioning his carefully selected landing spot, a deep gulch running through the river bed where his scuba diving surveillance mission had discovered this place of optimum depth, free from impaling junk. At six-foot-four inches tall and 215 pounds of sculpted muscle, he stood on the bridge ledge above the river as if a Greek god surveying the Aegean Sea from mighty cliffs of weathered limestone. He wore a midnight-black diver’s suit, which might offer some insulation upon impact, perhaps binding his anatomy together as the force of water, hard as concrete, made contact with his feet.

Mark’s intractable goal was to leap from the bridge and will himself into a perfect vertical posture soon after reaching the apex of trajectory. Then he would press his arms to his side so that they would not be dislocated or broken at impact. If his calculations were correct, buttressed by six months of dogged preparation, he would slide into the water without damaging himself, being the first human not to die by a jump from this precarious location. His focus had become so intense to have rendered awareness of impending danger irrelevant.

With three full breaths to oxygenate his system and prepare for the plunge, he pulled his arms behind him as if an artistic highdiver and leapt. The errant trucker rumbled by Mark’s jump location at forty-five miles an hour — five-miles an hour above the speed limit. The draft off the truck flung small rocks and paper liter behind it, and gusts caught Mark’s back as he reached jump apogee, pushing him head first into an uncontrolled, awkward freefall. His assistants gasped as they watched Mark cascade downward, his legs and arms flailing to return his body to a vertical posture.

Will Tests Life.

At the beginning of my second year of graduate school at the University of Kansas, several students and I were visiting a professor at her home. Her boyfriend stopped by, a man of imposing stature. At six-foot-four-inches and with a chiseled jaw, Mark appeared to be a stereotypical jock, albeit one who could have also posed as a male fashion model. I learned that he was a PhD candidate seeking double degrees in sports psychology and exercise physiology.

Mark’s extraordinary fitness and friendly nature caused me to confess that I was then having concerns about my health. By the early 1970s, the connections between cigarette smoking and cancer were gaining wider acceptance in spite of persistent denials by tobacco companies. I knew my long-term health was on the line. Mark invited me to go jogging with him and though hesitant I accepted.

The next Saturday we ran in a city park in Lawrence, and at first I kept pace, being young and lean. But as the miles stretched out, Mark’s graceful stride left me in the background. He jogged effortlessly ahead in the distance. Because health was what I wanted more than anything after a childhood of illness, I quit smoking four days later, on September 14, 1973, an auspicious occasion more important to me than my birthday. Mark never scolded or lectured me about smoking but caused me to seek health because of his example.

As our friendship grew, I discovered that he also had confronted severe illnesses in childhood but to a degree far greater than my own tribulations. When he was an infant and living with his mother in Mexico City, relentless intestinal bleeding threatened his life; but his mother persevered until she found a physician with knowledge of nutrition who prescribed a life-saving diet of soy instead of cow’s milk.

When Mark was two, he suffered from severe sinus infections, and a then-experimental therapy involved X-ray radiation. By today’s standards, Mark received an unfiltered radiation overdose fifty times what's recommended for an adult, predisposing him to cancer.

When he was eight, a tumor appeared on the left side of his neck; the diagnosis: neurogenic sarcoma. Surgeons removed muscle, lymph and nerve tissue, including the sternoclydomastoid muscle, which is responsible for assisting with head and neck rotation. Instead of becoming handicapped relative to his peers, Mark tenaciously worked out, played football, and ran in track while in high school, earning letters in both sports.

Because he had lost muscle tissue on his left side, throwing his physical symmetry out of balance, Mark also became committed to resistance training until he built himself up to the physical stature I first witnessed at my professor’s house. He joined the marines after high school, surviving the mental and physical ordeals of three months of training at Parris Island, South Carolina: “the ultimate rite of passage into manhood.” He also wanted to dispatch a lingering threat of cancer’s metastasis.

Mark may be the only marine in history who was also a pre-induction cancer patient, enduring rigorous training at Parris Island while receiving an Honorable Discharge after three years of service. In the Marine Corps, he also learned to love running since new recruits ran everywhere as they fulfilled daily duties.

Mark worked tenaciously to get his PhD, and discoveries during his education, as well as life experiences, became the foundation of his book entitled Achieving Wellness through Risk Taking. This book preceded many of the health and fitness trends of the 1980s and articulated now-commonplace ideas about nutrition and fitness. His premise is set forth in the book title: human beings can achieve greater states of health by taking measured risks.

While working as a health consultant in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mark performed a number of experiments to test his own physical and psychological endurance, as well as to demonstrate principles set forth in his book. The feat of greatest impact to me was his jump from ten stories off the Paseo Street Bridge in Kansas City, into the swirling Missouri River below.

Mark prepared for months, enlisting support from scientific and medical advisors. The physical challenge for him was to enter the water vertically. Since the upper half of the human body weighs more than the lower half, the body has a tendency to tumble forward when falling from great heights.

If he did not hit the water exactly upright, he risked breaking his back. Several tortured people had already committed suicide from the location of his jump. Mark spent many weekends jumping from successively higher cliffs in the Missouri Ozarks until he perfected ways to achieve vertical orientation in midair.

Practice did make perfect, and, after making mid-jump corrections due to draft from the passing eighteen-wheeler, he landed artistically, making a small splash and emerging from the depths of the muddy river unscathed.

On another harrowing adventure of five days duration, Mark swam and floated from Kansas City, Kansas, to St. Louis, Missouri, in the Missouri River. Not only did he encounter man-made dangers, such as fishing lines and barges threatening to pull him into their wake, he also struggled with severe hypothermia since the muddy river relentlessly sucked away body heat.

I understood these experiments as true testimonials to the power of mind over body. Their enactment stood as a metaphor for Eros, the life force.

Mark didn’t choose to live in a safe, predictable groove; his early encounters with mortality caused him to stare death in the face — by his accounting — thirty-nine times. To Mark and many people lucid about the exigencies of mortal existence, this aggressive, gentle man chose to challenge life on his terms.

In 1992, Mark called me to let me know that the area around his Adam’s apple had swollen twelve times normal size. The diagnosis of thyroid cancer, undoubtedly a residual of his overdose of X-ray radiation, did not bend his knees for more than two days. Surgeons removed the cancerous gland, and forty-eight hours later Mark ran 2 ½ miles through wooded trails around his home. Again, this aggressive activity wasn’t rash; Mark had prepared with weeks of conditioning for the surgery and rapid return to extreme activity.

Mark called me nine years later to tell me that while running his usual path he felt tightness in his chest. He finished the four-mile run but continued wheezing and coughing over the next few weeks. One day while running he coughed and tasted blood. After a carousel of medical tests, surgeons recommended evasive surgery to remove a cancerous egg-shaped tumor.

Mark spent six weeks getting into peak condition for one of the most difficult and painful surgeries imaginable. The week following his operation was excruciating; removal of his left lung also required breaking ribs.

As he told me, “Getting to the bathroom was like running a marathon (and I refused to use a bedpan). Tubes hung from everywhere: a venous line, an arterial line, a needle in my low back delivering titrated morphine, an oxygen tube in my nose, and drainage tubes under my left armpit.”

Mark reflected on the irony of his own medical history: “I have never smoked, and I avoid others who smoke. I was a running pioneer, doing it way before it became a social norm. I could not rationalize this happening to me. I had crafted my body into 215 lbs of toughness, and this was not part of the plan.”

Nevertheless, Mark struggled out of his bed, where it was so much easier to lay anesthetized by pain medications, and began to fight At first he walked hesitantly. Then he set physical goals. His one-year post-operative celebration included running three miles nonstop. His goal for the next year was to run four miles nonstop, which again he accomplished. Then he ran three miles in thirty minutes.

Mark believed his survival through so many adversities was due to a determined effort that never waned. “It comes from winning all those little confrontations with oneself. Once I’m standing on a treadmill, I know that I have won. This is how I survive.”

Getting old isn't part of the plan for many Baby Boomers, a generation noted for its youth-seeking character. But the human condition demands that we age, and we have two fundamental choices for how we do it: to surrender to aging, allowing the body to unravel with the mind and spirit; or to confront and fight aging, as was the path of Dr. Mark Crooks, who faced the diseases and accidents of aging long before his contemporaries.

In November 2009, Mark learned that lesions had appeared in his liver. Resolute as always, he began exploring how he might receive a liver transplant. Medical policies required that patients be declared cancer free for at least five years before a transplant could be scheduled.

When it became clear to Mark that this would be his final confrontation with Thanatos, he accepted his fate and continued exercising in whatever form he could manage, even pushing an IV cart in front of him as he circumnavigated a hospital floor. He never stopped challenging himself until one week before his death — a week spent in the Kansas City Hospice. He died on July 8, 2010.

What have I learned about aging from Mark? Any excuse not to stay in the best shape possible is insufficient. Any excuse not to keep setting and fighting for goals is inadequate.

Life is a test of will demanding that we make conscious daily choices to prevail and thrive. Mark’s approach to living is also an optimistic metaphor for a generation getting older and coming to represent societal conceptions of the aging process.

We can choose Thanatos and allow our bodies to perish due to sloth and gluttony, bad habits and dependencies, or we can choose Eros and get in shape physically and mentally, redefining the meaning of aging. We can confront media forces aimed at tearing apart aging spirits and demonstrate that this generation is not narcissistic, self-absorbed, fatuous, or any other condescending label.

To the media and to ourselves, we can resurrect an aphorism from our youth: “Hell no, we won’t go.” Against all odds, we won’t go passively to Thanatos. We will go on.

Enjoy an intense and uplifting story inspired by Mark's life through Brent Green's biographical novel, Warrior, which focuses on the protagonist's steadfast commitment to health and fitness while fighting cancer for 57 years. 

Click on this link to order your copy of Warrior on Amazon.

All photos and videos, Copyright 2020, Brent Green. All rights reserved.

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African American Heroes, Brown v. Board of Education, and Martin Luther King

Having grown up in Topeka, Kansas, I have a profound and ironic connection to the nascent Civil Rights movement. Before 1954, which happened to be the year I started Kindergarten, racial segregation was common in American schools, as it was in Topeka, especially elementary schools.

Public school administrators forced African-American children to attend schools often encumbered by substandard facilities and many miles from their homes, although white-only schools existed in nearby neighborhoods.

This inequity of course led to Oliver L. Brown et. al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, a precursor to sweeping cultural and political changes that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would facilitate and lead one decade later. 

Brown et al. v. Board of Education was a case that contested the Kansas statute of 1879 permitting the segregation of public elementary schools. At the very least, the national focus accorded to the Brown decision and its unprecedented outcome in the Supreme Court make it a legal landmark. The plaintiffs argued that separate elementary schools were an impediment to black children's education.

I had no awareness of this Supreme Court decision during my first few years in elementary school, and Southwest Elementary School (now Whitson Elementary) remained mostly white. There is not a single individual of color in any of my class photos from that time.

However, as we started the 6th grade, my class anticipated a special teacher, someone who had developed a celebrity status in our school—Mr. J. B. Holland.

A kind and erudite African-American teacher, Mr. Holland stopped by our class three times weekly to teach science. Up to that point, I had been an average student, demonstrating modest enthusiasm for learning, but Mr. Holland stimulated a dormant zeal for science; he set fire to my passion for learning about chemistry and biology. I remember rehearsing arcane and difficult biology terms, with atypical effort and repetition, to impress this extraordinary educator and to win his encouragement. He commanded attention in the classroom, and his wit and clarity opened minds.

I was not alone in my reactions to Mr. Holland. Here is how he has been described in historical background information concerning Monroe Elementary School, epicenter of the Brown decision:

J. B. Holland might have been one of the "supreme" black teachers of Topeka. Frank Wilson served as principal in the newly-integrated Whitson Elementary School over Holland, who had once been principal of Monroe Elementary School. Wilson praised Holland as "one of the most outstanding teachers I had ever come across." He also said that parents were anxious to get their children into a class with Mr. Holland because of his reputation as an entertaining and motivating instructor.

Growing up in a significant crucible of racial divisiveness, I nevertheless owe my lifelong passion for learning to a man who lived daily with veiled and obvious Jim Crow realities everywhere in Topeka but inside his magical classroom. I know from subsequent adult conversations with my classmates that Mr. Holland was an influential early mentor to most of us in our long-term educational quest.

Many Baby Boomers who received stimulating and inspiring lessons in life from Mr. Holland owe his memory a debt of gratitude.

My story of this teacher has been permanently encapsulated as oral history in the Library of Congress, my firsthand witness to the American Civil Rights Movement.

Others growing up elsewhere also had positive formative experiences directly or indirectly because of African-American mentors: coaches, ministers, college educators, physicians, civic leaders, professional athletes, Hollywood actors, and, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King.

Boomers sat on the front row of racial integration in America, and now it is our time to demonstrate our thankfulness for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and all the brave souls who led this nation's Civil Rights movement.

I encourage those who grew up during the 1950's, 60's and 70's to reflect upon their own discoveries and awakenings that were nurtured by African-American heroes, personal and public.

What Vincent van Gogh Can Teach Boomers (and everyone else) about Failure

Waking from a fitful dream, he struggled out of bed and stumbled to a barred window. From this perspective in the asylum, he beheld a clear night, a large morning star enchanting him. The sight of stars always inspired him. Just as we take a train from Paris to Amsterdam, he thought, we take death to go to a star.

About a year later, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. He was 37 years old.

Life started more hopefully for him. He was son of a country minister who valued education. He memorized more than three-fourths of the Bible. As a young man, he lived in Paris and worked for his uncle who was a successful art dealer. He learned and mastered four languages.

He also fell deeply in love with his landlady’s daughter, who rejected him in favor of another. This rejection devastated him and led to his being fired from his uncle’s gallery.

He decided to follow his father’s footsteps and devote his life to God. Preachers being punished by the Methodist Church were often sent off to southern Belgium to coalmining territories where retched conditions prevailed. He volunteered for this assignment, finding special inspiration working with the poor and oppressed. He was quite effective as a spiritual counselor, and the miners nicknamed him “Christ of the Coal Mines.”

Church leaders did not see him as an asset but rather as undignified, so they fired him. Again, he sought refuge in his family and even became captivated by his widowed cousin, Kate. He declared his love for her, which Kate and her parents found repulsive.

Finally, he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to pursuing art. His younger brother saw potential in his paintings and agreed to support him with a monthly stipend. An art dealer, his brother believed the older brother’s paintings might sell in Paris.

During the next ten years, he moved around Europe while befriending artist peers. He started an artist’s union in a town near Paris where notable artists visited and painted with him.

The stipend his brother, Theo, gave him was adequate for living expenses but not for models, canvases, and expensive oil paints. He often lived solely on coffee, cigarettes, bread, and the psychedelic liqueur absinthe. He had a habit of putting his paintbrushes in his mouth, exposing him to lead poisoning. He also sipped turpentine from time to time.

These horrible health practices and the hallucinogenic effects of absinthe contributed to occasional spells of madness and thus the asylum that I described at the beginning of this story.

Yet he worked at a feverish pace. He wrote, “The power of work is a second youth.”

During ten years of prodigious output, he created over 2,100 paintings. Yet he did not gain the favor of rich art collectors. People in the town where he lived treated him viciously and even signed a petition asking government officials for his removal.

During this decade of frenetic work, his younger brother was only able to sell a single painting for the equivalent of $2,300 today.

Vincent van Gogh, who preferred to sign his paintings with just Vincent, felt despondent, lonely, and rejected for most of his adult life. He shot himself in the chest as a final act of self-loathing, although he did not successfully kill himself outright. He died two days later in the arms of his devoted brother, Theo.

Today, we view Vincent as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. The 1889 painting inspired by the clear night while he was in an asylum became known as “The Starry Night” and is housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His painting called “Irises” sold for $54 million dollars at auction. Another painting, a portrait of a doctor who cared for him in the asylum, sold for $83 million dollars.

Vincent’s story can be a lesson for all of us. He went to his grave seeing himself as a loser. He felt unloved, misunderstood, and rejected by all but his younger brother.

Most of us experience some of the pain that followed Vincent through his life. Maybe we fail to achieve our most private dream. Or we lose in love. Or we feel misunderstood. These feelings are part of the human experience.

Vincent’s story teaches us that in the end we may never know the full scope of our impact on the world. Our total influence may emerge after we are gone.

Next time things don’t work out, remember Vincent, an asylum and a painting called “The Starry Night.” It is a priceless masterpiece and one enduring legacy of a downtrodden and defeated man who created the work.

 

 

How A Twelve-Year-Old Girl Ventriloquist Gave Hope to a Dying Man

This is a true story about how 12-year-old Darci Lynne Farmer gave my brilliant next-door neighbor hope for a future he would not live to see. A sparkling YouTube video of the Oklahoma City ventriloquist's audition for America's Got Talent would be the last video he would ever watch. 

When my wife, Becky, and I walked into the Intensive Care Unit at St. Joseph’s Hospital that bright June day, he seemed as lucid as I remembered him during our many conversations and neighborhood gatherings spanning more than two decades. He was engaged, intellectual, funny, and circumspect. His animated chat careened from philosophical to silly, connected to transcendent, and physical to existential.

Herbert I. Jacobson had turned 86 nine months earlier. He looked and seemed to be in his sixties rather than shooting for the tenth decade of life. He never once needed hospitalization throughout his long life, but in May he became dehydrated and required hospital care. After being re-hydrated and stabilized, his physicians sent him home for a quick recovery. Yet he did not get better, and within another week he needed emergency hospitalization, this time for severe electrolyte imbalances. A life-threatening situation spiraled out of control, leading to deterioration of his kidneys and heart. Physicians declared his condition terminal.

Within minutes after our arrival, Herb launched into a conversation that Dr. Robert Butler described as life review. Dr. Butler, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and psychiatrist, identified life review as a cathartic process that helps those diagnosed with a terminal condition affirm value and meaning in their lives.

Dedicating Everything He Had to Helping Another Girl, His Daughter

When she was a child, his daughter became inflicted by Gaucher disease (pronounced go-SHAY), more likely in people whose ancestors originate from the Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish population. Herb tirelessly lobbied, fund-raised, cajoled, and pleaded for financial support to fight and treat this cruel disease. He testified before Congress, pressing elected officials until the nation’s legislators agreed to support funding for The Metabolic Clinic at Children's Hospital Colorado, recognized internationally for its expertise in diagnosis and treatment of metabolic disorders.

We discussed his years as a volunteer docent at Denver’s Museum of Nature and Science. He served as a guide for an exhibit called “Space Odyssey,” an immersive, interactive experience to teach guests about the cosmos. He loved to grab the attention of children touring the museum. His favorite icebreaker joke would be to ask a child like Darci her age. When she answered, “Twelve,” Herb then would reply, “When I was your age, I was fourteen!”

A former school teacher who loved teaching children, he sometimes shared his grave concerns about the future. A child of the 1930’s, raised in a New York orphanage, he knew deprivation on a level most cannot comprehend. He had spent formative years enduring hardships without parents and stable surroundings. He grew up scrabbling for means to a good life. He believed that the US Constitution does not automatically transfer from generation to generation with inviolable guarantees. He was concerned that today’s digital distractions and cultural narcissism might crumble the nation’s foundations. A young generation lacking rigorous liberal education, rich with history and its lessons, worried him most.

Five days before Herb died, this spunky twelve-year-old girl from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, appeared on the twelfth season premiere of America’s Got Talent, a reality show on the NBC television network. The popular talent contest features singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, and other performers of all ages competing for a top prize of one million dollars and a chance to headline a show in Las Vegas. Aware of his pessimistic perspective, I brought with me an anecdote to assuage his concerns about the nation’s future. I loaded a YouTube video onto my iPhone and said, “I want you to feel optimistic about the future for our nation’s youngest generations. Here is an example of possibilities for a brighter future.” 

Petunia

She walked onstage with an endearing smile. She carried a puppet she calls Petunia – a whimsical white rabbit with large pointed ears and wide eyes encircled by mascara. She announced to judge Simon Cowell that her name is Darci Lynne. When asked by Cowell why she decided to enter the show, she answered, “Well, it was one of my big dreams, but also I would like to keep ventriloquism alive because it’s not common.”

Then she looked at her animated puppet and said, “Are you ready?” Petunia replied, “Hit it!” as orchestral music lifted. Darci Lynne feigned surprise by saying, “You’re going to sing? Oh, boy!” Suddenly Petunia opened her mouth wide and began singing Summertime.

As Petunia astounded the audience, Darci Lynne smiled sweetly, innocently. The five judges became flabbergasted, not quite believing that a petite child, so young and inexperienced, could sing with such force and in tune without moving her lips. Not once. She demonstrated poise, self-confidence, rapport with the judges and audience, shocking mastery of ventriloquism for such a young age, an uncanny ability to split her personality between Petunia and the real Darci, all while achieving vocal range beyond the reach of most children.

Darci Lynne Sang A Timeless Song Popular During Herb's Youth

Her song seemed perfect for the tastes of a dying man who had spent years cherishing music that helped define his formative years, causing him to eventually store over 35,000 jazz and Big Band recordings on his beloved iPod. Summertime, an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess, is one of the most covered songs of all time, with interpretations by performers ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Janis Joplin.

After she finished, studio audience members jumped to their feet and honored the gifted girl with a standing ovation. Her shy giggles transformed into Bambi tears. Speaking in turn, each judge praised her for a charming performance. Judge Mel B said, “You make my heart melt. You were brilliant! I’m trying to describe how amazing it was. You know what?” Mel B jumped up and slapped a buzzer.

The Golden Buzzer may be activated only once by each judge per season. Mel B’s buzzer slap meant that Darci Lynne would advance to the final live shows without needing to compete at lower tiers. As gold confetti rained from the studio ceiling, the Oklahoma City girl became overcome by sweet emotions: disbelieving, crying, squealing, and jumping with joy.

Herb Jacobson

Herb was charmed and astounded by her talent. He was uplifted by her bold and sophisticated interpretation of a hit song from his youth. His final request was for me to share this video with Sharon, his wife, soon after he passed away.

An amazing ninety minutes concluded as he weakly transferred from a recliner to his hospital bed. A few others in the room began to weep. He saw this sadness and said, “I’m sorry ... I’m sorry.” These words expressed his regret for leaving his family yet revealed courage that he had accepted his fate.

He completed his life journey holding onto a secular theology articulated by Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel wrote:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

As we stood to leave the ICU, knowingly saying goodbye for the last time, he stretched out his hand to shake mine, his face a mystery in this moment so full of meaning. I said, “I’m not going to say good-bye, Herb. Rather, I’ll see you again.” He appeared quizzical, reflective. I shook once more. “I’ll see you again.”

Bolstered by his life review and entertained by a gifted girl from Oklahoma, Herb Jacobson’s final hours became a summertime day glorified with radical amazement. He was ready to spread his wings “and take to the sky.”

UPDATE

This story has gone viral on Twitter, with thousands of readers expressing sadness, joy, love, and gratitude. I'm so pleased that my post has garnered a wider audience, bringing public attention to the life of a good neighbor and a father figure to me. Of equal beauty is the following Tweet from Darci Lynne's mother, Misty Farmer: 

And my heart melted once again when I discovered a Tweet from Darci Lynne, written in the plainspoken style of a remarkable young lady: 

Brent Green is the author of six books about Boomers, business and aging. His newest book is Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss. Copyright 2017, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

 

The Boomer Generation Journey of "The Case for Christ"

This is not a blog about religion, nor is it a political blog. Rather, Boomers blog has maintained a clear generational focus since its inauguration in June 2005. Sometimes religion and politics have generational implications, and this is specifically true for a new movie released ten days before the 2017 Easter Sunday and entitled The Case for Christ.

This odyssey follows the real-life story of Lee Strobel, a Boomer born in 1952. Receiving a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, Strobel began his professional career as a newspaper reporter, notably for The Chicago Tribune, where he achieved award-winning recognition from UPI for his incisive reporting.

An avowed atheist, Strobel's hardened beliefs become severely tested by his wife, Leslie. After a series of family challenges, Leslie, an agnostic, aims her struggling faith at Christianity for solace and hope. Strobel cannot accept such a transformation, feeling threatened by his wife's conversion as if a cult-like wedge driving them apart.

The journalist sets out to ply his investigative reporting skills and debunk Christianity. He focuses on the most significant myth of the religion: resurrection of Jesus Christ. By disproving Christ's resurrection from Roman crucifixion and death, Strobel believes the entire religion will cave as if a house of cards. He can then rescue his wife from brainwashing and restore the equilibrium of their otherwise compatible marriage.

Strobel travels the nation to meet with and interview thirteen evangelical Christian experts covering history, anatomy, religious studies, psychology, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. Each resurrection-defying theory he attempts to prove meets countervailing evidence; each theological linchpin becomes more persuasive and captivating. When confronted with the totality of evidence presented by so many convincing experts, Strobel's emotional resistance collapses, and he also converts to Christianity.

His epiphany launches a new career, in his words "to share the evidence that supports the truth and claims of Christianity," eventually leading to his bestselling book and movie by the same title. Brian Bird, a professional screenwriter, has given Strobel's movie adaptation its Hollywood flair, with a gripping narrative pace, engaging plot twists, and satisfying story resolution.

I became aware of this movie the same day it was released for a special showing. The news came to me through a video promotion and e-newsletter developed by Marc Middleton and Bill Shafer, co-founders of a positive aging and wellness media company called Growing Bolder.

Even with such short notice, my wife, Becky, and I attended the first screening of the movie that also included a live Q&A with Strobel, his wife, and the movie's lead cast members and principal filmmakers. Paradoxically, we watched the movie in the same theater made infamous and haunting by the 2012 Aurora slayings where twelve innocent moviegoers had been massacred and 50 others injured. Although we had the choice of two other alternative theaters for this special event, the Century 16 seemed a fitting context for cinematic redemption.

My views of cultural and artistic phenomena ultimately become filtered through the lens of generational sociology. After twenty years of serious research and study of this generation, I also believe that our shared formative years are prologue to the present and prescriptive for the future. Whether Lee Strobel knows this consciously or not, his faith origin story reflects and refines the narrative of his generation. Thus, I noticed several aspects of this movie with broader generational implications.

Give Me A Head with Hair

Young Lee sported shoulder-length hair, which made him appear revolutionary and iconoclastic in the context of the straight-laced people he encounters throughout the movie. With his "freak flag" planted in a busy, all-business newsroom, his appearance reminded me of an investigative reporting duo showcased in the movie All The Presidents Men, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. This universally acclaimed political thriller follows two obstinate young journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post. Playing Carl Bernstein, Hoffman also parades shoulder-length hair, defiant and nonconforming. 

Complicated Father-Son Relationships

Young Baby Boomer men had complex and sometimes vitriolic relationships with their Greatest Generation fathers. Much of this divisiveness centered on the Vietnam War, when the men who fought nobly in World War II often felt their sons should embrace the Pax Americana moral imperatives of another offensive war. The two generations parted company on other core values, including women's liberation, racial integration, and gay rights. Boomer men often thought of their laconic fathers as insensitive and rigid, unwilling or unable to show genuine affection. Lee's angry relationship with his father portrayed this larger generational narrative. It was only after Walter Strobel's sudden death that Lee discovers how much his father loved and respected an unforgiving son. This breakdown in communication between men of these different generations has been magnificently captured through a popular song by Mike + The Mechanics and entitled The Living Years.

Carry On Wayward Son

Set in 1979 and 1980, the movie showcases some historical popular culture. One song stands out from the cinematic background: Carry On Wayward Son, created and performed by progressive rock super-group Kansas for their 1976 album Leftoverture. In 1977, the song crested at number eleven on the US Billboard Hot 100. Then Carry On Wayward Son became the second-most-played track on US classic rock radio stations in 1995 and number one in 1997.

What's ironic and not widely known is that two of the founding band members became evangelical Christians around the same time as Lee Strobel's conversion. Kerry Livgren, who wrote most of the band's hit songs, and Dave Hope, who performed as the band's bass guitar player, shared profound born again Christian experiences during their strenuous years as part of a stadium-filling rock band. Today, Livgren creates Christian music with his ultimate achievement an opus entitled Cantata: The Resurrection of Lazarus, an epic orchestral and vocal composition based on a Biblical story told in John, Chapter 11. Hope has served in the clergy for Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida. Today he is a retired Anglican priest.

Power of Generational Aphorisms

High school classmates Kerry Livgren, Kansas songwriter and co-founder, and Brent

Many Boomers remember with clarity a romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and released to theaters in 1970. Love Story conveys a heartrending fictional romance between two Ivy League college students: Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal, and Jennifer "Jenny" Cavalleri, played by Ali MacGraw. Similar to Lee and Leslie Strobel's story, the protagonists of Love Story confront severe challenges to their marriage from external forces. For the Strobel's, the aphorism distilling their unity in the face of disunity is "You and only you." For the troubled couple in Love Story, one memorable line stands out as Oliver's final statement to his insensitive father: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Boomers were raised on marketing and cultural aphorisms, and in many ways their generational story can be unfurled with a succession of pithy statements accumulating across five decades.

The Boomer generation is at a crossroads today. Many are reconsidering their spiritual beliefs, and some are rediscovering their childhood religious values. An expanding cohort falls into a religious netherworld described with an acronym SBNR: Spiritual But Not Religious.

This perennially soul-searching generation is reemerging around a zeitgeist today characterized by grand-parenting, generativity, and grief. Because of their advancing age and oncoming "sunset lifestage," many are facing increasing losses, bereavement, and core values reassessment. This is also why I have written Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at A Time of Loss. This book conveys my own search for the sources of grace.

The timing for The Case for Christ could not be better. I'm sure the creative community that has shaped this movie hopes and even expects some spiritual wayfarers will rediscover their Christian faith. At the very least, more will become inspired to ask difficult questions about the hereafter, probing for satisfying answers, much in the same way that Lee Strobel did in 1979 and 1980, the beginning of his productive career investigating and reporting on life's greatest mysteries.

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For Boomers and older, aging brings great losses. Is there value in suffering?

As is the situation for most readers over age 50, I have lost many significant persons in my life. After each loss, I grieved privately, rarely reaching out to others when I could have used some advice or a steady shoulder. I went through the stages of grief on my own.

Then last year I lost my sister to stage IV lung cancer, leaving me as the final surviving member of my nuclear family. I did not seek grief support when losing Julie; an unexpected approach to counseling came to me, and it has made a significant difference.

My sister passed away while receiving hospice care. Mark McGann, an easygoing chaplain, visited Julie’s home a few days before she died. He asked our family members to gather with him around a dining room table. We were sleep-deprived, anxious, and grief-stricken. He then asked, “Is there value in suffering?”

When Chaplain Mark posed this question, our wife-mother-sister-grandmother was dying in the master bedroom ten yards away. That moment was as raw as life can be, Julie’s departure imminent, the question of her suffering our lingering concern. And without qualifications, we were all suffering.

But this question cut to the core of our palpable, immediate encounter with mortality. The question required us to get in touch with our feelings in those final hours before Julie passed and provided an avenue to start finding answers where sometimes there are no obvious responses.

At first I became analytical: suffering is fundamental to the human condition. Suffering creates a vivid contrast illuminating joy, happiness, and satisfaction. It is a harsh lesson on the other side of sublime. We all must suffer whether we choose to or not. There must be value in that which is given in our lives. But rationalization did not assuage my suffering nor suggest something positive about such dark grief.

Several weeks later as I reflected more about suffering after loss, I revisited the misty days following the deaths of our parents who had passed away less than one day apart in July 2000. I had existed in a thick, murky fog for months, slogging through days of routine and work, numb and disillusioned and distracted. Then my wife, Becky, and I decided we needed a spontaneous break from exhausting routine and unresolved grief, so we traveled to Amsterdam, Holland. 

The Quest for Understanding

We became spellbound with the ancient Dutch city, the canals, exceptionally friendly natives, and an all-pervading creative vibe. From Rembrandt’s original painting studio to a modern museum showcasing the magnum opus of Vincent van Gogh, we walked in the footsteps of the Masters.

I responded by taking hundreds of photos of the Dutch people being themselves, such as mothers on bicycles transporting towhead toddlers and innovative mimes frozen solid near intersections. I captured visual stories of a European setting very different from our home. I allowed my senses to take in all that life can offer if we are alert, present, and open to new experiences. And gently, numbing grief transformed into new possibilities: a satellite’s perspective of how my life might proceed forward productively.

When we returned from Amsterdam, I transformed my photos into digitally printed posters. Nine months after our parents had passed away, I hosted an exhibition at a popular gourmet coffee shop where my framed Amsterdam photographs remained on display for several weeks.

Without suffering I would not have traveled to Amsterdam when we did, nor would I have seen what I saw: transitory instants when visual elements aligned under optimum lighting conditions. I would not have mastered Photoshop so I could perfect my images for digital printing. I would not have taken creative risks involved in sharing my work in a gallery setting.

Helen Keller became afflicted by scarlet fever or meningitis at nineteen months. The illness left her sightless and deaf. Nevertheless, she became the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She wrote and published twelve books and lectured worldwide. She experienced suffering from a perspective that would incapacitate many. Quite the opposite, she wrote: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

Suffering helped me comprehend once again what is useful and attainable in this life. Suffering motivated me to re-engage. I transformed the foreign, figuratively and literally, into the familiar. Suffering can precipitate creativity, liberating the creator through inspiration and then many available channels of human communication including painting, sculpting, songwriting, personal essays, poetry, photography, and videos. Therefore, I discovered there is value in suffering.

Provocative questions such as those posed by a humble hospice chaplain can help us reconsider our deepest values and beliefs at times of greatest grief and vulnerability. Answering unforeseen and challenging questions can become a path to greater spiritual awareness, a more resilient comportment, renewed faith, and optimism.

We may be just one question away from an entirely different life.

Brent Green is the author of six books about Boomers, business and aging. His forthcoming book is Questions of the Spirit: The Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss. Copyright 2017, Brent Green & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wow! This is Brent Green's sixth and finest book—and right up there with the best works focused on loss, grief and renewal. It is heart-warming to see how Brent has woven the threads of his life into a compelling personal narrative while revealing universal truths about mortality. Calling on his background in counseling psychology, he therapeutically inspires readers to search within for answers to challenging and unresolved spiritual questions. The depth and flow of the narrative kept me engaged, helping me learn more about myself along the way. The spiritual podiums and appreciative audiences will benefit from his hard-won wisdom. I give this book five stars!

— Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.

Author, Fierce with Age, The Spirituality of Age (Nautilus Award), The Art of Resilience, and many more 

Brent Green's wonderful book offers us the guidance we need when we lose someone we love. It's the kind of book we want to read before we lose someone we love and also afterwards to remind us of journey we all must go through. This is a very special book written by a very special man as a tribute of love to a very special woman who I had the honor of knowing. You will read it with joy as a reminder of how to keep our hearts open, even in the face of the inevitable losses we all must endure. It is truly a gift of love.

— Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Author, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come

A beautifully written book about our inexorable experiences with loss as we move through the life course. Green presents the reader with 18 remarkably poignant stories revealing our experiences with loss resulting not only from its common association with the death of a loved one, but loss through the lens of other more latent perspectives such as identity, opportunity, success or relationships that make up our human experience.

Each chapter is followed by questions for personal reflection or group discussion that will inspire the readers to contemplate their own rarely explored beliefs and values. This is not a book of all-purpose beatitudes, or aphorisms for coping but one that will guide us to discover new paths of meaning when negotiating with loss and the tensions between presence and absence that can bring us wholeness strength and transcendence. 

— David Cox

President, Society of Certified Senior Advisors

In Memoriam: John Darin, LA radio and TV personality, on the road again, going places he's never been

Note to readers: John Christian Miller, a.k.a. John Darin, my good friend and business colleague for nearly 30 years, died from pancreatic cancer on March 9, 2014. In honor of his memory, I'm re-posting this memorial tribute. RIP, JD.

Every holiday season his card arrived, one of the few handwritten cards we received each year. Most people have discontinued holiday cards altogether or instead they mail form letters filled with glad tidings and exuberant news about children. He always wished us health and success for the new year and usually offered a punchline, some ironic twist on life’s typical absurdities. He promised to stop and see us in Denver during one of his epic road trips. His cars were his children, nurtured, maintained, and nudged to greatness.

The first child I met was a taxicab yellow Porsche. Behind the wheel, wearing sunglasses, he looked like a leading man: dashing, cocky, alpha. It’s anyone’s guess how many times that sports car zipped from LA to Colorado and points east, but many. Then he adopted a bright red Miata, providing even less practical luggage space than the Porsche. But he found a creative way to strap his luggage to the Miata’s trunk rack, being well equipped and provisioned for weeks on the road. He brushed off my practical concerns that the contents of his luggage may be ruined in rain or snow.

As the years piled on, he finally became more sensible about his peripatetic nature and proclivity to drive through the mountains of Utah and Colorado. A Jeep Grand Cherokee became his ultimate road-tripping metal-child, and he equipped it with technological luxuries: GPS, CB radio, radar detector, and a great music system. Like its pretentious brothers, the Jeep pressed a lot of pavement, so much so that he even replaced the entire engine in lieu of buying a new car. He found accomplishment in rehabbing and refurbishing rather than replacing. His scrupulous restorations of aging cars always created something better than the originals.

John Christian Miller loved cars in exactly the same way he loved life. He enjoyed the journey as much as any other man I have known, finding reasons to remain positive and excited in spite of occasional setbacks. He was witty, funny, articulate – blessed with a powerful, resonating, room-filling voice. His quickness attested to the decades that he had spent as a leading LA radio news anchor, growing into AM radio during its heyday, always slightly ahead of his time but in step with the zeitgeist. Equally at ease on television as he pitched the miracle of Ginsu knives or the shrewd investment potential of gold coins, casual in the presence of celebrities, earnest about free enterprise, John Darin, as his stage name portrayed, was as smooth and pleasing as Bobby, the 1950’s folk-pop music icon who must have inspired the radio veteran’s pseudonym.

John Darin, or JD as I nicknamed him, was a friend apart, a periodic rush of positive energy who would check in by phone or email just to see how we were doing. He usually had a new post-retirement scheme to make money in areas as divergent as pitching affordable pre-need cremation plans to growing non-GMO soybeans in Brazil. He looked to the future as bright with possibilities.

During the holiday season of 2014, his traditional card did not arrive. I had been mildly concerned, knowing somewhere in the recesses of my mind that he was a predictable friend I’d known for 24 years. He should have been in touch by then. But I had let it go: no flashing warning signs. It had taken me almost a year from his last email to become really concerned.

When walking around a lake near my home, I dispatched a quick email from my iPhone. It bounced instantly. Could JD have changed internet service providers without letting me know? Not fathomable. Then I called his home office number. Disconnected. I tried his cell phone number. Also disconnected. I sped-walked home, wondering what had happened.

Becky was the first to discover the truth as revealed by Google. Dick Heatherton, a famous radio and television personality and brother of Joey Heatherton, a well-known singer and actress from the sixties and seventies, had written a deeply felt lamentation about John’s death.

The digest version goes like this: Severe back pain during the 2013 holiday season had forced JD to seek medical attention, and the diagnosis could not have been more brutal: pancreatic cancer. JD’s journey from diagnosis to death didn’t last more than ten weeks. He died March 9, 2014. The news spread , but not everywhere.

He had died almost nine months before it occurred to me that I should get in touch and find out when he would be coming to visit Becky and me in Denver. Although his substantial LA radio circle of colleagues and friends knew of his illness and death, I was dumbstruck ignorant. JD’s death hit me as a cold slap: the Google query we never want to see.

Could he have called me? Didn’t he know that I would have been there in whatever way I could? Did he think of Becky and me during his final weeks of pain and suffering, dulled by narcotics? Not even an email? Did he reach for his cell phone to call then hesitated as another shooting pain overwhelmed his consciousness, or a morphine drip dulled him to senselessness?

This is a different kind of death than I have ever experienced: a dying process that is disconnected from my awareness. In this networked society, where most news travels around the globe within minutes, is it possible for a friend to get sick and die and a long-term friend not to have a clue until nine months after his death?  

All these questions have no answers. The answers have died too. Yet to reconcile this dissonance I can imagine how it might have been had he called.

(Ring, ring)

“Hello … hey, JD, how the heck have you been?”

“Well, under the weather to be truthful.”

“A cold or flu? I hope you’re on the other side of it now.”

“Actually, it’s more severe.” Pregnant pause. “I have pancreatic cancer.”

“That’s horrible news, JD. Have your doctors figured out a treatment plan yet? Newer targeted drugs are showing a lot of promise.”

“The plan is to keep me comfortable. That’s all they can do. The cancer has already taken over most of my internal organs.”

“No surgeries? No chemo?”

“It’s too late for that. So… how’s Becky? How have you been?”

I understand how horrendous conversations like this might be for someone terminally ill. How difficult it must be to nurture others trying to find words and understand their own emotions when death comes knocking. An exuberant man full of life and laughter would not want to close his final days with one downer telephone conversation after another. He was too witty for that. Too ironic and clever.

But I am guilty of complacency about the facts of our temporary time on earth. Maybe that’s a trick of the mind: to close out the possibility that this day may be my last or only two months remain. Perhaps creating a sense of permanence in an impermanent existence helps mortals move through the days without becoming paralyzed by inevitable probabilities: disease, death, and disappearance by a too-distant friend.

I keep 95 percent of the non-spam emails I receive. Fortunately, long ago I labeled an Outlook folder “John Darin.” During the rush of disbelief and grief after discovering Dick Heatherton’s blog tribute to our mutual friend, I returned to that folder to read JDs final email message to me. It came shortly after Thanksgiving in 2013 and just a few weeks before he would receive the shocking news of his imminent death.

He wrote: thinking of you guys at holiday time. long overdue for a Denver visit. maybe early next year. He then shared a brief rundown of his travel plans for the holidays: from LA, to Seattle, to Chicago, busy and frenetic and, as always, connecting with a wide circle of family and friends. His travel destinations were more about people than places. Then he signed off: see you again soon maybe, Yewtaw John Darin. (LA manicured through-and-through, he loved the western aura bestowed by his retirement home in Utah, cowboy boots and all.)

Now I know that “maybe” was significant: hesitation and uncertainty coming from someone always so positive about the future. JD didn’t just skim over the possibilities of his days as if a stone skipping the surface of life; he dove into his plans, becoming immersed with gusto.

Maybe mattered then, and I didn’t understand.