Judith Viorst, MAKING THE BEST OF WHAT'S LEFT: When We're Too Old to Get the Chairs Reupholstered
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:45]Judith Viorst is the author of Making the Best of What's Left, when we're too old to
[0:50]get the chairs reappostered.
[0:52]This is her second time on the podcast the first time I interviewed her as part of the
[0:56]Temple and Manual Striker Center event series.
[0:59]Judith Viorst is the author of The Beloved, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No
[1:03]Good Very Bad Day, which has sold some 4 million copies.
[1:07]The Lulu books, including Lulu and the Brontosaurus, The New York Times Bestseller Necessary
[1:12]Losses, Four Musicals, and Poetry for Children and Adults.
[1:15]Her most recent books, Poetry, include What Are You Glad About?
[1:19]What Are You Mad About?
[1:20]And Hearing 90.
[1:22]She lives in Washington, D.C.
[1:24]Welcome, Judy.
[1:25]Thank you for coming on totally book with Zibi to talk about Making the Best of What's
[1:29]Left, when you're too old to get the chairs reappostered.
[1:32]Congratulations.
[1:33]Thank you, thank you.
[1:35]You wrote in such a funny and moving and also a sad way about the loss of your husband
[1:41]in this book and what it means to be older and what life looks like when you leave
[1:46]your home and so much else.
[1:48]Tell me about your decision to write this particular book and having read, nearing 90,
[1:53]I was eagerly looking forward to this installment, so thank you for writing it.
[1:58]Well, I tend to be writing about where I am in my life and this was certainly a major
[2:05]where I am in my life.
[2:06]I've been married for over 60 years to Milton, knew him when he was 19 and I was 18.
[2:14]So he's been in my life practically my whole life and his loss and moving to a retirement
[2:21]community and starting to acquire a list of specialists and every kind, you know, longer
[2:32]than my life span, I've got me thinking about how do we manage at this time of life?
[2:39]How do we redefine happiness and negotiate loneliness and when our arguments with the kids
[2:47]will they want us to give up our car keys?
[2:50]Well, I am profoundly sorry for your loss and I appreciate all of what you wrote.
[2:59]Can I read the poem in this book called Stop Being Dead?
[3:02]Yes, please.
[3:03]Okay.
[3:04]So this is a poem you wrote about Milton.
[3:07]Stop being dead.
[3:08]I have these conversations with my husband.
[3:10]I'm hoping that he's hearing what I've said.
[3:12]For though I know he died this past December, I keep on telling him, stop being dead.
[3:17]You've never been a stickler for the rules, dear.
[3:19]You've crossed some lines and some were really red.
[3:21]Obedience is not among your virtues.
[3:23]So stop obeying.
[3:24]Just stop being dead.
[3:26]I need you sitting at our kitchen table.
[3:28]I need you lying next to me in bed.
[3:30]I need you fixing our damn circuit breakers.
[3:32]I need you.
[3:33]Could you please stop being dead?
[3:34]It's only you for whom I'm lonely.
[3:36]I won't take any substitutes instead.
[3:39]Who knew you'd be completely irreplaceable?
[3:41]Come back to me.
[3:42]Come back.
[3:43]Stop being dead.
[3:44]Oh, it makes me want to cry.
[3:46]But it also evokes a lot of memories of this vital, vigorous, super opinionated man who
[3:56]I live with and love for so many years.
[3:58]I think so many people fear that this will happen and you joke about it early in the
[4:04]book.
[4:05]He wasn't supposed to die first, right?
[4:07]Absolutely not.
[4:09]So now that this is the way things have played out, would you ever go back and do anything
[4:13]differently?
[4:14]Did you tell other people like, how do you live life when there's so much uncertainty
[4:19]now that you know where you've ended up, so to speak?
[4:23]Well, I mean, the main thing I would like to have done differently has not been such an
[4:28]absolute dummy about the details of practical life.
[4:33]Anything that Milton was in charge of, I let him be totally in charge of, I did not
[4:39]do taxes, had to get a car inspected where the switch was when there was a water break
[4:46]and water was dripping down and I didn't know how to turn it off.
[4:51]I mean, it's nice to be taken care of and have your husband and you split the chores,
[4:57]but believe me, life is a lot easier if you know where the switch is to turn off the
[5:04]water and on a less pragmatic note, I mean, I was pretty good at telling him I loved him
[5:14]and fairly good at saying I was sorry when I screwed up in some way, but I could have
[5:20]been better.
[5:21]I think we all could have, anytime we felt and I love you, we should just say it,
[5:26]just say it, and it probably wouldn't kill us if we all just say more, I'm sorry, you know,
[5:35]if I went back, I think I'd be a better person, I mean, I think we all probably would be.
[5:43]Can I read just one more paragraph from what's left?
[5:47]Please do.
[5:48]Okay, you wrote, I don't want to flunk old age, I really want to be good at old age.
[5:52]After giving out grades for old age, I want an A plus, but we won't be good at old
[5:57]age until we figured out what's left after we've dealt with a host of cascading losses.
[6:02]And perhaps among these losses, the most difficult for us is the death of a husband or
[6:05]wife who, for better and worse, has been part of our life for most of our lifetime.
[6:09]I think we need a book entitled Preparations for Widowhood and we need to read it before
[6:14]our husband dies.
[6:15]We also have plenty to learn from those who are widowed, much of it obvious, some of it
[6:19]a warning word to the wise that such and such should be done or done right now while he's
[6:24]alive because later is not negotably too late, having some separate interests, some separate
[6:29]friendships, some separate sense of who we are, when who we are is not a part of a pair
[6:35]can help to ease the separateness of widowed and we shouldn't wait till his death to figure
[6:39]out how to be a person, not only a wife.
[6:42]Do you feel like you now are being not only a wife?
[6:47]Have you noticed some changes since then?
[6:50]Well, yes, a lot of changes.
[6:53]I mean, there is something about having this other presence in your life who was, well,
[6:59]I once wrote a poem and said, yeah, that what's the secret of a long marriage, you know,
[7:03]mystery is my habit and my history.
[7:07]It was my habit and my history, you know, we shared so much who else you're going to lie
[7:12]in bed with at night and talk about all the details and wonders of your children.
[7:18]There's nobody as interested in that as your own husband and, you know, you continue with
[7:23]life.
[7:24]I know a lot of women who have done remarkably well and I think I'm doing pretty well
[7:28]without the man we love with us anymore.
[7:32]But it is, and some of these women have even managed to have a new relationship, have
[7:38]even managed to take off their clothes in front of a new man, which is not easy of
[7:44]the certain age.
[7:47]And yet there is this absence of this person you've been connected to for such a long time.
[7:54]So you have both.
[7:55]You also flourish in certain ways.
[7:58]You know, I've seen people really, some of them go on to, you know, to new activities
[8:04]and new relationships of friendship and studies or a poetry group or whatever.
[8:10]I'm not seeing a lot of women turning into wilted flowers after their husbands die, but
[8:17]they have to work at it.
[8:18]You have to work at it.
[8:20]How do you feel about death?
[8:22]I don't like it, Sibi.
[8:24]I think it's a really dumb idea.
[8:27]I don't understand why they didn't come up with a better option.
[8:32]But I think about it a lot.
[8:35]And I think about people I love who have died.
[8:38]And I think there was something to be said about continuing relationships in a way after
[8:45]someone has died, remembering them, remembering that maybe in a slightly different way as
[8:51]you've gotten older and understood new things.
[8:55]I just went to New York three days ago to say goodbye to a very, very beloved old friend
[9:03]of mine.
[9:04]We met when our kids were five years old and just held her hand and said goodbye to her.
[9:09]And I think that's a good thing to do too if you can do that.
[9:12]Oh, so sad.
[9:14]Are you, are you not to be somber on this?
[9:17]It's like the weather day is beautiful and it's all, you know, happy and whatever.
[9:21]So I don't mean to bring you down with these discussions about death.
[9:24]But are you afraid of death yourself for you?
[9:28]Oh, I think like a lot of people, we all come to the conclusion that we're not afraid
[9:33]of death as much as we're afraid of dying.
[9:36]We want to have a sort of a hospice kind of death, a death that is the composed of some
[9:44]level of dignity and a lot of level of pain free.
[9:49]That makes sense.
[9:51]Tell me about the power of community and how important it is.
[9:55]I know you already touched on this.
[10:00]people that you care about and who were there at any stage. Tell me about that and maybe a close
[10:06]friend who's really helped you along the way.
[10:08]I think community is absolutely central to happiness. I mean, when you get married to somebody,
[10:16]your marriage is not going to work out if you expect that one person to be everything and be
[10:21]interested in everything that you care about. That's why the universe invented friendships and
[10:29]family. And community just helps you, you know, you call up your in a bad mood and get somebody
[10:38]to talk you out of it or convince you that this disastrous grew up that you recently engaged in
[10:45]is really not the end of the world after all. Who can bring some laughter into your life when
[10:53]you're feeling glad about who can hold your hand and be sad with you when you need that.
[10:57]There is a tremendously warm and welcoming community here where I live in this retirement
[11:03]community. Amazing to me that at this late stage in life, I could even make new friends
[11:10]and people that I had never met before and found a very meaningful connections with.
[11:17]What's a message? That's just for the day and get you through the night.
[11:20]Very true. Your career as a writer is so amazing, right? You just are open and funny and vulnerable
[11:28]and you have written throughout life and taken the readership along with you. How do you do that?
[11:36]Like, how can other people emulate what you've done from writing children's books to writing
[11:42]funny poems to writing books for grownups and all of that? Like, when did you know you were
[11:48]writer and how did you keep it going for, you know, so long and just like morphing when you
[11:54]needed to and all of that? Oh, it's a big. I'm one of these people who wanted to be a writer my whole
[12:01]life. I was sending stuff out to my mother's women's magazine. Literally when I was seven, eight
[12:07]years old, I think I was still doing printing, not writing, not in person. And because my mother's
[12:15]favorite poem was at a belly about the maiden in a set book or down by the sea and dead maiden,
[12:21]I thought that there had to be a dead body in every poem I wrote. So my first poem was an O
[12:27]to my dead mother and father, both alive at the time and a little nervous, why don't you go out
[12:33]and roll and skate and forget that morbid stuff. And I just, I set this stuff out. I was sending,
[12:41]I was sending writing out until I was well into my 30s without one single word ever being published.
[12:49]But I didn't know how to not write. I didn't know how to express who I was and how I felt.
[12:56]So, you know, writing wasn't an assignment I gave myself or a career choice. It chose me.
[13:04]And how did you, even though you say you just kept writing, you can keep writing but decide not
[13:09]to publish or not to deal with the whole industry or rejection or whatever, did you just know
[13:16]deep down that this is what you were meant to do and you were willing to put up with whatever?
[13:20]Well, again, I was once asked by somebody after I'd given a talk about, she said, I want to be
[13:28]a writer like you, but I can't stand rejection. I said, get another career.
[13:33]Because you're going to, you're going to have to stand a lot of rejection. So, I just kept on
[13:41]on sending out. And, you know, one thing led to another led to another and, you know, by some
[13:48]miracle, I wound up finally having poems published in New York Magazine. And my life changed.
[13:55]But it took me a very, very long time to get to that. And I just plugged away. I wrote,
[14:02]I said, out, I got back or totally ignored. And I needed to write. So, I have, I have now,
[14:09]I mean, if you don't need to write and you can't stand rejection, really, you know,
[14:14]take up tap dancing.
[14:17]Yeah, big market for tap dancing. Very reliable choice there.
[14:24]Were you surprised by the success and sort of longevity of Alexander and
[14:28]terrible, horrible, no good, very bad. I really, I really was because, I mean, I had my
[14:34]Alexander and I, and I, I read him this story when it was still in manuscript form. And, you know,
[14:42]thinking, you know, since he had a lot more than a share of bad days, I thought I, I would
[14:48]cheer him up by writing this about kid at a bad day. And he, he hated the book. He actually,
[14:57]I mean, he said, why are you giving me a bad day? Why don't you give one to Nick? Why don't you
[15:01]give one to Tony? Why me? You know, and he really was, this was not working out the way I,
[15:08]and hoped it was. And I said to him that, well, we could change it to Stanley in the terrible
[15:13]horrible or Walter in the terrible horrible. But then, and then this is maybe being a totally
[15:18]manipulative mommy. They just won't be in great big letters in the front of the book.
[15:24]He said, keep it Alexander. And the subsequent success of it was an absolute amazement to me.
[15:31]It was actually turned down by the, by the publisher I submitted to, to, and, you know,
[15:38]who I figured was, was going to take it because you're taking two other buy books.
[15:43]And I have to say, as a result of all of its success, I have a very immature attitude,
[15:50]which goes like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that so much.
[16:00]What's the thing that makes you the happiest when you wake up each day and get going? Like,
[16:05]what do you write still every day? Does that still make you happy? Is there something else you've
[16:10]started? Like, what, what, what, what makes you happy every day? What makes me happy every day?
[16:17]Well, this absolute sinful beginning of my day, which is also, I have to say, I'm, I feel
[16:24]as if I'm listing all of my immatureities, is a large glass, which is sort of basically half chocolate,
[16:31]Hershey's syrup and half milk. Every morning, a large glass of very chocolatey chocolate milk.
[16:39]And that's sort of what is very good for your writing right into the day. I don't,
[16:44]I don't necessarily write every day, but when I'm working on something and in the middle of it,
[16:49]I can get, I can get so engrossed. I have my chocolate milk. I have not brushed my teeth.
[16:57]I'm still in my night gown and I go to my desk and I say to myself, don't start, but I start,
[17:04]and then it can be two o'clock before I'm out of my night gown. And when writing is going well,
[17:10]and you're just sort of lying along, even though, you know, it's putting a lot of stuff in the trash
[17:15]basket, it's, it's a pretty exhilarating feeling. Well, I love that. A great image.
[17:23]I have to say, my grandmother made hot cocoa for breakfast every single day. She did it with
[17:27]the Hershey's powder or the Nestle. Oh, yeah, Hershey's powder. And I'm like, you know what,
[17:33]maybe this is the secret to life. Get a little more chocolate. Absolutely.
[17:41]What do you like to read? I like to read everything. Well, I start the day with two newspapers
[17:47]every day. And a lot of magazines, you know, I read the old classics. I read some history.
[17:57]I finished a very interesting book recently about Lindbergh and Roosevelt about, you know,
[18:04]internationalist and isolationist. It was found very interesting. And I'm, I'm, I'm reading Bob Gottlieb's
[18:13]book on being a voracious reader right now, which I love reading. And I like Ross McDonald
[18:22]murder mysteries. I'm, I'm, I'm a very eclectic reader. And I love, love, love, poetry.
[18:28]And read poetry. And, and while everybody else is doing word games and boggle and this one and
[18:35]that one, I, I memorize poetry for my own pleasure. I promise my friends, I'm not going to force
[18:41]them to stand around listening while I recite poetry. But I, I'm excited to myself.
[18:46]Well, you were welcome to recite a poem if you would like now.
[18:49]The floor is yours. This is, this is your moment to shine.
[18:53]Oh, okay. Really? Yeah. Really.
[18:57]Lewis McEnise, the sunlight on the garden hardens and grows cold. We cannot cage the minute
[19:05]within its net of gold. When all is told, we cannot beg for pardon. Our pardon is free lances,
[19:12]advances towards its end. The earth compels upon its sonnets and birds to send. And soon,
[19:20]my friend, we will have no time for dances. The sky was good for flying to find the church bells
[19:26]at every evil iron siren and what it tells. The earth compels, we are dying each of dying.
[19:34]But not expecting pardon, hardened in heart anew. And glad to have set under thunder and rain
[19:42]with you. I'm grateful to for sunlight on the garden. Oh my gosh. I'm applauding. I'll give
[19:49]you a standing ovation for my... Thank you. It was so nice. That's our beautiful poem.
[19:54]That is a beautiful poem. And wow, that you can just recite it like that. I can barely...
[20:00]I remember the Jabberwokey, which is, I memorized the whole poems, the pieces of poems,
[20:10]that was the whole wood.
[20:12]And then you have to drill or it slips away down those holes in your memory.
[20:18]But I mean, I think everybody should memorize poetry, it's like having these little treasures
[20:24]inside your soul that just, you know, stop for red light, set of freaking out, because
[20:30]you're like, you decide a little poem.
[20:32]Huh.
[20:33]It's like the ultimate in mindfulness.
[20:35]I love that.
[20:36]Oh my goodness.
[20:37]Okay, well, I don't want to keep you forever, but do you have any advice for the aspiring
[20:43]author out there?
[20:44]Well, I guess my big advice is you just keep at it, you keep at it, and you're not
[20:53]discouraged by the fact that at the end of the day, there was like one sheet of paper
[20:59]on your desk and a rema paper in the trash can, that you understand that writing is rewriting
[21:06]and rewriting and telling it a million dumb ways before you tell it a good way.
[21:12]And if you're a writer, you don't need to hear any of this from me because you're going
[21:16]to do it anyway.
[21:19]Well, well, Judy, thank you so, so much for your time.
[21:24]You were such a role model to so many and your attitude about everything is just fabulous
[21:30]and how great I will start memorizing poems and think of you.
[21:36]So thank you.
[21:37]Thank you.
[21:38]And it was a real pleasure to talk with you.
[21:39]It really was.
[21:40]Oh, you too.
[21:41]I hope you have a great day.
[21:43]You too.
[21:44]Thank you.
[21:45]Bye bye.
[21:46]It's a totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[21:50]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[21:56]and spread the word.
[21:58]Thanks so much.
[21:59]Oh, and bye the books.