HUMANING with Dr. Kelly Flanagan

I’ve renamed this Substack from THE INNER GATHERING to HUMANING, but it’s more than just a change of names...

My wife’s 96-year-old grandfather is on FaceTime and we gather around my MacBook, granted the gift of this rare moment between the onset of his painkillers and the oblivion that quickly follows. It’s a chance to say goodbye, and we all know it.

“Vuvu,” we ask (Vuvu is Portuguese for grandpa), “how are you doing?”

His question is his answer. “Quinn,” he asks my sixteen-year-old son, “will you and your brother carry my coffin with your cousins?” Quinn says yes. You can almost see the lump in his throat.

Vuvu nods quietly. He thinks. Thinking takes longer now. A smile plays across his lips. “Did I ever tell you the one about…” he asks, and goes on to tell us a joke we’ve never heard from him before. We didn’t think he had any new ones left. We all laugh a little harder than the joke deserves, because really we’re laughing at every joke he’s ever told.

He chuckles along with us, pleased to have made his loved ones laugh one last time. Then he grows quiet again, before addressing thirteen-year-old Caitlin. “Will you read the Scripture at my funeral?” he asks. Her lower lids do their job and hold her tears in place as she answers yes.

He nods again and thinks some more.

“Did you know, when I started working at Dupont, the Delaware Memorial Bridge didn’t exist so every day they transported us across the river on a company ferry?” We thought we’d heard every story about his commute to work, but once again, this is a first. He goes into every detail of it, including his impersonation of one of his carpool mates, Charlie Karney. A year ago we might have grown a little weary of his pace. Now, we hang on every word.

He grows quiet again, before addressing me.

“Flanagan,” he says, “you did such a good job with Mary’s eulogy, would you do mine too?” Now my lower lids are put to the test, as well. Yes, I tell him, it would be one of the greatest honors of my life to deliver his eulogy. He nods again. The mention of his wife of seventy-plus years seems to have taken him somewhere we can’t go.

Maybe that’s just practice for what’s to come.

He returns to us. “Did I ever tell you the story about so-and-so?” he asks. “That man was as wide as he was tall.” It’s a story with some colorful language and it’s absolutely hilarious and it’s clear what he’s doing: he’s showing us the parts of his life that, for propriety’s sake, he held back until now. At the end, he’s stepping fully into his humanity and showing it all to us.

The longest pause comes next, before he finally says what’s really on his mind. It’s both a statement and a question. “I hope I did right by you all.” Now, all of our lower lids are overwhelmed, as we reassure him that he has been a good man and lived a good life and has loved the three generations after him as well as anyone could.

The medication is winning now, as he struggles to find a foothold in the conversation. Slowly, he begins to shake his head back and forth, and a smile plays on his lips once again. He opens his mouth to speak. We lean in, waiting for his last words.

“Charlie Karney,” he says wryly.

We all erupt in laughter, as his medication tugs him off into oblivion, and that is the way our time here with him ends. Afterward, we sort of melt into each other’s arms, feeling the full joy and sorrow of the moment. Eventually, Quinn says what we’re all feeling.

“I hope I’m that brave when my time comes.”

Humaning is a lot of things, but if I had to boil it down to one thing, I’d say humaning is the lifelong art of opening our hearts to the whole human experience. By the end, Vuvu’s heart was fully open to the whole human experience, and it’s the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed.

What does it mean to open our hearts? Put simply, a long time ago, when we were young, each of us unconsciously created a list of experiences we prefer to have (usually pleasurable) and a list of experiences we prefer not to have (usually painful). Then we got in the habit of overly attaching to our preferred experiences and overly resisting—closing our hearts to—the rest of our lives. In the end, though, it is this experience of resisting—of closing—that causes most of our suffering, and the experience of opening is what allows love, joy, self-acceptance, and compassion to flow through us.

Humaning is being brave enough to experience it all.

I came here to Substack last February to write a non-fiction book in public, so I named this Substack after the working title of that book, The Inner Gathering. This year, I’ve come to love Substack, because it is a unicorn in today’s media landscape. Every publication here is supported entirely by its readers, so advertisers aren’t in charge. You, the reader, are. It’s a chance to reclaim our time and attention from social media algorithms that keep us fearfully or angrily clicking, and to give our energy instead to thoughtful and meaningful written content. Here, we get a chance to create the media of which we’re all worthy.

Here, you won’t be used, you’ll be soothed.

Last year, when I closed my therapy practice, I took one more step toward becoming a full-time writer. This is another step. I’m going to be writing more regularly for you again. The new About page explains that I’ll be releasing a post every Wednesday, just like the old blogging days, with approximately half of those posts going to everyone and half going to paid subscribers. Reminder: you can choose to receive the posts by email and/or on the Substack website or app. In addition, paid subscribers will get to write my book along with me, connect as a community in the Substack chat, and choose the topics for our monthly Human Hour on Zoom.

If adulting is the process of becoming a thriving adult, then humaning is the process of becoming a flourishing human. And this publication will be a little corner of the internet where we can all be inspired through storytelling and conversation to love the journey, so one day our people might say about us…

“I hope I’m that brave when my time comes.”

---

I’d love to hear your thoughts about all this in the comments, as well as any questions it raises for you.

---