: James Richard Krum
: Learning to Love Later in Life A Teaching Memoir
: BookBaby
: 9781098385583
: 1
: CHF 8.30
:
: Esoterik: Allgemeines, Nachschlagewerke
: English
: 164
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Gaining freedom from conditioned behaviors and mastering new ways of behaving is the storyline of the book. As a 'teaching memoir,' periodically readers are prompted to ' pause, and ponder' how what they are reading relates to their lives. And, at the end, readers are encouraged to create a roadmap to change their own lives. Telling the author's life story, the book is broken into several parts including 'Living Among the Dead,' 'Reflections on My Forty-three Year Marriage' which includes a section on 'What It Was Like Being married to Me,' and 'Finding Love in my Eighties.' The roadmap includes sections on understanding what it is to be human and becoming aware of barriers to love. It ends with sections on 'The Practice of Love' and putting together the pieces of a puzzle to change one's life.

Chapter 1:
Living Among theDead

Preface

Chapter 1 looks at my unusual childhood and adolescent years growing up as part of a business rather than as part of a cohesive family unit. I’m sure you have heard the term ‘family business.’ However, mine is the story of abusiness family. In essence, my early life was molded to meet the needs of my parents’ undertaking business. There were no boundaries between the business and our family and the needs of the business always came first. Being an undertaker is a 24/7/365 commitment. When a call comes in reporting a death, the business springs to action. It’s something like a 911 call reporting a fire. A sense of urgency pervaded our family life. This urgency, combined with never having bonded with my mother, whose primary job was managing the office of the business, has festered as a wound my whole life. These two factors had detrimental effects on my being a good husband and father, and were passed on to my children in subtleways.

When M.B. MetElsie

Enterprising businessman, widower with two small children, seeks eligible woman with bookkeeping skills and good communitycontacts.

If newspaper classified personal ads had existed during the mid-1920s, I imagine my father might have written the above advertisement in search of a new wife. M.B. stands for Mizpah Bean, my father’s first and middle names. Mizpah comes from the Bible, and Bean was his mother’s maiden name. My father was an onlychild.

Elsie Evans was a good candidate. She came from a large family and was a member of the Lutheran church in the town where M.B. had both his furniture store and his undertaking business. Elsie was a business school graduate. For her, M.B. Krum was a good catch. By temperament, they were opposites. M.B. was a risk-taker who was happiest when he had money borrowed from the bank to expand his business. Elsie kept track of the books and knew how stretched they were financially during the Great Depression when I was born in 1934. I have no idea whether I was planned or not. Being born is one of the few events in my life that I have not had to figure out andmanage.

Take Him to the FuneralHome

For many people, their last ride is from the hospital to the funeral home. For me, it was my first ride. Living above the funeral parlor robbed me of my spontaneity and the freedom to be a normal child. I was left in the care of Martha, our live-in housekeeper, who had a large apartment to keep immaculate in addition to doing the cooking and the laundry and taking care of three other children. There was little time for me. As an infant, I must h