My daughter Pauline is at the age where she is right in the middle of things, raising her children and also looking out for her elderly parents.
Of the two, her mother and I probably are the tougher job.
Nicole and I are both 75, and she is already in a memory care unit at a local assisted living facility. I will probably join her in the non-memory care part of the facility by the end of the year. I am not doing as well as I would have hoped, and it’s possible Nicole will be less reluctant to be where she is if I am there too.
So I was a little surprised at a serious question she asked me the other day.
“What do you want from your future?”
I avoided Rodney Dangerfield’s stock answer. “Future? I don’t even order green bananas.”
I have already surpassed by two years the average lifetime of an American male born in 1949 but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to call it quits yet. I never wanted to live to be 100 or even 90,
In fact, whenever I think of old age, I am reminded of two things.
At Thanksgiving 2008 in California, when I was 58 and my first grandchild was just two months old, I recalled the recent death of the oldest person in the U.S., a 116-year-old woman in Indiana. She had been widowed at age 39 and had never remarried, and she had outlived her children, grandchildren and most of her great-grandchildren.
Thar reminded me of the other thing. I forget who said it, but it was extremely poignant.
“If you live long enough, you will outlive everyone you ever loved.”
I don’t want to outlive my four younger siblings, I would be filled with horror if I outlived my children or grandchildren.
I promised my wife, who is three months younger than I am, that I would try to live as long as she needs me. I used to say if I lived to be 80, that would be enough and they could take me away the next day.
I have often compared life to 18 holes of golf, and if 80 is the end for me, that means I’m standing at the 18th tee. I don’t play golf anymore — my back won’t permit it — but nothing would make me happier than to finish well. I have been a burden to the people who love me far too often. I would like to be less of a burden in these closing years.
I have had two books published and I have two more completed and ready to go. A fifth is 80 percent done, and I have a strong idea for a sixth. I would like to get all that work done. Six books in print would be an impressive oeuvre.
I am a flawed man with a few good qualities, but if I can be there for Nicole, finish my writing projects and not be a burden, that’s a decent future at this point.
Now comes the hard part.
Living up to it.