The Third Act of Life Before the Final Curtain

I'd like to be picked up in this...
in case anyone cares

The curling script read "Forest Lawn" on the side of the pale silver hearse.  I was peeking out between the blinds of my bathroom window for my usual morning weather check when I saw it. As gaped through the slats, two people dressed in sombre black got out of the vehicle and mounted the steps of the house across the street. They knocked and were immediately let inside. Show over, I went downstairs to get my morning coffee with the new knowledge that someone on the street had just died. Those people don't show up for false alarms. The unofficial town cryer of my block soon apprised me of what had happened. A 62 year old man had died of cancer.  I didn't know the man, I've only lived on the block for 18 months and he wasn't here most of the time, but still....62.  Sobering.

Ian Brown's "Sixty"

For the last month or so I feel that I have been surrounded by the prospect of aging and the end of life. My doctor had recommended I read a book entitled "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by  Atul Gawande. The author is an American doctor, a son of two doctors. It's a thoughtful, informative (too informative, perhaps) and honest description of our aging process and how modern medicine aids or hurts us in the end. That was my light Christmas holiday reading. At the same time I also read a book recommended by my sister, "Sixty" by Ian Brown. Brown is a Canadian journalist who decided to keep a diary from his 60th birthday to his 61st and record his thoughts on his own aging and what he saw around him. It's comic, tragic and unflinching. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Male or female, we share much the same problems and issues with our human bodies and minds. Aging is a great leveler.  In both books the authors watched their active, interesting, very elderly fathers die. One son recorded it in great medical detail, the other as more of an emotional event. I was touched by both accounts and could identify with each of their losses.

My friends and I are all watching their parents get older and die. Many of my conversations now revolve around what is happening with our parents. Those who have already lost their parents to the great beyond can easily empathize with what is going on with those still left.  My father is gone and my mom, though healthy, is in her late eighties and is moving at the end of this month with her 90 year old partner into a retirement center. They are on my mind a great deal as I help them with their packing and concerns. This will be my mother's seventh move in the seven years since my dad died. That fact alone leaves me with a feeling that my older years may not be ones of peace and contentment but rather a searching for something I have lost. If I even make it to her age.

"Gentle Into This Good Night"
original art by Megan Podwin

I have believed for a while now that my arrogant Baby Boom generation is not going to live as long as we think we will. Our parents are from a generation in which so many have benefited from modern medicine and are living into their eighties and nineties. Do we think we will do the same? Will medicine save us from ourselves? As humans our lifespan seems to have stalled out, the oldest age reached is not getting any older. It is still very rare to see someone live past 105, let alone 115, despite medical intervention.  Our bodies do give out.  My generation has abused itself with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, obesity, sedentary lifestyle and stress. Unless the aliens come to help out with their space age technology we will be, and already are, dying off. With assisted suicide becoming a reality in Canada I'm not sure that every Boomer will even choose to live out their years as those before us might have done.

Even though I am attempting to be 'ageless' those around me seem to be moving into their sixties and talking of retirement, of a loss of excitement with life, a feeling of closing doors, regrets.  No more big firsts ahead, so much of life is behind, not in front.  Ian Brown points out in his book that if we can expect to live to 85 then the span from 60 to 85 is as great as the span from 30 to 55. Who can't look back on that space of time and not feel that a great deal went on?  I believe we can still experience many "firsts", we just need to redefine them. There will never again be a first love, a first job, a first home purchased or a first baby born to me. That doesn't dismay me. I envy my children their beautiful youth but am well aware I had mine and that I enjoyed it. There are no 'do overs', that is not what I'm after. I may not be quite as energetic or as physically strong as I was but I am smarter, wiser and less foolhardy than when I was younger and I'm still curious, still interested and still hoping for more.
A friend of mine has a mantra, "this is as good as it gets" to help with her acceptance of where she is in life.  I dislike that phrase because I think there is the possibility of many things out there that I cannot even imagine yet that may prove to make life better next year than it is right now, at least for the next two decades. Life after eighty appears to be more problematic according to the reading I just did.  January has been a month of reflection and learning about aging and I am internalizing that and moving forward with positivity.  As an antidote,  I'm currently reading Blogging for Dummies and the latest novel from Alan Bradley, starring  his eleven year old fictional sleuth Flavia deLuce. Flavia puts me in touch with my eleven year old self who fell in love with stories of plucky children in England. They were a favourite escape of mine as a young girl and they still are, I guess.
 My grandmother, as she was nearing the end of her 93 years here, told my mom , "we just have to live it out until it's done". None of us knows when that will be so here's to living it out every day and finding our new set of "firsts" for the decades to come.

"Whereabouts Unknown"
original art by Megan Podwin