Deathday Countdown
I was never big on birthdays, not mine or anyone else’s. I think it is hard to get excited about something that has little meaning to me. What connection each day of my life has to do with my birthday is a mystery to me. Birthdays have always been as exciting to me as exchanging gifts with people who are in no need of gifts. No one has to do anything to be born, and yet we celebrate that yearly as if the fact of being born was an accomplishment on the part of the one being born. Naturally the parents did something and whether or not it was a good thing remains to be proven. I think poor people are more excited about gift exchanges because they are always in need of something, including the attention gift giving brings. If everyone took all the money they spend on exchanging gifts with people in no need of a gift and gave that money to the less fortunate, the world would be a far better and kinder place.
Thus, I have essentially ignored my birthday most of my life. In fact, since a child I don’t think I have ever had a birthday party. Of all the things I might like to be celebrated for, just being born is not one of them. People close to me know better than to irritate me in that way. And unless someone is poor, it is rare for me to shower them with any gifts. To be T.O. fair, I don’t accept gifts either, albeit sometimes a person who hardly knows me slips a gift in, but understands quickly it better be the last one. I prefer friendship be cemented by words and deeds, not obligatory meaningless gifts. Sometimes I fail. When Obama first ran for President I was a big fan. One day I was in the lobby to get my mail and the guard and Manager told me to wait while they located the cleaning gal. I figured I must have done something wrong—my specialty. She arrived with a gift all wrapped up and addressed to me. I refused to open it and explained to her that I just don’t accept gifts and rarely give them (in her case, being underpaid, I do give her a generous gratuity at Christmas) but I certainly was not going to accept any present. She kept insisting that I accept her present. I jumped down her throat. “Do I look like I need any present? What could you possibly buy me that I need? If I need something I go out and buy it. You struggle financially and I am supposed to let you buy me a present? Now let’s get real here.” Others began to accumulate and all started getting on my case. “What’s the matter with you Reid, if she wants you to have her present, just take it.” The gal looked near tears. Everyone is looking like obnoxious Reid is making the cleaning gal cry. I felt forced to open the present. Inside was a large picture of Obama with an expensive frame around it. I liked it, but that is not something I would purchase myself with that expensive frame around it. “This is worth some money, why in the world would you give this to me?” “I know you like Obama.” The picture still hangs in my living room with many other of my ‘heroes’ in world history. Later, upon reflection, it was probably among a cache of stolen goods someone in her neighborhood had, and she asked for it so she could give it to me. She doesn’t work here any more but she sometimes stops by to “see how I am doing”. Nice gal. I wonder if she is one of those who Trump is hot on her tail?
Anyway, I have no use for birthdays and gift giving among the affluent, but my deathday merits some attention. It is one of these events we simply cannot ignore or avoid. It is, after all, our final goodbye. It is ironic that such a day most likely will find us not in the best of shape to hardly know which end is up. I’d prefer to be in excellent physical and mental shape, have a huge party with all the good people I have known in life and just say goodbye in a grand memorable fashion.
For whatever reason, I have chosen 85 as the age I would like to die, after having relatively good health right up to my deathday when I die in my sleep and just can’t remember any longer to get up and get a move on. I think we suffer less from the ordeal of death if we expect and accept the inevitability of our deathday. Even when we are on our deathbed, others don’t really send us any deathday cards. More to the point, no matter how famous or powerful or how many friends we have, everyone will die alone. It is well known medically that people on their deathbed become less and less interested in involving themselves with others or any aspect of life. If there are any who are overcome with grief and become apoplectic about our death it will be others, not ourselves on the days around our deathday. While others may wail and weep, the dying are busy with dying.
So one year into my ten year plan for continued existence, what is changing? Well, I no longer walk 5-7 miles everyday, but every other day and mostly 5 miles now. My feet and legs feel like lead if I walk long distances everyday. It seems we need be realistic and not pretend like we are still young again. Just today I had a tough time going out for my wandering. But once out I come back feeling in a better more pensive mood. Always. I feel like I have gone over the peak and headed downward into decline and the walks bring me back over to the other side of the peak. Even if true, this will work only so many times.
I have a hard time remembering names now. Many actually, and to be safe, I refer to others as “My friend”. There is no middle name. Ok, maybe ‘good’ is thrown in sometimes. Part of this is aging, and part of it is that I don’t think I make much of an effort to remember names. My effort or energy level is getting less and less. “To hell with it” is becoming a well worn phrase stolen from my dad. Excitement is seldom a goal sought. Now I prefer peace and quiet, no pressure, no fuss, no whining—oh just everybody be ‘cool’, friendly, and non demanding. These days my body requires endless patching. Patch, patch, patch. So far nothing has been unpatchable and I have escaped the major stuff like stroke, heart attack, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and so on. Maybe God just likes me a lot, but a little birdie whispered that is absurd. This little birdie is a good thing to have around, it keeps my feet on the ground a bit more. Most people associate being old with sitting around with nothing to do. Well, maybe so depending on what ‘something to do’ amounts to. My den is piled high with books and articles to read, topics to muse about, my wanderings take 3-4 hours, I love to cook, music and Netflix movies to listen to (late at night), eating out—-although I do that less since if I like something I tend to learn how to cook it myself, there is my FANAFI Fund, the Redwood Forest (missed this year), Sheebiejiebee the cat, Riva the Horse (now ended), an occasional lunch or dinner with someone, never more than 3-4, a football pool, limited idle chat with assorted others in the building, and of course the housework. All in all, there is one year down with no major calamities on my back. The fractured shoulder makes me a minor cripple, but I am scheduled to have my options examined at Mayo Clinic next week. Getting their attention took some manuevering. But what else is new? Some often referred to me as “that slippery one”.
My regular doctor has diagnosed me as being dead from the neck up. I use that joke a lot. At any rate my decline meter has not taken a nose dive YET. I will have to be a little more patient. I hope I don’t whine and fuss and whimper and get all angry and frustrated when the rug gets pulled out from under me, but time will tell.
But back to deathday. I would rather see one big birthday, one allowed big marriage day, one allowed 50th wedding anniversary, and one scheduled deathday. The birthday would be at the end of the formative years when there is something to celebrate about having been born. I would attend that kind of birthday. The marriage day and 50th wedding anniversary are self explanatory. See, if there were limited ‘big’ days I would attend. But the way it is now, once one starts, there is no ending. It could take up a major part of one’s life. Now for the deathday celebration. It would not take place on the day of death, most of those about to die are not really up to it at the time. So a person would schedule this day while they are still mentally and physically at a reasonable level. It would be like a celebration of one’s life with all the friends still living attending to celebrate the good times. Of course, you are going to say how would we contact all these dear people from the past. Well, there should be a national register for all deathday celebrations. So we could then look up the names of people who meant so much to us in the past and see if their death day has been scheduled, AND one would be able to list the names of those who were so dear at one point and when any of them schedule a deathday celebration we would be notified on our computer. Now that would be a meaningful gathering. Nice pipedream huh? Not really practical and kind of scary. I would fear the one person who put me on their notification list might not be able to attend. Smile.
I know a lot of people who rarely miss a local funeral of people they knew. What is the point? The dead person won’t be there. Only the shell is left, the nut is gone. The truth is, most of the people who attend a wake or funeral never bothered to visit the person in many years. This seems a tad irrational. It seems visiting others has been mostly replaced by social media devices. Not bad, I guess, but different. I know a lot of people, if I knew their end was nearing, that I would make every effort to celebrate their life in a formal way. I am not particularly interested in staring at their dead body. Memorial services some time after death are not bad because people who really knew the person well speak instead of some clergy type who give their usual generic spiel. Useless. But a deathday celebration would include testimonials, and also hear from the person on track to die. And the dying would get to hear the kind words from those part of their past. If we can’t feel good about the future then at least we ought to feel good about the past. It would give me a chance to pull a practical joke on all those present.
Someone once told me I could expect a large funeral: “Give the people what they want and they will come in droves”/“Most are here just to be sure he is really dead.” Of course none of us are important to the larger picture of evolution. That annoys me. So maybe all that is needed is to post a notice in the paper that on such and such a date, so and so really doesn’t matter any more. No details need be provided because it really doesn’t matter any more. Interesting how things get suddenly reversed: at death the future doesn’t matter, and the only things that ever mattered are in the past. When the race has ended, soon there will be no trace left of our existence, and no one around to even perpetuate any meaningful memory. How depressing. Without T.O. around to promote his achievements, what will happen to his accomplishment of ‘being someone’ instead of a ‘nobody’? Perhaps those are most contented who are happy enough to be a ‘nobody’. Expectations can be suicidal to success. Death is the great leveler. Leveling with you is a good way to end this.
