My wife and I were sitting at dinner recently, and I looked at her, grateful to be where we are after our meeting 54 years ago. Suddenly, the thought occurred to me that we are both well into the last quarter of our lives. I am 73 yrs old, and she is a year younger. Using AI to ask a question instead of doing the math myself, I am told that if we live to be 90, we have used 81% of our lives to date.
We are both well into the last quarter of the game, the clock is ticking down, and every play counts even more.
Even knowing this, it still comes as a surprise to me when I am referred to by family and friends, and by my primary care physician, as “Old and getting older”. Even my wife will remind me of this fact when I fall under the delusion that I am not.
I don’t have to consciously meditate on the fact. It stares me down every morning and evening in the mirror, when I look most my age.
In the United States, life expectancy continues to rise every generation. For most of human history, people only lived for about 30 years. In the last two centuries, global life expectancy has risen to 73 years. U.S. life expectancy is 76 yrs. If you are healthy at 73, insurance and Social Security say you will live past 90.
In modern Western culture, we have been running as fast as we can from death. Funerals have given way to “Celebrations of Life,” where the deceased has already been quietly cremated and tucked away out of sight. No one wants to look at death. No one wants to look into that mirror. Maybe If we look the other way, we will also live better, happier, and healthier.
But do we?
I regularly visit a group of senior citizens at their senior living complex, where they can “graduate” from independent living to assisted living, to memory care, or to constant nursing care.
Each person is struggling with physical and mental decline. They are not having fun, they are not generally happy, and most would just as soon go to sleep and not wake up.
I had a friend who has since died tell me, while he was in hospice, that he was not afraid of dying, but did not look forward to the process. I understand that feeling.
I think the real question is not “Why” this happens, or “How” will it happen, but “What do I do with myself while it is happening?”
The poet Mary Oliver famously wrote, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with this one wild and precious life?”
Ancient mystics and sages also have something to say about it;
- “Keep the moment of your death before your eyes” Rule of St. Benedict
- “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants.” PS 116:15
- “Teach us to number our Days” Ps 90:12
- “The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.” Epicurus
- As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. Leonardo da Vinci
I have spent too much time thinking about “MY” legacy. The certain truth is that I will be completely forgotten within two generations. I do not remember anything about my great-grandparents; what kind of persons they were, how they lived, or what they believed.
Being concerned with what I leave behind of myself keeps me from doing what I am to do. The time is now. I believe what I leave behind is not the explicit memory of me, but the intangible ripples that linger and spread way beyond me as I go about encountering others.
I also used to fret a lot about what I have to give this world. What are my talents and my skills? What do I bring to the table, and how big will that be?
But today, I think of the story in John’s Gospel;
“Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
Well, you may know that 5,000 men and women were fed, and 12 baskets of scraps were left over.
We have all been given a small basket with a few fish and loaves of bread. We bring to each moment whatever it is we have been given. Unexpected events become miracles when you just show up and try to give what you have and who you are.
I spent the first three quarters of my life trying to find my place in this life. It turns out the whole thing is so simple, but I had to shed a lot of wrong ideas along the way.
The simple idea is this: I am to be a giver, and not a taker. I am to show up to whoever is in front of me and offer myself. I am to do what I can with what I have. There is nothing else for me to know, to learn, or to do.
My wife and I attended a Fundraiser where the entertainment was an old-time string band. Not one for schmoozing at cocktail parties, I wandered over to the band, and I was mesmerized by the banjo player. I thought it would be cool to learn how to do that. So, during Covid, I bought a banjo and learned to play by watching YouTube. I imagined my wife and grandkids sitting in rapture listening to me play.
Instead, when I sit down and start playing, no one really notices—everyone keeps talking, the kids keep playing, it’s as if I am not there. Occasionally, one of the kids would say, “Nice, Dad,” as they walked right by.
But some did enjoy it: A friend of mine was in the last stages of Parkinson’s. He loved playing his guitar. I took my banjo over weekly with some friends, and we played. I placed his guitar in his hands, and he moved his hands up and down as if he was playing, smiling ear to ear. I have also taken my banjo to the nursing home, where I visit several residents.
Last year, my church asked if anyone could sit every other week for an afternoon with an 82-year-old man who had late-stage dementia so his wife could get out for a while and get her hair done, nails, or meet with her knitting group.
He is stooped over and walks with a cane or walker from the couch to the bathroom to the back porch. His conversation is in about a five-minute loop—the cumulus clouds are coming in from Montana- it’s going to get rough. His years as a machine shop supervisor, and the two or three work episodes that are there always in his mind.
I didn’t know what to do with these four hours every other week. I’m not a professional social worker. I brought some games to play, but he wasn’t interested. I knew my role was not to just sit there with him and watch ESPN.
So, one day I brought my banjo. We went out to the back porch where he loves to sit, and I started playing my song list. I was surprised when he started slapping his knees, and singing along to “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”. After a few more songs, Gene jumped up out of his chair, threw down his cane, and started buck dancing. Just then, his wife and daughter walked out onto the porch. My friend did not notice them; he just kept dancing and hollering Yee Haw!!
I could see tears in his wife’s eyes, and his daughter’s mouth dropped. When finished, his wife said “This is the first time in over twenty years I have seen him Dance. He used to Buck Dance and sing all the time at festivals and honky-tonks. I never thought I would see it again!”
Looking back, I know now that this moment was why I was inspired to play the banjo. Not to impress my grandkids, but to give it away
Frederich Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
So you may be old and getting older. Still, there is a game to finish. Where is the place God has called you to? What are your loaves and fishes? Who in your life needs them?
Wrinkles, a slower gate, slower reactions, faulty memory. It’s all coming for me. I’m in my final quarter. The time is now. My one job in life is to give what it is I have been given. This is what I plan to do with the remaining years of my one, wild, and precious life.
Kind Regards,
Bob
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