Month: December 2020

Well, I’m about to have one of those landmark birthdays. In a few days I will turn 70 years old and, quite honestly, I’m not handling it well. It’s got me a bit depressed.

I have no justification for being down. I feel great. By the grace of God I have no physical limitations. Just finished my annual physical exam whereupon my doctor pronounced me fit as a fiddle. I have an incredible wife, loving family, wonderful friends. I lack for nothing.

Yet, there’s something about that number. Why is it that 70 sounds so much older than 69? I was okay with 30, 40, 50, and even 60. But 70? Ugh.

I made the mistake of taking out my phone and asking Siri what the average life expectancy of a male in the United States is. She came back with an answer of 76.3 years. Gulp. That rocked my world.

So there you have it. In your 70’s you have to start seriously contemplating the big finale, the end of the road, the home stretch. I’ve reached the stage where, whenever I learn of the passing of an acquaintance or a celebrity, the first words out of my mouth are “Gee, how old was he?” All too often the reply comes back “Oh, he was seventy- ______”.

I have made absolutely no arrangements or plan for my final resting place. I’ve never wanted to think about it. Do I want to be buried or cremated? Who wants to ponder that? How do you even make that decision? On one hand, it would be kind of nice to have a grave with a nice headstone, a place where my kids and grandkids could occasionally visit, a cute epitaph like “I told you I was sick”.

But families travel their own path and one day mine may move on and leave me to the worms and the erosion of the wind.

Cremation seems cheaper and less hassle for all involved. Maybe my ashes could be split and lie in separate urns on the mantels of my son and daughter. Until the cat knocks it down and spills me all over the living room carpet, at which point I wind up getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner and deposited into the trash.

Maybe Michael Jackson had the right idea. I could be frozen in a hyperbolic chamber and reawakened when they find a cure for what killed me.

Nah, that won’t work. I get the chills when someone turns on a ceiling fan.

(Deep sigh) All this thinking about one’s demise can make you feel forlorn. Dang 70’s. It’s your fault.

Wait a minute….I just found another article on life expectancy. It says because of medical advances, the chances of a man reaching 80 are now about 62 percent. And the chances of reaching 90 have doubled from 50 years ago. Says here one of every seven Americans is over the age of 80!

Wow. That’s more like it. Looks like there’s a whole new chapter yet to be written. I feel much better. Guess I’ll put away that phone number for the cemetery office for awhile.

Happy Birthday to me! Anybody want to go jogging?

Before there was e-mail, before text messaging, before Face Time or Facebook or Face Masks or whatever, if you wanted to catch up with family and friends at this time of year, you would do so via Christmas cards. You’d go to that hard-to- reach drawer or shelf in your closet where you put things you knew you would only use once a year, and pull down that red box containing cards and envelopes……and……The List.

Yes. The List. It might be an address book. Might be a legal pad. Maybe just a ripped out sheet from a notebook. No matter how hard you tried to keep it organized, it was a mess of crossed out names and addresses, with updated names and addresses scribbled into the margins. It might well have coffee stains and sticky spots from where food and drink was spilled on it during long hours of writing and updating.

It was a pain keeping it current, and, of course, making those critical decisions about who stays on it and who goes. Did they send me a card last year? Exactly how many years should I send them a card without getting one in return before I take them off? What if I take them off, and they send me a late card after Christmas? Do I send one back? Wouldn’t that tip them off that I took them off my list?

Regardless, it was worth the stress, because sending them out usually meant you got several back in return. Each one would have a little hand-written summary of how things were with them and their family, maybe even a photo or two. It was your life line for staying connected. I looked forward to the mail arriving every day in December, anxiously anticipating another stack of news flashes from loved ones I seldom got to see.

Over time, much has changed. It seems fewer folks every year are motivated to put in the time to work through their list and write out the cards. So much easier, I guess, to bang out a group e-mail. I get it. Life is busy. Time is short. Still, I can’t help feeling something has been lost.

Those few minutes it took to write something personal to us in the card meant that, if only for a moment, that person thought about us and thought enough of us to want to share their own highlights, if only briefly.

Sharon and I still get several cards, and I’m still excited to open them and see who they’re from. Very few have any kind of personal message hand written in them. This makes me sad because I really want to know more about what’s going on with them. But I’m thankful nonetheless to still be on their list, and I console myself by keeping in mind that maybe they did have to think about us for a moment as they addressed the card.

At this point, I must engage in full disclosure. I have easy talking. Sharon takes on the task of writing out and sending our cards. Sometimes we consult together about…..The List…..but she does all the work. I just reap the benefits of reading the cards that come in. So I don’t mean for this blog to come off as being critical. As I said, I get it. I appreciate the time it takes to commit to the task.

I just hope it’s a tradition that does not fade away, as so many do because technology allows it.