How long do you want to live?
Granted, it’s unlikely to be your call – and if it is your call, you’ll have lived enough. But in your dreams and daydreams, how long?
A tallying people, Americans crave chronological extent. A centenarian is assumed to have done something fine, no matter how little they’ve done. Any death before retirement age is deemed “tragic,” “premature.” Oldsters are quizzed about the “secret” to long life.
Young I was scared to death of death. A hypochondriac, I was always dying, drying my eyes amidst a crowd of mourners, bidding myself fond farewell. More than once I planned my funeral, weighing the propriety of including my own words among the tributes and, if so, which. What a loss I judged myself, who might have moved mountains!
These days death doesn’t worry me. I love life, mostly abstain from self-ruinous behavior, shrug off suicidal fantasies as self-pity, but when the time comes I expect to go without a fuss, maybe spicing the moment with a quotable quip. After every medical exam I expect a death warrant and rejoice at its postponement. Not today, Mister Bones.
My equanimity is not attributable to satisfaction with my outcome. I share Shakespeare’s regret (per Richard II): “I wasted time and now doth time waste me.” I could kick myself, as that contorting saying goes, for the hours frittered and opportunities ignored. But what use crying over spilt years. Any bitterness might be allayed by the luck of my most recent decades, when I licked cancer, welcomed grandkids, stumbled into these missives, and best of all, hooked up with Jane. I also learned to use my time more conscionably – cancer is a compelling professor – devoting my all to my chance, cutting the crud out of my schedule, quitting the pursuit of tinsel from fear of gold. With selves as with kids, if they’ve done all they could, what more can we ask?
Existence has no value, only life, and life is what we make of it. In Thomas Hardy’s words, “Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.” My vision of hell is being stuck in an airport, feeling hours leak away. Almost as bad are waiting for a help desk to respond while bad music crackles, or blathering with a bore. Writing I’m most alive, when sense and senses must combine to combat confusion.
Contributing to my calm is the abandonment of any afterlife. Dust is our universal destination, sooner or later what difference. I’d love to have been Shakespeare, but even he can’t purchase immortality, merely an extension of reputation.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedImperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
Whether I’m extolled or ridiculed posthumously, I won’t feel it, so why worry? Most destructive to mortal peace is the jurisdiction of Saint Peter or his equivalent, weighing admittance to some paradisial afterparty, sure to be a yawn. What were humans thinking to erect such a monstrosity between now and non-existence? Of course we fall short, disappoint, fail – if not, we’ve dreamt too low! What use griming fruitful hours with futile regret? The only folks who get past Peter scot-free are those who lack any conscience to dismay – the Nameless One, say, who did everything perfectly.
I hope to live as long as allowed what I can call life. My dread is imbecility, incapacity, exhausting the resources and patience of potentially productive survivors. I wouldn’t mind exiting existence via Switzerland, but it seems unnecessarily expensive. Why not just kiss one another goodnight?