People die.
The spectacular success of modern medicine masks this displeasing fact. Even knowledgeable folks mistake mortality for malpractice. An aggrieved octogenarian moans, “If the doctors hadn’t botched it, my love would still be alive!”
I’m lucky to be alive. Born when my dad was, I’d be dead thrice by now. Diagnoses discovered diseases invisible to earlier eyes. New-fangled pharmaceuticals correct my body’s chemistry. When death comes, while unwelcome, it will be no surprise. Bless my docs for having gotten me so far.
The seemingly endless evitability of death confuses us. If permitted, we persist too long in our pursuits, preventing the promotion of younger talents. How many high offices are occupied by gaga moribunds! Anyone with eyes can see the Nameless One is not all there, as he blathers incoherently. Yet his partisans, propped by his power, denounce such claims as mischief. I’d loathe this ogre at any age, but what a shame if he eliminated mankind inadvertently! His predecessor, whom I admired, likewise continued too long. He and his handlers wrecked his long honorable record of service by pretending otherwise. They share the blame for our current calamity
To safeguard civilization, let’s make retirement a) mandatory and b) valorous, an achievement as grand as graduation. The inevitability of retirement will spare seniors the temptation of evading it by clinging to power past their time. I groan watching former schoolmates entering their epoch of freedom without a plan, unable to envision a change, hoping to be kept on in their former posts. No, friends, I feel like scolding them, begin anew, enter your new phase with zest, slam the door on yesterday and prepare for tomorrow. Plunge into your new adventure, no time off. You’ll have empty hours aplenty soon enough.
Dying is not optional, but living is. What a sad reward for decades of striving, to rot on a beach! A day may come when rotting is all one’s good for, but shouldn’t we postpone that tedium as long as we’ve strength? Inanition is no ambition – ease is a disease! Seeing still hearty contemporaries “taking it easy,” I feel like Jesus at Bethesda, exhorting the cripple to “Take up your bed and walk!”
I got lucky with retirement, I admit. It shoved me into the vocation I’d long dodged. Age 21, I yearned to be a writer but lacked the guts. My pride insisted on a paycheck and podium, neither of which a writing life assures. When my best pal quit his prestigious bank job to paint, I gawked. Where did he find the strength!
Hindsight recommends the route I ended up taking. Age 21 I wasn’t ready to write. I hadn’t lived enough. As my beloved teacher put it, I wrote OK but I didn’t know anything. I bristled, naturally. Hadn’t I earned all A’s? Books, it turns out, are easier to read than write.
Death is not defeat but a blessing. It makes life a thrill. When folks died young, they got busy sooner, frittering less time. Think of Keats, Schubert, Achilles! Our distended lives are a privilege only if we make them so – doing, not being done to. Existence is a chore if it’s not insistence. I have never felt more energized by dawn, eager to mix my coffee, feed the dog, and plop onto my work-bed to commence the impossible. I’ve no time to fidget or fuss with Death’s footsteps nearing.
Jesus promised his followers eternal life. That was a neat recruitment tool, but I can think of nothing worse. Living forever is a yawn, let me live now.
This is death’s gift.