Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
My Plan: Living to 100
My plan is to live to 100, maybe longer.
I say that realizing that I may not have the appropriate level of dread of being very old. It hasn’t been so bad so far, especially since I got over the crumpling of my face which actually started decades ago. Sun and smoking will do that to you.
Not having significant health problems, beyond pretty substantial hearing loss, has sheltered me from the rough edges of aging. I get that. I feel lucky to just be deaf and not be other things – to not be, as my old professor once said, one of the ‘halt and the lame.’ I move okay. So far.
Still, and I know I speak for many here, it takes years to wrap one’s head around being old. But from those years of struggle and denial and grief, yes, grief, because people can feel plenty sad about getting old, there emerges a weird peacefulness. It’s like peddling a bike, nice and easy, with the wind in your hair, no cars coming, no potholes, just tall oaks on either side of the path, and maybe kids playing ball in the distance. You could pedal harder, but you don’t need to. However fast you’re going is fast enough.
It’s delicious.
The man who sold me my sweet new bike died a few weeks ago. He was 53. He didn’t think he would live to be 100 but he thought he’d see 54. I think about him a lot. I think that he didn’t get to get past his fear of aging to the promised land of being old and carefree, or at least having that precious, probably fleeting, moment of being both. I know the carefree part could evaporate any minute.
So, yes, living to 100 is my plan. My intention, as they say. We’ll see, though, won’t we?
5 Comments on “My Plan: Living to 100”
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Long may you continue to pedal on bright, sunny days!
I love the picture of you!
I don’t know that I feel dread about getting older. I think I feel more dread about the status of the world in general. Living another 35 years might mean having to watch my grand kids and their kids trying to deal with what my generation messed up. I’m not sure I want to experience that as I already feel bad enough.
I’ve had spine surgery, heart surgery, stomach surgery, lost both breasts to cancer and here I am heading into 77 and actually feeling better than I have in years. If all the lethal stuff doesn’t kill you, you live. I can’t ride a bike — balance not good and a fall off a bike would put me in a wheelchair. So I walk. Garry, aside from being deaf and having one disc repaired more than 20 years ago, is in great shape for a guy closing on 82. He was never much of a biker even in his prime, but he exercises daily (even when explicitly warned NOT to) and he is very strong. If we win the lottery, he wants his hair back. Oh vanity.
We both come from long-lived families which is the biggest difference in life expectancy. If one or both parents lived a long life, the odds favor you doing the same if you take reasonable care of yourself. I’ve been a mess for a long time and yet, here I am. My father lived into his 90s, though my mother died early from cancer as did my brother who was barely 60 when cancer took him, but all my mother’s sisters lived into their late 80s and one beat 100 by a couple of years.
I wish I’d asked more about family medical history when I could, but who was thinking about that stuff when we were young? Who even knew it would matter?
You nailed it, my friend!