Aging Capriciously

Going to see our financial adviser at Edmund Jones today to setup some type of account to cover burial costs.  This was Karen’s idea and I reluctantly agreed.  You might think it was my idea, but it was not.  Next Thursday we are finally going to have a will made up.  This was also something that Karen wanted, and I have dragged my feet on for years.  Funny, how many people have tried to convince me that I will live longer than 3645 days.  Try telling people that you know how long you will live and see what they say.  Are we dealing here with optimism or denial?  I wonder what they will all say when I pass?  What do you think they will say about you when you pass?  Think of five things you are sure they will say.  I dare you.  It is not easy.

Woke up this morning to snow and not sunshine.  Will go out for a run as soon as my motivation level rises.  I am doing a two on, one off, running schedule.  Run two days, take a break.  Today is my second day, tomorrow I take a break.  Over the years, I have run a variety of schedules:  two-one, three-one, one on, one off.  It does not really seem to matter much what schedule I run on; I generally end up running about 60 percent of the days in a given month.  I try to average about thirty minutes per run.  Some months I average 40 minutes or more and other months, I average about 25 or so.  I call it a maintenance schedule rather than a goal driven schedule.  I simply want to maintain my present level of fitness as long as possible.  I am not going to win any Olympic gold medals, so why train as though I am a peak athlete.  I did take two first places in 5k’s last year.  Only because I was the only one in the 70-year-old age group in one.  The other one was more legitimate since I did have some competition.

Woke up this morning, thinking about change.  Sometimes we accept the possibility of change and other times we reject it.   Seems to me that sometimes we accept the possibility when it is only wishful thinking.  Such as some thinking that Donald Trump was going to be a good president and that he was only kidding about things he would do when he was running.  In this case, I use the metaphor that the leopard does not change its spots.  In other cases, we believe that change is possible, and it seems to me that in some of these cases it is hopeful thinking.  We hope that someone can see the error of their ways or that they will wake up and realize that their life is going in the wrong direction.  Such thinking may be realistic as people can and do change.  Is there a difference between wishful thinking and hopeful thinking?  I think there is.

I think something must happen for people to change.  Something precipitates change in people.  Maybe I am wrong, but without some causal factors, I do not think people are going to change.  My sister has been hoping for many years that someday her husband would retire, and they could take more vacations or travel more together. I just talked to her yesterday and she now seems on the verge of accepting that this wonderful dream is not going to happen.  I have thought for years that she was denying reality, but she kept right on being hopeful.   He has recently taken another full-time job at the age of 68 and seems to have no desire to travel or pack his suitcase to see the world.  I think my sister is going to have to wake up and smell the roses all by herself or find some friends to travel with.  That is reality and all the hoping in the world is not going to change it.

So, when to hold them and when to fold them is still the big question for many of us in life or as they say in AA:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

My childhood school years were from 1952 to 1964.  I left high school in May of 1964 at age 17 and joined the United States Air force in October of 1964 at age 18.  Back when I was in school, we did not have school shootings, we did not talk back to our teachers, bullying was not a school program and parents did not walk their kids to school or stand at the bus stop until it arrived.

If I had come home from school and told my father that a teacher had been mean to me or even hit me, my father would have asked what I did to deserve it.  Today, if a kid comes home and tells their parents “My teacher was unfair to me,” the parent is likely to call the school principal and request a sit-down meeting with the teacher and the principal.  The parent might even retain a lawyer to get the school to agree to be fairer to her/his little Johnnie or Jane.

Back when I was in school, after school we would go to the park or playground or some nearby field and depending on the season, play football or baseball.  We did not have our mom or dad driving us all over the state to games, tournaments and competitions with teams from other states.  We did not have parents worried that we would not have a high enough batting average to qualify for a state scholarship.  We did not have coaches telling us that we had to choose between attending practice or going to Mother’s day dinner with our mom and grandmother.

A few weeks ago, I was substitute teaching for four days in a Social Studies class.  The teacher had gone to a conference.  I was left written instructions by the regular teacher for each class but for the third period class I could come up with my own assignment.  The students in the third period were dealing with current political issues.  I winged it the first day, but I went home that night and developed an assignment that put two students together on a team to run for mayor and vice mayor of Casa Grande.   Each team of two had to develop a campaign poster and address what they would do for the city in terms of education and economics.  In addition, they had to address current political hot issues such as gay marriage, transgender bathrooms, building a border wall and a few others.  They got to choose from a slate of ten “hot” issues and they had to speak to how they would deal with these issues if they were elected.

On day three of my substitute class, a guy walked into my third period class with black jeans and a black t-shirt marked security.  He started going through my desk (borrowed of course from the regular teacher).  I asked him what he was looking for.  He said he wanted to see my lesson plans.  I showed him the plans and he asked who said I could teach this unit?  I told him the regular teacher had given me permission to develop my own lesson plan.  He then said “You can’t do that.  You are not the regular teacher.”  I politely asked him what he objected to and he said “Some of these topics are inappropriate.  A parent had called up to complain and we have a big problem on our hands.”  I said I would be happy to remove any subjects or topics that he disliked but I noted that most of them were from a “contemporary” issues folder that was on the regular teacher’s desk.  He said that did not matter since I was not the regular teacher. He struck out six of the ten issues and told me to replace them with some less controversial issues.

A few hours later, the head of the Social Studies department came in while I was having lunch and wanted to know what the heck was going on.  The regular teacher (at conference) was getting phone calls from parents and was confused and upset.  I explained my lesson plan again and discussed the changes made after my meeting with Security.  Somewhat satisfied the department head left, but not before telling me that my plans to have students vote for the winning teams could not take place as I had described to the students.  I had told the class that I was going to give the first-place team ten dollars and the second-place team five dollars.  The department head said this could disqualify any potential athletes from a scholarship.  I should find another award.  I suggested a box of chocolates and was told that this could be dangerous since some students were allergic to peanuts.  He left the issue with me.  After school, I discussed it with the principal’s administrative assistant, and we agreed to some gift certificates to McDonalds.  I purchased a ten dollar and five-dollar certificate on my way home from the school.  Later after my wife Karen heard the story, she remarked that these certificates could still be thought of as an in-kind contribution.  I was not moved by her concern.  😊

The students were perplexed at the changes which I described as due to political necessity, but they enjoyed the McDonald’s gift certificates.  The following week I visited the regular classroom teacher to find out what had happened.  She was somewhat confused.  She replied that no one had called her and that she had not received any calls from parents.  She said she had not heard a word from anyone until she arrived back at the school.  She did not understand what all the fuss was about, but she had received good reports from the students in regard to my classroom management and would be happy to have me sub for her again.

I don’t harp on or much believe in the “good old days.”  The good old days in the USA were not so good for Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Women, Disabled, Immigrants, Gays and others.  Perhaps if you were White, there was such a thing as the good old days.  However, I also do not believe that progress is always a straight line forward.  Some of the things I experienced as a child (sadly to me) seem to be lost to the current generation of children.  I think these things had value.  I am not sure why these things were lost or how we can ever find them again.  For me, there is a tragedy in the loss.  Maybe this generation will not miss what they never had or maybe values have changed so that what I might have thought was wonderful would be scorned today.  I guess I will never know the answer to this question:  Are kids better off today then they were yesterday?

“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world.” 
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

I woke up this morning thinking about the difference between youth and old age.  It seems to me that youth is a time of getting.  A time of gaining things.  We get a career.  We get friends.  We get a spouse.  We get children.  We get a family.  We get money.  We get health.  We get trophies and awards.  We get toys.  We get a home.  Old age is just the opposite.  It is a time of losing.  It is a time of giving.

In old age, we lose our favorite restaurants and eating places.  We lose our favorite beaches as they put another new development up.  We lose our toys as we can no longer balance our bicycles, motorcycles, skis, or whatever.  We don’t dare do the jumps or twists or turns that we were so fond of when we were young.

We lose our careers.  We give up work that for many years defined and provided meaning to our lives. We lose our friends.  We lose our family.  We lose our moms, and pops, and sisters and brothers.  Sometimes, we even lose our children.

We lose our health.  We lose our teeth, our eyesight, our hair, our hearing.  We lose our stamina, our flexibility, our dexterity, our balance, our knees, our hips.  We lose our homes as we can no longer walk up the stairs or clean the kitchen.  We lose our money as it goes to the doctors, the assisted living center, the nursing home, the hospital and then the funeral home.

Everything that we were given when we were young will eventually be taken as we get older.  Perhaps the hardest part of getting old is the letting go of things that we thought had value.  Old age will teach us lessons about value.  It will clarify for many of us what really has value versus what we thought had value.  For some, this realization may come too late.  If youth can be full of hope, old age can be full of regrets.

Old age can sap our spirit.  They say growing old is not for the faint of heart.  I had a cousin that killed himself by hanging.  Another cousin that shot himself.  One of my best friends killed himself three years ago on a sunny Indian summer Sunday morning.  Even the great Thomas Jefferson mused that he had lived longer than he should have and mourned the passing of so many friends:

“one of the misfortunes of living too long is the loss of all one’s early friends and affections. when I review the ground over which I have passed since my youth, I see it strewed like a field of battle with the bodies of deceased friends. I stand like a solitary tree in a field, it’s trunk indeed erect, but its limbs fallen off, and its neighboring plants eradicated from around it.”  — From a letter of Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Brown.

Some of my friends have laughed at the idea that I have only 3647 days to live.  They point out my good health and remark that I am being too skeptical.  However, I often see obituaries that are full of people of seemingly good health who die in their forties, fifties and sixties of natural causes or cause unknown.  Why should I live past the lifetime designated by those experts who compile actuarial tables?  If the odds makers place 40 to 1 on a horse winning, I would be a fool to take less odds unless I knew something that they did not.  I certainly do not know the manner of my death or the time of my death; both of which provide an interesting question for a parlor game.  How many of us would really like to know the exact time and manner of our death?

Tomorrow and tomorrow will bring us each one day closer to death or will it be immortality?

“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.  Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.” — Ecclesiastes

I am not a very religious person.  Some would say the same but say that they are spiritual.  Frankly, I don’t think I qualify for that epithet either.  Particularly since I don’t know what being spiritual means.  I don’t believe in ghosts, angels, gods, demons, fairies, gremlins, goblins, devils or any kind of enlightened or unenlightened presence in the universe.  I am not sure I even believe in the universe.  I see stars and a sun out there but perhaps it is a conspiracy by right-wing nut cases to make us think there is a universe out there.  Maybe they are projections from some giant movie camera maintained to keep us working and striving and fighting so that we can get to that great nirvana in the sky called Heaven.   I think many may go to the other place which we might call an anti-nirvana or Hell.

Anyway, enough of the two-bit philosophy.  I was going to comment on going to church with my spouse yesterday.  Despite all my negativity, pessimism, cynicism and disbelief she still believes in Jesus, God and to a lesser degree Lutheranism.  I refrain from bringing up some dirt on Luther less in the interest of marital harmony and more in respect for Karen’s beliefs.  She does not tell me that I am full of shit and that my beliefs are idiotic, and I do the same for her beliefs.  Yesterday was one of those days when I accompanied her to church.  Perhaps every few months, I will go to church with her.  Sermons can be very uplifting, and I think one can always learn from hearing someone talk about morality and ethics and whatever else a particular church pastor might have to say.

Karen goes to Pilgrim Lutheran Church and was actually baptized there.  When we moved to Frederic in 2010 (A city founded by Karen’s ancestors among several other families), Karen was excited about being able to attend this church.  We found an older congregation which was very welcoming.  At the time, there was a woman pastor.  She left a few years later and was replaced by a Pastor who supported Bernie Sanders.  He was there several years and left for greener pastures.  They are again being ministered by an older retired pastor who will be a stand-in until they get a new “energized” younger pastor.  Sadly, knowing how long it takes for a church to do a “calling” and knowing the average age of this church population, I might be the only one left to greet the new pastor. 😊

That is my main point.  Statistics all over the US show that church participation and membership in traditional religions is declining.  Young people are either going to hip mega-churches or not going to church at all.  Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Catholics, and Episcopalians are all seeing declines in their memberships.  The number of vacant churches in the USA is staggering.

But statistics are one thing.  It is another thing when you grew up going to church and suddenly you notice that at 72 you might be the youngest member of the congregation.  It does not take a genius to realize that in twenty or so years, the church will be empty (baring some divine intervention or miracle) which to me seems highly unlikely.

Even to my heathen soul, I feel a sadness at the evident change happening.  Just like the decline in family farms, a way of life is becoming obsolete.  I don’t know what will replace the community that is often so evident in these churches.  I have been warmly greeted in Baptist churches, African Episcopal Methodist churches, Baha’i temples and many other places of worship.  While I may not belong to a particular denomination or go to any one church regularly, I still shed a tear in watching a way of life that I grew up with pass into memory.

“I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.” —  Khalil Gibran

Over the past sixty or so years, friends and friendships have been a puzzle for me.  I have often wondered what happened to many of my once close and sometimes best friends.  There was: Johnny the Communist, Tommie the Evangelical, Steve the Orthodox Jew, Dick the Inscrutable, Greg the Contrarian, Linda the “I haven’t a thing to say to you.”  There was my ex-wife who said, “We don’t have anything in common anymore.”

There were many who I fell out with over McCarthy versus Kennedy and Bernie Sanders versus Hillary.  These I can understand.  It is the ones like Linda (whom I have not a clue what I said or did to her that caused her to decide to stop talking to me) that keep me awake at night.  My ex-wife is also a puzzle since for about 15 or more years after we were divorced we remained friends.  She even came to my second marriage ceremony with Karen along with her brother and sister.  Then inexplicably we have “nothing in common anymore” and I have not heard from her since.

I won’t lie and say it does not matter.  It matters a great deal to me, although I am not sure if it is because I cannot figure out why these friendships ended or because I still care about each of these former and once friends.  I am reminded of the refrain from the famous New Year’s song Auld Lang Syne by Robert Burns, “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”  I often wish I could simply forget them and not bring them to mind.  However, that is easier said than done.  These lost friends weigh on my thoughts and conscience too frequently disrupting my sought after tranquility.

The loss of a friend is a very profound chapter in one’s life.  It is not like “losing” something.  You cannot just go to the “lost and found” and retrieve it.  Often, I suspect “lost” friendships can never be retrieved.  Furthermore, you might grieve over something you lost but you will soon get over it.  With lost friendships, you never really get over the grief.  Lost friendships are accompanied by pain, hurt, disappointment, sadness, worry and especially guilt and self-recriminations.  “Was it something I said or did?”  “How was I responsible?”

Even lost loves do not compare to a lost friendship.  With a lost love, it is probably clear who or what was the agent responsible for the breakup.  It is also usually clear, who is leaving whom, since one person typically initiates the breakup.  Breakups of friendships are not as cut and dried.  They may happen over many weeks, months or years as you drift further and further apart.  And as with my ex-friend Linda, I have not a clue as to what I said or did that led to our recent estrangement.  Even my ex-wife told me why she did not want to see me anymore, albeit a very strange explanation for a sixteen-year marriage and a fifteen-year friendship.

Well, time to get on with the day.  I am going to accompany Karen to her Lutheran ancestors’ church today.  A church where Karen was also baptized.  After church we are going to a Swedish Brunch in West Sweden (Where else?) at Grace Lutheran church (A few miles from Karen’s church).  For a “free will donation” they will have the following goodies:

• Swedish pancakes
• Swedish meatballs
• Egg bake
• Potato sausage
• Fruit cup
• Swedish breads

I don’t think that Italians have anything to compare to egg bake and Swedish pancakes, but Swedish meatballs cannot compare to my Grandmother’s Italian meatballs and potato sausage tastes like someone left the good Italian sausage out of the casing.  Oh, I should not forget Lefse.  Karen’s favorite bread in the whole world, which on first taste I once compared to buttered newspaper.  Lefse and even lutefisk have since grown on me and I look forward to a lutefisk dinner now and then.  Mostly then.

That’s all for now folks:

“If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.”
– Winnie the Pooh

The title of this blog reflects the number of days that actuarial tables give me to live.  I am now 72 years of age, and when I check the charts for someone with my physical condition and prior health history, they say I can reasonable expect to live another ten years or so.  Since there are 365 days in most years, I figure that gives me 3650 days to spend doing whatever I want.  I love to read and write.  I have over 600 blogs on this site dealing with a wide variety of topics.  My blogs deal with many different themes.  I have written some fictional stories, some inspirational stories and a fair amount of what I would call social and political commentary or satire.

As we all age, we hope to leave some type of legacy for the world to remember us by.  With some people, it is their children and grandchildren.  Other people leave a treasure of money or a vast exotic collection that will inspire future generations.  Many people paint, sing, compose, write or perform.  Very few people will deny that there is some part of them that wants to be remembered for something.  A life without meaning is not a life.

An artist, writer, singer, actor or composer may have completed hundreds of books, songs or performances, but they will be lucky if they are remembered for even one.  I think of people like Theodore Sturgeon, Mary Faulkner, Victor Hugo, Jimmy Driftwood, Prince, Leonardo da Vinci, Spencer Tracy and many other great artists.  Most of us would be hard pressed to remember more than one item in the vast repertoire of these greats.  How many patents can you name that Thomas Edison had?  Probably just the light bulb!  Yet Edison is credited with 1093 patents.  Anyone remembered for even one work of creativity is beyond the norm.

Nevertheless, most of us strive to create a legacy of some sort.  It is a way to feel that our lives had some meaning and that we added some value to the world.  We don’t give up despite the odds being against us.  The vast majority of humanity will die unheralded and perhaps not even have a grave marker to note their passing.  Unfortunately, some will decide that evil is a way to be remembered and sadly they are often right.  Shakespeare said that “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

I suffered the last few months from something that I have named “writers depression.”  I have only composed about three or four blogs in the past six months.  I do not call it writers block since I never felt blocked.  Each day I woke with several good ideas that I thought would make a fun or interesting blog.  But each time I started to sit down at my computer, I thought “what’s the point.”  Few people read my blogs.  Few make comments and after ten years of writing blogs, many of what I thought were my best endeavors were the least read of the bunch.

So today, I am starting a new effort.  I am writing my thoughts for each of the 3650 days left in my life.  Maybe these musings will be like the “Dead Sea Scrolls” and found by someone two thousand years from now.  Frankly as Rhett Butler said, “I don’t really give a dam.”  I love to write, and I am going scribble my reflections on a daily or weekly basis.  I feel no responsibility to write each day or even each week.  I simply want to create a narrative to see how I view my life as each day brings me closer to the end.  I have a lot to say, but so do we all.  By the way, this is not a memoir.  It is simply 3650 days in the life of.