Golden Age? Yeah, right!

Who are you kidding? I'm not thrilled with getting older. I still cannot grasp that I am, and neither can you. Are we supposed to be happy? About what? Hooray, my bladder is "compromised"? Are we supposed to cheer? Leapin' Lizards, my stool looks normal? Good Googamooga, when people with expressions of pity gently but firmly take my arm and ask, "May I help you, sir?" Terror strikes. "Don't touch me! I have leprosy!" Do I really look like I need help? Really?

The rocking chair was invented so old folks could set on the porch rocking back and forth dawn 'til dusk to keep the blood moving. Well, I'm here to say, I'm no more ready for that rocking chair than I am for the electric chair.

The face that looks back at me now from the bathroom mirror is not the same face shaving off his first moustache with Ivory soap and a single-edged razor blade that's not even made anymore. Moustache? Might as well call a trike a Harley. A dust mote barely visible through an electron microscope. I was sixteen then. I'm not sixteen now. Big diff!

I read about all the pluses of getting older but I have yet to find one that fits. Senior's breakfast at Denny's? Free bus rides to the petting zoo? Ten percent off shower stools at Target? Half price Tuesdays on selected items at Dollar General? Golden Age? Yeah, right.Try pig iron. What are the advantages of getting older? Tell me. I'm listening. It's like the Chinese torture of a thousand cuts, one by one until it gets to your heart. Your family stands on the shore watching helplessly as you fight the riptide, remorseless and relentless, taking you away from them, taking us away from each other. That riptide is following its natural course, and so are you. I cannot conceive of myself as nothing. How to bear it? I don't believe in Pearly Gates. I don't believe in fire and brimstone. All that stuff happens while you're still alive.

So, quick! Where's the solace already? There isn't any if you think about it, so don't think about it. There will be sadness. It will never go away, but now is not the time. So, if now is not the time, what's the time for?

I want to die well.

We know how our loved ones are going to feel because we've been there, by this time, more than once. It's not my wish to make it harder for them while I'm still here, so I need to tweak my whereabouts, suss out the trouble spots. Weed out the niggling glitches and ancient, nagging sorrows. Lingering resentments. Social detritus. Bonehead  mistakes. Ditch the chum. Go for the prime rib. Much tastier, and easier on the gut.

No more time to sweat the small stuff. Leave 'em laughing. "Take my wife, please!" Saunter instead of hike. Chew instead of bolt. Sip instead of slurp. Spend more time spending more time. Stand outside under the night sky staring at the stars, seeking patterns. It's a different world, but it's still yours. I have no answers. I've stopped looking for them.The circumstances of my life have delivered me to this place. Now, where to go from here?

I want to die well.

Stephen Foreman, I say to myself, you are one lucky guy. You get bumps and bruises, some broken toes and a broken nose but nothing organic, mental stuff but nothing psychotic. You've escaped the worst of it. It's been rough at times. So what? There's worse. You're in a good place. Why's that? Because I say so.

Yep. Because I say so, not you.

Sixty years ago I wrote:

"This I know and only this, that I am given a life, a gift that only once I will receive, and I choose to wring it dry of all it's pleasures so that when I am wombed in death's certain eternity I shall not reflect in anguish that I have had but birth and death and nothing more."

Corny, I know. Words from my first play, many lifetimes ago, originally written and performed at Morgan. I was so young when I wrote those words. They just came out. I'm not even certain I knew back then just how determined I was, how, consciously or not, these words would shape the rest of my life. I knew the answer without knowing I knew it. My answer. The one best for me.

Way back up in our first meadow I planted a grove of trees. Our family grove. Each tree planted for a family member. One pear tree for Jamie and me. We gave birth to this life. The pears are small and hard but slice up well then add brie. An apple tree planted for Sevi Donnelly Foreman on his first birthday. It's flourishing now, three decades later, flush and brimming with sweet, crisp, hefty macouns. Take one. An exotic crab apple tree radiant with burgundy colored leaves and bright red berries the size of pearls. This one, Madden's, Madden Rose Foreman, our daughter with the auburn mane. The newest tree is an oak, planted for my grandson's first birthday, a white oak, already sturdy. Dorian Alexander. There are other trees, too - weeping peaseblossom, birch, another apple, a struggling cherry, but the family grove is at the center of it. I'm planning on planting two or three peach trees next Spring to shorten the distance between my son's tree and my daughter's. A wooden bench would be welcome, nothing exotic, no teak or tulipwood. Ash is on the way out. Local maple will do fine. The blueberries didn't make it through the winter, but that's no big loss since wild blueberries are all over the place. When I sit in the middle of that grove, everything makes sense. I won't be here, but it will.There are no words.