Preparing to Go
Ready for Longevity — Or a Quick Exit
A Year To Live
When I was 58, I read a book by Stephen Levine that he wrote when he was 58, “A Year To Live: How to Live This Year as if it Were Your Last”. I picked a day and lived the next year, from that day, as if it were my last. It happened to be two weeks before my mom died. She was 88. It really helped me through that first year of grieving her loss. It helped me to live in the moment, and to look at my life and tie up any loose ends. It was an intense year. Her passing hit me harder than I expected it to, but that exercise kept it all real.
My dad lived to the age of 77, the same age Levine was when he died. I wondered, when I heard of the author’s passing, if he’d lived his final year the way he talked about doing it in his book. I wondered if he, like me, felt like he’d already done all of that, and was able to just relax and enjoy each moment of that year, as best he could.
Living that year like that, I really felt like I took care of a lot of issues that had lingered in my life up until that year. A few more have come up in subsequent years, but I took care of them as they came up. I’ve learned not to wait, to put these things off. If not now, when?
If I found out tomorrow that I had some rare condition that would only leave me with a year to live, I believe I would be okay with that news. On the other hand, my current plan is to live to triple digits, and keep on rocking this life until I’m 100. I still have so much to do.
Enjoy Each Moment
It’s an interesting place to be in — while I’d love longevity, I’d be fine if it all came to a crashing halt tomorrow. Going through that exercise for that year really helped me to get to this place. It’s allowed me to just relax and enjoy each moment, not waiting for some future goal to arrive. There’s not a lot of things I feel like I didn’t get to do — I’m already on bonus time, here. I’ve done way more than I ever expected to do. Yet, there’s so much more I want to do. Places I want to see. People I want to meet.
Blowing Smoke Up My Ass
I guess what’s got me feeling so philosophical today is, I’m going in for a virtual colonoscopy tomorrow. I’m on the liquid diet today, cleaning out my system. What’s the difference between a virtual and an actual colonoscopy? With the virtual one, they’ll basically just blow smoke up my ass and take pictures. It’s much less intrusive. I did one 10 years ago, at age 54, after putting it off for 4 years. I was supposed to get it done when I turned 50. When my wife discovered the virtual one, I finally did it. I guess you might say, I was used to having smoke blown up my ass, so what was there to lose?
What’s better this time is, I don’t have to fast for two days beforehand. You have to be more cleaned out for the virtual procedure than the actual one, so they used to put you on a liquid diet for two days instead of one. Between then and now, they’ve figured out ways to do the job in one day instead of two. More nasty things to drink, and some pills you take, that get the job done faster. It’s uncomfortable, but I don’t mind it a bit. Last time, I was so overwhelmingly hungry, food was all I could think of for that last half a day or so.
This time, I’m doing fine, with only about 3 more waking hours to go before I turn in for the night, then get up and go get some smoke blown up my ass. Then, I’ll head for the nearest breakfast joint and chow down. Hopefully, the results will look good for 36 more healthy years, to reach that century mark. That would be cool!
But, if they find something that’s going to take me out before then — hey, it’s been a good life. Rock on without me, people.
