in my time of dying
coming to terms with the fact that forever isn't real
Every April four the last four years I have received from work a longevity bonus - basically some extra cash for being here so long. They are referred to by some workers as “dinosaur checks,” a nod to the fact that those of us receiving the checks are old and ancient and might as well be extinct. I refuse to use the term. I find it insulting.
But the truth is, I am, to many people, old and ancient. I’ll be 60 in four months. That’s an unfathomable number to someone who is just in their early twenties, to someone who has their entire life stretched out before them like an unending road. I don’t mind admitting my age anymore, I’ve gotten past the whole stigma of being old and in the way. I know what I am. I’m outdated and archaic. People over 55 fall out of favor with the younger crowd in a way that makes you feel sometimes like you have no right to be alive, that to exist is to defy the laws of nature. To which I say, get over yourselves, you are aging just as fast as the rest of us and some day it will be your turn to have people want to Logan’s Run you into oblivion.
Maybe I have twenty good years left. If my parents - in their early 80s - are any indication, I may have a bit more. They are healthy and well and active. No matter how many years I have left, they will not be enough. I still have shit I want to do. I still have to retire and enjoy those days of not waking up to an alarm. There’s traveling to do and people I’ve yet to meet and maybe, just maybe, I’ll find love again.
While I put on a good face about aging, the real truth is that I sometimes wake up at 3am and think “holy shit, I’m slowly dying.” I’ve hit an age where my body is revolting against me. Getting out of bed hurts. Walking hurts. My back hurts, my knees hurt, if I dare go to a concert or a hockey game and stay out past 11, I need a full day to recover. I have slowed down considerably and while a lot of that is my fault because I don’t really exercise or take care of my body as I should, a lot of it is just me withering away with age. I lie awake for an hour or so almost every night thinking about the fact that I’m dying, we’re all dying, we live our lives marked for certain death. It’s a horrible thing to think about at all but in the middle of the night it’s especially harrowing.
I think about my parents, how they probably don’t have an awful lot of time left relatively speaking, and I get anxious. I can’t imagine my life without them here. I can’t imagine them not existing anymore. But people don’t exist forever, and that has been rubbed in my face over the past few years as people I grew up admiring - musicians, sports stars, actors - keep dying on me. My ex father in law died recently and when I went to the wake I hugged his wife and there was nothing to her. She seems to have shrunk and withered, like she’s pulling a slow disappearing act on all of us. It scared me and saddened me. I wish people could somehow last forever.
I think about that word a lot: forever. Two Christmases before our last one together my ex gave me an infinity symbol necklace. "Forever,” he wrote in the card. I suppose if I had any kind of meaningful conversation with him now I would ask him what forever meant to him. Because I know now what it didn’t mean to him; not long lasting, not always, not continuously, perpetually, or endlessly. Not infinity. It was just a word he used with poetic license. The thing I took away most from this is not that the concept of a forever is bullshit, but that things don’t have to last forever to have been good. Hobbies, careers, relationships can all end, wither away from us, and we have to look at the time we had with them graciously. It’s the same with people. No one is here forever. Forever is a fallacy. We’re here for the duration, and that duration is different for everyone. I no longer want to hear about infinity or forever. I want to appreciate the here and now because nothing lasts. I want to spend time with my parents and enjoy my own life before it’s all taken away.
There’s a grand old oak tree in my front yard. I grew up across the street from that oak tree and I always marveled about how majestic it is, how it’s so ancient yet so sturdy and it used to make me think there were some things that were just built to last forever. But the oak tree is dying now, its branches weak, it’s leaves crackly and brown. I wonder if we’ll have to take it down, if the tree I thought would outlive us all will have to be euthanized. I think of that oak tree as an extension of myself, how I was once strong and fierce but age has mellowed me into a husk of what I used to be.
I march slowly toward my inevitable death, reluctant to be here at an age where I am called a dinosaur, where I compare myself to a hundred year old tree, where I feel like I’m constantly in the way. I can’t last forever, it doesn’t work that way. But I can live in a way that makes my time here good. I can be caring and loving to others, I can be kind and loving to myself. For all my 3am thoughts about dying, there are daytime thoughts of getting off my ass and living life to the fullest instead of settling into the act of disappearing. I want to do things with my kids and my friends. I want to enjoy my time with my parents. It can’t be forever, but it can be good. And I think if you see it in these terms, that we are not here for a long time but we are here for a good time, you will enjoy your days and your impending old age in a better way.
I don’t want to be a dinosaur. I don’t want to be a dying oak tree. What I want to be is a 60 year old who appreciates that time is fleeting, but there are still good days ahead. I’m working on it.