Stages

Of course, this posting is all about me though I am using the plural pronouns as a mask. And since what I write about is about me me I want to begin by acknowledging that I am an admittedly somewhat privileged life-long middle-class now retired academic with two pensions and social security income. Mea culpa! I have some investments that should take me to my demise as long as I need not enter assisted living or a memory care unit. In the event it becomes necessary, my children have generously guaranteed me an occupancy in a basement apartment. At my death all of the monies (and hell, there isn’t all that much) will go to the daughters.

I reflect: In my adolescence, well, the talk was usually about sex: about who was having any and who wished they were getting some. I suppose it would have helped me if I actually talked to girls who were at least within my reach. The conversation was certainly about lust and hunger. Then as I moved into my twenties I guess I added to my conversations about sex—always a concern—issues concerning meaningful career choices and moves. People I knew chose a path: doctor, lawyer, academic, astronaut. For some the choice was not necessarily theirs to make: they went into the armed services and some came home. Our thirties were spent trying to succeed in that chosen career path: how to rise in the companies and departments we were in. Graduate schools entered into our consideration. Some enrolled. In our thirties we also began to consider the possibilities of family, marriage and children. Some chose to settle down, marry, and even start a family. Others opted for surrogacy or singleness. Mortgages and their rates become central to the talk; we refinanced as the rates fell.  (And yes, I have begun to use the plural pronoun). Then, as we entered our forties our thoughts turned again to career: in our lives we had begun to feel restless and to consider whether it might benefit us to change course. Some—not a few— suffered from a mid-life crisis (I admit, a privilege for those in the middle-class and beyond) and at the bars and over drinks we complained to anyone who would listen, and we hoped that some of those listeners were sympathetic friends. We talked to our friends, our financial advisers and our therapists. We joined a gym and began to ride the stationary bike and lift weights. 

In our fifties we begin to attend to our investments, paid off our mortgages or refinanced them, and our thoughts turned to retirement and Social Security. Some talked to their financial advisers if they still had them, and others calculated their positions on paper with a pencil and a good eraser. In our sixties we signed up for Medicare and looked about for supplemental insurance. We considered if now might be the time to buy a cemetery plot and to write a will. Then, as we limped into our seventies we began to think about the arrays of medications that began to occupy our pantries and bathroom mirrored cabinet. We had pills for every ailment that has arisen and even for ones that we anticipated. Regularly we were careful to check which medications were due for refill. Our days were peppered with pill popping. With worry we talked to our doctors more frequently. We obsessed about our health and ratcheted up our inclination to hypochondria. We emailed our doctor more frequently and appreciated their patience. In our seventies we tended to complain more and chose to socialize with people our own age with whom we could discuss our aging issues. We purchased burial plots and made plans for the funeral. 

I haven’t arrived yet into my 80s but I know health issues and medicines will remain in the forefront of concerns, but I foresee that I might then return increasingly to concern about my legacy though it is too late to do anything about it. We even take to exclaiming “It doesn’t matter!”

And I note that I have begun to think and talk like an old man. My conversation is filled with complaint and not only about my health and wealth, but also about the state of the world over which I have had little or no influence and that I will at my demise leave behind. In the supermarkets I am pleased to discover what is on sale and am gleeful when I spy the sign for BOGOs. I carry home four tins of tuna fish, but I am a vegetarian and don’t even eat tuna fish; hell, they were on sale! I have lived in the Midwest for thirty-five years and have happily taken myself running on the roads in temperatures that dropped to -20 degrees with even a serious wind chill factor. But now I am no longer tolerant of cold, am reluctant to go out of doors with the temperature hovering around zero degrees; as I write this I am sitting before the fireplace where roars a blaze produced by fake logs. I look to see what films are now streaming. 

I head to warmer climates in February to weather out the winter in a place where winter does not enter. I am therefore packing a minimum of clothes and a maximum of medications and health aids.