Some thoughts on old age and dying ...

One of my earliest "mature" stories, begun in my early twenties, started with the protagonist sitting on his front porch in his old age, slowly rocking back and forth, passing the time, thinking about the end of his life, fast approaching. The stream of consciousness setting up the story was about what regrets he might have.

As I thought about that story, it changed my life. Because I became aware early on that the biggest regret for me would come if I didn't pursue my dreams, march to my drummer, take my own path through life. It mattered not a twit whether the route would be crowded or lonely, hard or easy, long or short ... what mattered, I thought, would be that it was mine, of my choosing. I would get the feedback from my decisions.

As a white male of Scandinavian descent, born and raised in the northern tier States of Minnesota and Washington, a natural-born citizen of the United States, gifted with a reasonable intelligence and no physical defects, AND of the working class, I was relatively free to do whatever I wanted to do. I had no legacy of expectations other than to not screw up so badly that it would embarrass family or friends. I was blessed indeed. I was free ... still am, for that matter.

Now that I am that old man rocking away the end of my life, I feel like sharing what I am thinking about ... as openly and honestly as I can. At least some part of that feeling stems from the fact that the important adults in my childhood and youth kept most of their thoughts and how their experiences affected them, hidden from me. I wish I would have known then, or at least in my young adult years, what I now know ... and which I understand as being a fairly common experience.

For starters, up until my early forties, I didn't think much about dying. As a child, I thought a lot about going to Hell, because I was raised a Fundamentalist Christian, a mixture of old time Baptist and Pentecostal religion. I was saved, experienced the Baptism of the Holy Ghost, and the psyche phenomenon of Speaking in Tongues ... the whole bit. As a child, I only knew what I knew.

In my late teens I started seriously questioning the literal teachings of the Bible and spent the next forty some years trying to figure it all out, details of which I allude to from time to time in my stories and public journals.

In my early forties, I had the mid-life crisis we hear so much about as common to older men. I realized in a startling epiphany that my life really was going to end some day, leaving me with less time to live than I had already lived. I even remember much of the specific circumstances when and where it happened. It was in the fall, the early 1980's and I was traveling to Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, from Seattle, via public transportation--a Greyhound and then the local city bus. I had been up most of the night before discussing the state of the cosmos in an all night restaurant, and slept most of the way to Olympia on the Greyhound bus. I got there, boarded the city bus to the college, and as I settled into my seat, I suddenly realized that I was going to die.

I can still remember the shock I felt at that moment. It was true, I was going to die. If ever there was a troubling of deaf heaven with bootless cries, to borrow a line from Shakespeare, that was it.

But I got through the moment, and the day with a renewed committment to follow my own path ... which was never very straight for any length of time, but always interesting.

Fast forward to the end of July, 2002, when I came quite close to dying from acute kidney failure. One of the benefits from dying from kidney failure is that it is usually a simple and painless drifting off into a coma and then dying as all the body's functions shut down. I liken it to settling into a big cotton candy cloud. I don't remember consciously fighting it. I do remember thinking that if this is dying, it ain't so bad. It didn't seem to matter one way or the other, whether I lived or died.

I haven't been afraid of dying since. I get a little annoyed once in awhile when I am right in the midst of a writing project, and I feel my body acting kind of sluggish, and I can get peeved about the interruption if I do in fact have to head off to the Emergency Room to check my blood chemistry when I don't feel right. My basic reaction is that I don't want to be bothered with it at the moment. If I'm not in the midst of something, I am much more mellow, even sanguine, about it.

Another thing, I have prostate cancer and receive a periodic hormonal medical treatment to keep my testosterone in check. As a result, I am basically a chemical enuch. With this new status I discovered that many men don't like to talk about a reduced sex drive in old age. From my point of view, it solves a lot of problems. If I would have known how I would feel about it once it was imposed ... who knows, I might have opted for it sooner. It's hard to explain the additional sense of freedom I have simply because I no longer have an appreciable sex drive. This is a clear example of what I believe older people should share.

I have lived each age-phase of my life past childhood and puberty in pursuit of what I wanted at the time. I regret none of it. It got me here. In this moment, here and now, I am free with more choices than I could ever hope to pursue. I can pick the most satisfying for me, and I do. I love it with a full-throttle zest for living in the moment.

I'll get back to you on the subject.