Limping into the home stretch

Don’t let anyone kid you about the “golden years.” There’s nothing golden about them. Unless it’s the glow of casket handles.

I’m urged daily to buy burial insurance. That’s right, burial insurance. And not from just one carrier. There’s competition to cover my interment.

I get all kinds of age-related offers. Promises to restore my sexual prowess. Oh-so-safe pills to help me remember things. Hearing aids that bring in outer space.

Being old and feeble attracts lots of attention. The other day, my wife and I started to open the car door in front of a local theater. Before the door was completely open, two young women appeared and offered to help us get out of the car. We shouldn’t have been surprised. On a trip to New York City, we were repeatedly offered seats in the subway.

One of the sure sign things are slipping is loss of memory. I can’t remember anything — like why I’m writing this column. My wife is a few years younger, but just as forgetful. She leaves post-it reminders everywhere, if she can remember to write them. They seem to proliferate, since taking them down requires remembering whether they’re one-day old or several-months old.

TRECKER

The writer Joseph Epstein is in the same (sinking) boat. Also heading into the home stretch, he says he can’t remember names or much of anything else. But he’s in good company. We have a president, he says, whose “mind isn’t one anyone would want at the helm of our ship of state.” President Biden can’t remember anything either.

Aging presents all kinds of challenges. Here’s one I’m facing. A woman from the Office of Gift Planning of the University of Chicago is coming to town to arrange for me to leave a generous gift after I pass. It’s not whether, but how much. I never agreed to this or asked her to visit, but she was relentless. She’s planning to come to my house to close the deal. What should I do? I’m thinking maybe a good disguise.

My contemporaries say, hey, don’t let any of this get to you. Things aren’t so bad. What’s left of the future is bright. I’m not so sure. To many of us, the past is more attractive than the future.

The past was when Republicans and Democrats worked together to get things done. (Think of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill.) The past was when the national debt actually meant something, when our borders weren’t open to any drug peddler or terrorist who wanted to stroll in, when there was some semblance of a work ethic.

Ah, the good old days.

But you can’t just chuck it while there’s still work to be done. History is full of folks who beat the clock.

¦ Claude Monet produced some of his best painting in his 70s and beyond.

¦ Frank Lloyd Wright oversaw construction of the Guggenheim Museum into his late 80s.

¦ Henry Kissinger remained lucid and productive until his death at age 100.

¦ Grandma Moses continued painting until her 101st birthday.

Productivity is fine, but when the work is finished, it all has to end.

A dear friend, older than I, thinks of the ending as a baseball analogy. Harkening back to the ancient Bob & Ray show, he remembers the two comics closing their show by saying, “This is Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding rounding third and being thrown out at home.” “Hell,” my friend said, “I’ll just beat the tag.”

He won’t of course. He’s dead meat. He’ll be out at the plate. ¦

— Dave Trecker is a chemist and retired Pfizer executive living in Florida.

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