I just learned something from my son. He’s older and wiser than me now.
We had a public disagreement on Facebook, and he really let me have it. It hurt, though that wasn’t his intent. The details don’t matter; they’re just between us. The point is that he taught me something.
For the sake of this essay, I’ll call my son Jeremy because that’s his name.
I’m 73, and Jeremy’s 47, but sometimes I still think of him as a kid.
I do, but I don’t. It’s complicated.
I knew he was an adult when he went off to college nearly 30 years ago, but that’s where most of my personal memories of him end. That’s where we started to grow apart.
The tricky thing about parenting is that you have two lifelong relationships with your children: when they need you and when they don’t. It’s the whole point of parenting, right? Give them what they need and then let them go on to live their own lives.
Forty years after this picture, Jeremy has a long, happy marriage and a brilliant adult child of his own. In many ways, he’s the finest man I know. And sure, I take some credit, but just a bit. He also has a mother, a stepmother, teachers, friends, and a thousand other inspirations I know nothing about.
Children grow up and fly away from the nest, but as just one parent, your relationship is grounded in the past of birthday parties, Christmas mornings, and teary, skinned knees. You try to hold onto that feeling but reach a point where your heart can’t follow.
We stay in touch, but sometimes I need to be reminded that my son hasn’t lived with me for well over half of his life.
“You have nothing in common but his childhood.”
My wife of 37 years lovingly explained that to me a few nights ago.
Jeremy and I still love and respect each other. We just told each other so. And in the wisdom of age, we’re probably closer now than ever.
I know, I know – as an old man I’m supposed to harp philosophically and say things like “age is only a number” and “you’re as young as you feel”. Those cliches are true but they feel too modest.
It’s my birthday! That makes me happy, I feel special today and am old enough to admit it.
Please indulge me just for a moment while I talk about the things old people always talk about, though we’d rather not. There is a point to all of this.
A year ago, just before my 72nd birthday, I had a health scare that ended with the great news that there was nothing wrong with my heart or brain. How many people get that kind of reassurance into their eighth decade?
That led me to retire from my radio career, a heads-up that it was time to get off the rat wheel and make every day Saturday. CarolAnn and I don’t have the money to go gallivanting around the world as future retirees dream. I still want to take a great vacation when we can but I love my wife, our dogs, and our home. A lot of people have none of that.
In the past month I’ve been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes and nearly simultaneously had all of my teeth extracted to make room for dentures. I was born without teeth and that’s how I’ll go out. Wish it could be otherwise but you know what the older old folks used to say, “You can wish in one hand and spit in the other…”
I don’t remember how that ended. It never made any sense to begin with.
Diabetes is manageable and the dentures will be useful when my gums no longer hurt and I learn to eat without feeling like I’m chewing with a mouthful of Legos.
An aside: If you’re looking for a dead solid perfect weight loss diet try combining sugar and carb restrictions for diabetics with the severe limitations of eating without teeth. In six weeks I’ve lost 35 pounds!
So, yeah, I’m thrilled to be 73. My dad died five months before he got there. That weighed on my mind for most of the past year, it really did, for two reasons: At first I was merely hoping that I wouldn’t keel over as early as he did. Then it finally dawned on me that Dad would be over the moon in love with the fact that I outlived him. For some reason that makes me proud.
Dad and me c. 1953, Land Park, Sacramento
I still talk to my dad. Not out loud but whenever I have a question I know he could answer, I ask him. I can hear his wise and loving answer as plainly as if he was here in the room.
I hope to live another 20 or 30 years. I’ll probably be lucky to manage another 10. But if I should pass and anyone asks, you tell them I died a happy man. No matter when or how it happens it will be true.
I’ve crossed the finish line. Now I’m just taking victory laps.
We say we’re “getting” old because we don’t know exactly when old happens and we keep pushing it back. I’m about two weeks from my 73rd birthday and still waffling on the definition of old. But along the way, I’ve gotten some physical bulletins that are impossible to ignore.
Unlike everyone my age I know, I will share my experience with you. You’re welcome.
The first heads-up was realizing that I need to take advantage of every public bathroom I see, whether or not I feel the need because when I do feel the need, it might well be too late.
Why didn’t somebody warn me about that? It seems like it would have been a neighborly heads-up between “getting old” friends. Just tell me, “You’re going to start leaking if you don’t pee in every nearby urinal or toilet.” That seems like a polite piece of advice, doesn’t it? Tell your friends.
A few days ago I had my remaining teeth taken out of my head. I now have no, zero, teeth.
The back story is lifelong, I’ve always had lousy teeth. Even as a child of the 50s, I had many cavities and horrific experiences with Dr. Clifford and his slow, smoke-emitting drill.
I’ve always brushed. I have occasionally flossed, (wink-wink). But while other people went in for semi-annual checkups I stayed away because nothing in my mouth ever hurt even as my teeth simply began disintegrating for no apparent reason.
I had one tooth break while I was eating soft, non-crunchy ice cream. A couple of years ago I found a broken tooth in my mouth while I was sleeping. WTF?
So, CarolAnn and I decided it would be best, and ultimately cheaper, if I would just yank ‘em all and get dentures.
As of three days ago, I have no teeth but expensive dentures that look like those wind-up chattering toys we’ve all seen.
So many things people don’t explain as you get older. And the websites don’t help because they’re written with AI prompts by marketing pros 50 years younger than you are. Some of them still have baby teeth.
The good news is that my dentist, periodontist, and oral surgeon, all enriched by my patronage, agree that the procedures thus far have gone perfectly.
The bad news is my gums are now swollen and painful. I talk like Daffy Duck, lithping and thputtering. Trying to eat soft food like a banana with new dentures is the same as chewing with a mouthful of Legos.
Look, as I told my dentist, Joe Smith (yes, his real name), just yesterday, I don’t get all twisted over things I can’t change. It is what it is. I’m alive, reasonably alert, and happy.
The professionals tell me things in my mouth will get better. I paid to trust and believe them.
But you know what? Either way, I wake up every morning with my wife beside me, the dogs are ready to be let outside to pee, and then I make their breakfast and my coffee.
People like to ask what I do every day now that I’m retired. It’s a hard question to answer because I do a lot of things that fascinate me but would sound like a complete waste of time for nearly everyone else.
I do stuff around the house, I write, I watch a little TV, and I nearly always take a nap with the dogs. But you know what I love most? Thinking. It’s something I haven’t had time to enjoy for most of my adult life. It’s the ultimate indulgence.
“Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.” – A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
What amazes me about getting old is the constant revelations of things I never gave much thought to.
Sometimes those revelations only create more and much bigger questions. Physics, for example: the construction and meaning of life. I’ve always been as curious as everyone but shrugged it off as unknowable, and what the hell, let’s order another drink. But recently, as I approach what we all assume will be the end of our existence, it has become a fascinating focus of my curiosity.
Who am/was I and why?
I want to soak up as much information as I can before it all becomes irrelevant.
The last couple of days I’ve been listening to a Lex Fridman podcast in which he talks with astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, Sara Walker. She’s one of those people with an IQ that’s off the charts. People who make the charts don’t know what to do with her. Lex keeps up with her pretty well but I get lost in nearly every exchange.
My progress is slow, the podcast is long. I feel stupid. I don’t know what I’ll take from it when I’ve reached the end but I do know it fascinates me.
I would be content to live retired without much mental stimulation. I love my wife, our dogs, our home, and our family and friends. I enjoy old movies and TV shows as much as the next old fat guy. But thinking about things I don’t understand excites me. It sends me down rabbit holes far more entertaining than the old Star Trek episodes I’ve been binging lately.
I think Sara Walker would agree without having a good handle on it herself.
Now that I’m retired from radio I’ve kept busy writing a weekly online column about radio. I get to sleep four hours longer than I used to and I work at home in my sweats but I’m still focused on radio, just from a different perspective. Nothing wrong with that but I want to expand my world so I’ve been exploring some options.
I have been thinking about going back to school. I never graduated college, maybe I should go back and be the one old fart in every class. Still mulling that over.
Writing fiction is my passion and though I can string words together nicely I don’t know anything about the craft. I wish I had gotten a writing degree when I was young but I didn’t. Now I’m looking into some online classes but they’re expensive. And what I do know from my experience is that in the end you still have to be willing to do the work. I’ve been mulling that over for decades.
The other thing I would love to do is act. I did plays onstage for 20+ years when I was much younger. At the time, when castmates of my age were trying to get professional acting careers started I said, “I’m going to wait until I’m old. You see the same old people in movies and on TV all the time. There aren’t many of them. I’ll wait until the competition is dying. ”
TV character actor Bert Mustin, 1884-1977. We saw him everywhere.
I have arrived. No, not as a professional actor, I have arrived at old.
I signed up for a free subscription to a casting call website for actors. Some of the jobs are unpaid, and some claim to pay very well. They all describe the actors they’re looking for, mostly young people. Over 50 is rare and calls for actors over 70 are nonexistent. That’s fine, I never expected to burst into Hollywood in a leading role at 72. I figured background acting (still referred to as “extras” if we’re honest) and maybe a sentence or two here and there would be great fun.
But here’s what dawned on me this morning as I was looking at the casting notices and writing courses:
Creativity is imagined to be a young person’s ability. All the websites I’ve looked at for writing courses feature pictures of happy young college types. Casting notices are the same. For some reason, our society assumes brains wither as bodies age.
Years ago in my 40s and 50s, I entered some playwriting competitions and was incensed to find contest entries restricted to “young playwrights”. Some actually specified “under 30”, or words to that effect. It pissed me off, and rightly so. I just lied about my age. It’s none of their business, right? I don’t have an expiration date.
Not incidentally, I won four of the half-dozen playwriting contests I entered.
(Paul McCartney, now 81, was asked ten years ago if he shouldn’t consider getting off the stage and letting younger performers have their place in the spotlight. “Fuck ’em,” he replied. “Let them work their way up like I did.”)
Here’s my point, and I think this may surprise you because I’ve written several ageism rants in this blog over the years. That, in itself, makes the point: I’m still learning and so will you.
I have gotten to an age where I don’t think ageism is a big deal. It’s a state of mind based on the perspective of the observer. It’s normal and natural, and sometimes it is reasonable and warranted.
I can’t portray a man in his 40s no matter how much time I spend in makeup. I’ve talked about this recently on the radio, about radio. You can’t hire a 60-year-old on-air personality for a Hot AC music station, you just can’t. 30 years is a lifetime. Inevitably the old guy is going to impart some of his life’s lessons into his shtick. Just as inevitably, the young audience will roll their eyes and say, “Okay, Boomer.”
This is how life works. When we’re young we think old people are stupid because they’re old. Old people think young people are stupid because they’re too young to know what they’re talking about.
They’re both right.
I understand the need for laws banning hiring discrimination of all kinds but you can’t legislate reality. Life experience and perspective can’t be ignored. It’s the result of personal growth through aging. It’s what keeps us fascinated by learning and passionate about life.
I’m a fat old fart looking for a TV or movie walk-on. Hell, I can even deliver lines believably.
But don’t tell me I’m too old to write. I’ll kick your young playwriting ass.
A chilly and sunny Sunday morning north of Dallas…
I haven’t written here in a while but just saw a link to one of my blogging partner Anita’s recent posts and it inspired me to mention a few things for this weblog, which has become something of a 20-year journal.
Me, pensive: Giants Causeway, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023.
The past seven months have been notable. I went to work at KLIF as usual dark and early Monday morning, July 31, having no idea it would be the last day of my 54-year career. After work, I drove CarolAnn to her cataract surgery appointment. From there we decided to have lunch at Mooyah Burgers in Stonebriar Mall. Enjoyed our burgers, sweet potato fries, and shakes. Walked outside to the car and I collapsed in the parking lot where I remained unconscious for a few minutes. I didn’t feel it coming, felt great in fact, and when I started to awaken I was being loaded into the back of an ambulance. After several hours in the emergency and a night in a private room at Medical City Frisco, several doctors shrugged and sent me home with no diagnosis.
Texas law makes it illegal to drive for three months after blacking out so I took a limited disability leave. Over those three months, I had every heart and brain scan that exists; still no explanation for my passing out. It surprised me to learn that this sort of thing is fairly common and usually leaves more questions than answers. Somebody commented that it must be very frustrating not knowing what happened. Actually, I’m pretty good at letting the unknowable pass without pointless wondering. What the doctors were able to tell me is that I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke and I don’t have any brain damage or tumor. Good enough for me.
By the time my waiting period ended and I was able to drive again CarolAnn and I decided I didn’t need to drive into Dallas at 3 AM anymore. I retired and am happily-ever-aftering with my beloved wife and pets. I love it. I’m doing a podcast called Conversations.buzz and writing a weekly column for the Barrett News Media national publication. Otherwise, I do the occasional chore at home, fix CarolAnn’s dinner, talk to the dogs and cat, and I usually work in a nap.
I loved my radio career and don’t miss it a bit.
Some people talk as if retirement is a death sentence. For me, it’s an endless string of Saturdays.
I have also retired from worrying about the world. These are troubled times and I’ve been studying and reporting them daily for 45 years. After five hours of news five days a week, I’m taking a long break. I haven’t read or listened to any news since that last July morning at KLIF. Ignorance really can be bliss. I expect to get over that and go back to keeping up on current events but I’ll be regularly skipping the political wars and daily tragedies that make the headlines. I guess that makes me selfish. I do care. In my own way, I’ve tried to make the world a little better by bringing daily smiles to morning commuters in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Dallas. I try to be kind to everyone I meet and keep my attitude well-adjusted. I think I’ve earned a break from stress that isn’t all mine.
There is also a great deal of joy to be found in the world if you just look for it.
Man, I’ve written a lot of philosophical tripe recently about aging, retiring, and now, dying. I suppose it’s only natural but I’m getting tired of it. Life is for living, not preparing to die.
The targeted ads are getting annoying.
Facebook targeted ad
So, listen up – I’m only going to say this once:
Whatever becomes of my “remains” when I die is not my concern. That may sound like I’m just kicking the can (along with the bucket) down to my survivors but look, it’s a pass. Don’t worry about it. I don’t. I’ll try to leave behind enough money to pay for the, ahem, cremation procedure (which is something I really don’t want to think about) but after that, do whatever you will with the ashes.
The ashes. Not my ashes.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep…
— Mary Elizabeth Frye
I used to have a grand plan that I told my family: to scatter the ashes in my beloved hometown of Sacramento. Specifically, I told them, sprinkle my earthly remains into the water where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet, just off Discovery Point. My grandpa Webster used to take us fishing there and it’s just upstream from Old Sacramento, where I spent many happy jazz festival days and nights as a young adult.
I told my wife and kids that it would be fitting if a four-piece traditional jazz ensemble played on the shore, perhaps a lively, Dixiesque rendition of the traditional Christian hymn, “A Closer Walk With Thee”.
Or maybe, “Another One Bites the Dust.”
Whatever. I’ll leave that up to you and the band.
That was my thinking years ago when I was still alive in my hometown and a regular, semi-celebrity fixture at the annual Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee.
Imagining the picture of my grieving family huddled together in a small boat under the cover of darkness (scattering ashes in a river is illegal in California, as are most innocuous things) brought a happy tear to my eye. But then life its ownself (copyright, the late, great Dan Jenkins) moved us to L.A. and eventually Texas. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest traditional jazz festival was crushed by cultural and political forces that trashed its glorious tradition after first removing the word Dixieland from the title. Thanks to the annual Sacramento Bee shocking photos of old people having fun, traditional jazz was run out of town.
Don’t get me started.
The point is, I don’t want my wife and kids to have to spend time and money fulfilling a silly idea I had years before I was old enough to think about dying in a reasonable way, which I now am.
I respect and admire people whose final wishes are detailed and specific.
Though he never expressed his desires to me, we took my father’s ashes to Green River in southwestern Wyoming, where he fished as a boy. It was a moving experience for us all. And if my family wants to do something similar to celebrate my life, by all means, they should do it.
But don’t do it for me. Do it for you.
CarolAnn, I’m leaving this decision to you. You’re really good at making decisions. Don’t feel compelled to have me in a jar in your bedroom but if that’s what you want, do it.
Hey, if you still have our cat, Corabelle, dump me in the litter box. I think it’s funny! You’ll get a giggle each day when you scoop it.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Live and love your life knowing that I loved mine thanks to you all.
I went searching for a pithy quote about November and this is where I stopped looking:
“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” – Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson has always cracked me up. I know I know — she is widely considered to be America’s greatest poet. I’m a troglodyte when it comes to poetry. I’ve spent 25 years ridiculing the “Belle of Amherst” since I wrote a play making fun of her work on nearly every page. After I finished writing it I was shocked to learn that Harvard University Press still held the copyright on most of her creations and they insisted on reading my two-act mockery before granting permission for me to quote her.
Even more shockingly, they decided it was fine, go ahead and perform it!
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul…
– Emmy again
You can’t make this stuff up. Oh, I get it, in this famous piece, a bird is implied as a metaphor for hope. I just find most metaphors to be unnecessary and often unintentionally funny abstractions.
And yet, when I went looking for a pithy quote about November I was hoping to find a touching metaphor of life approaching its final days.
Since I turned 70 more than two years ago I’ve made an effort to think philosophically about aging. Songs and stories are always referring to May to December romances and such.
Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
– “September Song”, lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill
I retired from radio yesterday and I’m very happy about it. I have no second thoughts and no regrets.
I just wanted to say something pithy that would express my complex sense of aging and, quite coincidentally, of leaving one’s lifelong career in the past.
Norway would have never occurred to me.
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
-You gotta love her, Emily Dickinson
I have wondered if it was sheer bravado whenever I heard retired people praise their retirement as the “new chapter” in their lives. Maybe it is for some, but I’m all in.
I’ve had a wonderful life and I still do. I’m more aware than ever of how fast my life has gone because I cherish every moment. I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean that literally.
I also know that I’m relatively close to the end of my life, but I’m not there yet.
Happily, I’m finally old enough to get it. These really are my golden years.
For the past six weeks, I’ve been off work and stuck at home because of a blackout I suffered in the parking lot at Mooyah Burgers. Two MRIs and various other medical tests are inconclusive. I feel fine. I could have gone back to work after my one night hospital stay except that Texas law won’t allow me to drive for three months after blacking out and the company that employs me won’t allow me to do my radio show from home. So, essentially, I’ve been visiting retirement.
I sleep later than I do when I go to the job; I wake up to feed the dogs and fix coffee. Then, I chat with CarolAnn before kissing her goodbye as she heads to work. The day that follows is pretty slow. I deal with medical and insurance-related paperwork, do some writing, and take a nap. That’s pretty much it until later in the afternoon when I can anticipate my wife’s return home.
Me on a train in Ireland.
As much as I have insisted over the years on my need for time alone, my life right now feels kind of lonely and confusing. I’m not retired, I’m on disability leave with tentative plans to return to work. But really, I am retired in the sense that I’m completely cut off from my career of 54 years. It’s all in the rearview mirror, for now, at least. That’s not necessarily a sad thing. It’s a mixed bag, really.
And, confusing.
In recent years I’ve asked retired friends how they fill their days. I get as many different answers as there are friends. Some have undertaken new, second careers, others find things around the house to keep them busy, yard work and home improvement, for example. A couple of guys I know admitted to being bored a lot. One of my oldest friends and colleagues told me he’s learned how to make shopping for an avocado fill up most of an afternoon.
Sometimes I think the idea of “keeping busy” is a misguided insistence. I might be happy doing nothing. What’s wrong with that?
The problem with transition is the uncertainty of it all. Should I retire now or wait? Can I even go back to my old career or is that just snuggling under a familiar but old, worn-out blanket when there might be more I can do?
What would that be? What can I do?
And, why do I insist on doing more?
I know all of the suggested answers from writing to volunteer work and just deepening my budding interest (please pardon the pun) in gardening. Maybe there is no single answer. Maybe what I’m doing now, a little bit of this and that, will settle into a comfortable pattern. I don’t know.
I suspect this is a transition that will fulfill itself in time. It’s confusing right now.
If you’ve “been there, done that” or are asking yourself the same questions please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
I may not be looking for answers as much as I’m looking for company.
CarolAnn and I in Northern Ireland, last month: Giants Causeway.
Three weeks ago I celebrated my 72nd birthday and then blacked out in the parking lot of a burger joint after lunch. I woke up some minutes later in the back of an ambulance, was taken to a nearby hospital, poked and prodded just a bit, and sent home the next day with no diagnosis.
The hospital people were very nice. They wheeled me out and wished me luck.
Since then I’ve seen a neurologist and a cardiologist. Both have run tests, neither has provided me with any insights. I like and trust them. The problem is, I’m not their only patient and they have their personal lives to lead. I don’t begrudge them a moment, I just await their educated assessments.
Except for the second-degree burns I suffered from lying in the parking lot during a Texas summer, I feel fine. Oh, maybe a tad dizzy at times. The neurologist did say I suffered a concussion. It should go away. She’ll let me know.
Meanwhile, my wife of 35 years, the Lovely-and-Feisty CarolAnn Conley-Williams, is having trouble sleeping. She looks at me with a mixture of adoration and anger; her experience in that parking lot was the shocking belief that I was dying. I didn’t but in her mind, I still could. Understandably, that scares her and pisses her off.
The company I work for has just learned that Texas law doesn’t allow me to drive to work after suffering a seizure. They also understand that while I could work from home, their own recently enacted policy forbids it. So, they’re paying me to sleep in and, no doubt, counting the expense. I’m grateful for the time I’ve been welcome there, however and whenever it ends.
For a long time, I’ve understood that my career will come to an end eventually and that the glorious achievement of living to my golden years would bring some medical challenges.
I just didn’t expect it all to happen on my birthday.
Things can almost always be worse. We carry on in gratitude.
