A Last Will and Testament... Sort Of

I am 62 years old. Now and then over the last forty years I have been told that I will not live forever. I’m starting to believe it. I have had a couple of friends die of what are essentially age-related illnesses. In my family, the preceding generation is almost all gone. There are a couple of non-blood-related aunts that are in their 90s and still living. I think that’s about two people out of twenty or so that made up that generation in my family. Personally, I am in good health, but I can sometimes tell that I am no longer 18 years old. I have chronic inflammation in my right heel. I have occasional back pain. It’s just a few little things, at least for now.

One day, hopefully 30+ years from now, I will wake up with a pain in the area of a vital organ, or it might be I awake with numbness in my arms, or slurred speech, and I’ll soon be informed by a medical professional that my days are numbered. Like I said; hopefully this will be decades from now, but it could conceivably be tomorrow, so I might as well be at least somewhat prepared.

I have wondered what friends and family would think about my time here on earth, looking back on it in retrospect. Someone might ponder what I thought about my own life, such as it was. Have I had a happy life? Well here it is; I have had a great time. To any friend or family member who might read this wacky blog after my demise, know that I have had a marvelous run and my regrets are far and few between.

Looking back, I broke a few hearts, regretfully. But I have had my own heart broken a time or two also, so maybe that’s just the way it is with life. Fact is; I have known love, beauty, excitement, and laughter, sometimes in pretty large doses. I have tried to share the joy as much as possible. When it comes right down to it; I really don’t think I have been all that bad a human being. Hopefully others will think the same thing.

I must admit that sometimes I think it is too bad that I never discovered the cure for cancer, or developed a space craft that could whisk passengers to Mars, but the fact of the matter is; I was never capable of achieving those aspirations, so the personal disappointment is minimal. If I were about to bid my final adieu, the only sorrow I would feel about my life in general is that it did not go on longer, keeping in mind that as of today it has gone on for a while now, and I am owed nothing. Quite the contrary; I am thankful for the time I've had.           

Thoughts Of A Long-Ago Smoker

When I think of social changes, one of the first things I look at is smoking policies, and really, society’s attitudes towards smoking in general. Other social changes have been more important, but few have been more extreme than the social changes and attitudes towards smoking that have taken place in a few short decades.

Many years ago I smoked. I smoked for about seven years between the ages of about 19 and 26. I liked Winston, but Marlboro was okay and in a pinch, I’d puff on an L&M or Raleigh. I remember my work days in 1975 at The Ohio State University when I was a 24 year-old smoker. I’d sit at a table and shuffle some papers with a cigarette between a couple of fingers, and an ashtray on the desktop an arm’s length away half-filled with butts. No one would dare think about asking me to put out my Winston. I paid money for it and I had the right to smoke it, even if it was a public workplace. Not far away, a coworker might have his cigarette perched on the edge of an ashtray, the cigarette’s white smoke curling upward. If a non-smoker came into the area, he or she would simply have to tolerate the hazy environment. Today, to people under the age of 25 or maybe even 30, all of this seems almost unreal.

To be fair, smoking indoors, in public places, was once so common that I think the odor and the general foulness of it went mostly unnoticed. Everything smelled like tobacco smoke, so the nose detected none of it. And I think there was something of a physical tolerance to the actual smoke back in those days, a kind of immunity.

A lot of people smoked. I do not know the percentage, but it seems like it was over 50%. Smoking was cool forty years ago. Paul Newman smoked; as did Beatle George Harrison. The Marlboro Man was the very epitome of rugged coolness forty years ago. But somewhere around the mid-80s things started to change. At first, public buildings nixed smoking except in assigned  “smoking areas”. That lasted a few years and then smokers had to go outside their buildings before lighting-up. Now there are places where smokers have to be not only outside, but a certain distance from doors and windows. There are some places where smoking is prohibited anywhere on the grounds. 

I quit smoking before any of these changes took place. I remember about 35 years ago sitting in a near-empty 6,000 seat arena, smoking a cigarette while watching a hockey game. Smoking in the arena was allowed at that time and besides, there wasn’t a soul within fifty feet. Nevertheless, one section away a man began hollering. I first heard this bellowing, and then a minute later realized that he was directing his shout specifically at me. When he knew he had my attention, he hollered at me to put out my cigarette, that it was bothering him.

I was stunned. How could the smoke from this lone Marlboro bother a man off in the distance? Well, of course it couldn’t. I looked at my burning cigarette, turned my gaze to the complaining man, and then after a few seconds of dramatic pause, gave him the finger. But the guy taught me a lesson. To this day I am lenient towards smokers and the relatively new rules that they have to follow. On the other hand, it wasn’t much after the “arena incident” that, in spirit, I gave the finger to cigarettes. I became a part of that social change that put cigarettes, once a staple in the American society, out the door… literally. Like most social change, it was not easy for some, but overall it was for the common good.        

Mom's Day

This is Mother's Day. I sort of felt like writing something even though my mother died five years ago this coming July 4th. My mother was a registered nurse. She worked for the Columbus Public School system as a school nurse. I think for a while when I was very young she had thoughts of me being a doctor. She probably envisioned me performing open-heart surgery in some big hospital. By about the time I was in the 7th grade she had to have discarded that notion given the fact that for the first six years of my academic career I received about three A's on my report cards, and all of those were in Physical Education. I would guess that for the next few years she would have settled for my just working in a hospital as a pharmacist or an anesthesiologist. But that dream faded too. By the time I was about sixteen or seventeen my mom had to figure that the only way I was going to get into a hospital was as a patient, and that sometimes seemed pretty likely.

Anyway, many years later, when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and her days were clearly numbered, I decided that I would make a little video of her life just to remind her that she had enjoyed a long, fruitful life. Unfortunately she died before I got very far on it. But after a few days of thought, I decided to finish it anyhow. However, instead of it being something for my mom, it's just about her.

I always remind the few people who have seen this over the past five years that any time they want to turn it off, it's okay. The life of someone else's mother probably is not the most exciting subject in the world, and the video isn't going to win an Academy Award for excellence anyway. Fact is, my mother probably deserves better, but then, I'd say that most mothers do.