This past week found me checking out actuarial tables with mixed hopefulness and trepidation. How much longer will my parents stick around? The correct answer, of course, is that nobody really knows. But according to the life expectancy chart I looked at, my dad can look forward to another four years, while my stepmother has some nine years ahead of her. (For both their sakes, I truly hope it’s less than that, based on their present condition.)
Four years. It sounds like so little. Even my own number (29.5 years left) seems pitifully small compared to what I’ve enjoyed so far. Our lives are simultaneously blighted and blessed by the full (if often repressed) awareness that we are here only for a brief moment in time. Not long ago, I asked my father if he ever expected to live as long as he has. “I just never thought about it,” he said. I can’t imagine that’s true; unless I’m the only one obsessed with these things, I’d guess most people wonder from time to time how much time they have—and then hope for more.
I read somewhere that “old” means anyone who’s 15 years older than we are. But how does that apply to someone in their late 80s with serious health problems? My attitude, as anyone reading this may pick up, is that truly old people are sticking around too long, although not always by choice. Thanks mostly to medical advances and healthier lifestyles, 70 really is the new 50; the formula works well as long as people stay healthy and active, though at a certain point the inevitable problems start creeping up. Medical intervention might prop us up for a while, but….
When humans are warehoused in nursing homes, staring blankly at a TV screen, or at nothing, what have we accomplished? They may be technically alive, though it’s not a life most people would want. Yet there they are, in ever-increasing numbers, but nobody in the political sphere would dare suggest that we “do something” that would help nature run its course a little faster.
At least for the moment, the humane option of setting people free from a miserable, pointless existence is not available here—but let’s hope that changes before “we” get there.
