SAXTONS RIVER — Worrying about dying has something in common with worrying about the sun burning out in five billion years: there's no way we can influence either event, so worrying is an an obvious waste of time.
Worrying about growing old, on the other hand, seems to support our doing a good job in coping with the unique challenges of end of life.
We owe it to ourselves - or so most of us think - to take special pains to conserve our remaining time and energy.
We know lots of people who've done a bad job: dying of avoidable diseases, sinking into an unwarranted despondency that depletes their personal resources, disregarding the evidence-based advice to exercise, eat healthfully, and remain socially engaged. We also know or have heard of nonagenarians who hold political office, are actively employed or win achievement trophies.
Such observations persuade us that we are responsible for an enormous charge: our aging selves. It is a task to be taken seriously, at risk not only of losing out on pleasure and happiness, but also of leaving a bad taste in the mouths of our eulogizers, who will, after mouthing the usual clichés, talk of our misdemeanors much as we talked of our children's countless failings decades earlier.
They will say such things as, “Mom never stopped grieving for Dad. She would turn down invitations from people she liked. She always felt sorry for herself.” Or “Dad just couldn't stay away from the bottle! He knew he was killing himself and driving us all crazy at the same time!” Or “I suspect she enjoyed being ill, since she refused to do what the doctors prescribed!”
Worst of all, if we're not careful and diligent, we may become dependents, consigning our children either to years of servitude or to paying others to look after us.
We have seen what that ending looks like: a shameful donning of prisoner garb under the, at best, watchful eyes of our warders.
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But what if we can't help ourselves? What if we have a genetic predisposition to cardiac disease, diabetes, or dementia?
No one in my ancestry, at least as far back as I can remember, ever got through her eighties with a sound mind, and, in fact, my paternal grandmother developed early Alzheimer's disease in her forties.
My sister and I, both in our mid-seventies and blessed with good health, live in fear and trembling of such a fate. Though we are too old for early Alzheimer's, when we forget about what we've left cooking on the stove, forget an appointment, or can't remember the name of the perennial that blooms every year in our garden, we are prone to thinly-veiled panic - at least until we undo our errors and resume a state of guarded surveillance over our own declines.
We employ all the recommended devices: writing lists, making mental memos of where we last put down our garden rakes, posting the names of our favorite plants on our refrigerators, and even practicing games that aid memory online or with pen on paper.
Having an aversion to games of either sort, I like to practice leaving my slippers or outdoor wear in a different place daily to test my memory, and I am delighted to find such determined focus almost always succeeds. But that doesn't mean I'll remember whether I've paid my bills or made an essential phone call. Underneath all that squirrel-like scurrying for the winter of our lives, we know there is little we can do to forfend a chilly ending.
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Meanwhile, we aging vehicles are contending with the deteriorations of our non-mental “parts,” as my father used to call them - the anatomical wear and tear of time.
So far, my sister and I have avoided artificial replacement of knees, hips, shoulders, and whatever else is available on the parts market, though - it is true - we've both had cataract correctional lens replacement.
(Pooh! That was nothing! An outpatient surgical procedure with a week or so of guarded activity afterwards.)
Eager not to lose a day of the brisk physical activity that characterizes my life, I dread having to face the likely infirmities that will find me out in future years.
Only once did I break a leg, and that put me in a crotchety state of mind for many weeks. I will likely be a lousy patient.
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But worries aside, there are blessings that the end of the journey commonly endows.
We may forget where we've put down our eyeglasses, but we remember having faced the life crises our children and younger generations are having to deal with: humiliations by schoolmates, oppressions of teachers, financial anxieties of the childrearing years, broken marriages, and, ultimately, loss of friends and lovers.
I witness the struggles of the halfway-there crowd with compassion and a desire to help, and, when given an ear, can relate accounts of my own experiences - briefly, of course, because such ear-lending is soon snatched away - that may cast a light on their own.
Losses due to death are, of course, more common to the elderly than to the younger. But although it took me more than a decade to adjust my life to the death of my husband of 40 years, I have emerged a calmer and happier person than I had been.
With leisure to pursue long-postponed passions, such as travel, painting, classes, grandchildren whose middle-of-the-night disturbances I can blissfully ignore, and with an overview of relationships - even of the entire human experiment - that mitigates anger and endows an almost Buddhistic calm, I know that I can face the inevitable final breakdown with a backward glance that approves and forgives.
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You might say that the end of the journey is like its beginning in more ways than just inducing helplessness and incapacity.
Freed from the mandates of responsibilities, we can recover the keen sensing of our innate urge to live, to thrive, to satisfy one's hungers.
At the final stretch one can also bask in the light of the setting sun - glad for the remaining five-billion-minus-a-few years of its life - with a quiet joy and a frugal regard for spending what resources remain to us wisely.
You have then arrived.