It appears my life has finally reached the third act of a three-act play.
Okay, so, no, I’m not announcing anything here.
You’re still stuck with Patti Samar for, well, as long as I continue to climb out of bed every morning and remain in a vertical state.
But dang.
Nobody told me that, after you turn 60 and you begin moving through the decade, you begin thinking about death more and more frequently.
And you kind of become a hypochondriac, even though you’ve never been a hypochondriac your entire life.
And the Google Machine doesn’t really help.
Every little ache and pain I feel? Oh yeah. I Google it. In the past three months, I’ve been certain I had a blood clot in my leg (I even went to the emergency room for that pseudo scare), cancers of all kinds, ALS, multiple sclerosis and any number of other medical maladies.
Every little ache and pain I feel? Oh yeah. I Google it. In the past three months, I’ve been certain I had a blood clot in my leg (I even went to the emergency room for that pseudo scare), cancers of all kinds, ALS, multiple sclerosis and any number of other medical maladies.
Why? Because I’m 60-effing-two years old, that’s why, and one look at the obituaries in the newspaper shows me lots and lots of 62 year olds.
These were not fears I faced at 32 or 42. Crap, I didn’t even give them much thought at 52. Anyone who ended up in the obits at 52 was just an unlucky bastard.
But 62? Oh sh–. People die for reals at 62.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average life span for a female in the United States is 81.4 years, and for a male it is 76.5 years.
Dang. Only 18.9 years left, if I’m average.
To be honest, I’m banking on being above average and I’m gunning for my 90s. Or, I could just roll the dice and say, “Put me on a Smucker’s jar, Al Roker! I’m 100!”
But in all seriousness.
I shouldn’t be surprised that I think about death and the terminal state of my being at this age. I’m definitely facing the last third of my life, if I’m lucky.
A recent Texas A&M study found that students who were shown a near-death experience and a snippet of a potential “after-life” using virtual reality (VR) glasses were much calmer and much less stressed about death than they were prior to the VR experience.
I kind of think I’m too much of a pragmatist for something like that to appease me.
To be honest, if I really dissect my fears, I think I’m more afraid of the process of death, not death itself. I worry about dying some long drawn-out death due to some health issue that may or may not be preventable.
I mean, I still wear sunscreen, I go for an annual mammogram, and I will continue to get a colonoscopy every decade just as the doctor orders, but I could still get cancer and I could still die some long, messy, protracted death as a result.
Or, I could get hit by a bus. Or I could just fall asleep one night and not wake up.
That, of course, would be my ideal. Snuggled up in my cozy bed, soft fleece sheets wrapped around me, caressing my skin, and lights out, only permanently. Ahhh…
My husband is 13 years older than me. And yes, of course, I love him. But I also really loved living alone for many years. I joke with him and tell him, regularly, that if life goes according to plan, because he is a male, by the actuarial mortality tables, I should outlive him.
We also jokingly state to one another, “Well, your third husband…” or “Well, your fourth wife…” meaning, of course, that, once one of us is gone, the other will surely be soooo lonely that we will pick up yet one more spouse to add to the bedpost notches.
But in reality, for me, not so much.
As an introvert who needs a lot of alone time to recharge my batteries, if he dies first, I will miss the camaraderie of my life-partner-in-crime, the man who is actually a good listener (most of the time), who has been my best friend of many decades.
But I won’t miss sharing a home with him. Or anyone.
And here’s the catch: I keep telling him, God has got it out for me. He’s like, “Patti, I know you aren’t a true believer, therefore, the last joke is on you. I’m gonna bring you home before I bring Dale home. How do you like that?”
Oh dear Lord.
What do you mean I don’t get to live my last decade or so in the peace and tranquility of singledom? What do you mean I have to live with Dale til death do I part?
Jiminy Crickets.
I didn’t see that coming.
Of course, neither one of us knows yet how the end of our story will be written. We are both (knock wood) still bountifully healthy (knock wood again…and thank goodness).
In the meanwhile, I’ve gotta spend less time on the Google Machine, looking up the many ways in which I might be dying.
As summer commences here in the Blue Water Area, it’s time to jump on a sailboat and start living, the wind in my face, wearing out my old, creaky body in the best way possible. Cheers!
To read this and all of the other stories in the current issue of ThumbCoast Senior magazine, click on the link in the comments, below.
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