Deciding at what age I would like to check out!

The world's oldest man, Henry Allingham, died today at age 113. Here was a man who has seen so much of the world. Born June 6, 1896, during the reign of Queen Victoria, Allingham would later recall sitting on his grandfather's shoulders waving a flag for King Edward VII's coronation in 1902. Transportation was horse drawn, coal was the primary fuel, street lighting was gas and in the financial heart of London, there was same-day mail delivery. How amazing is that? He is survived by five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one great-great-great grandchild.

My grandfather (on my mother's side), died a year before I was born. He was 52 at the time, a mere two years older than I am now. His death left a mark on my mother and my grandmother who mourned him daily for the rest of her life, thirty eight years later.  My only knowledge of him passed down to me in photographs that I would find as a teenager and hold until this last year when the technology allowed me to create new images using my own camera and Photoshop.

As I wrote about some time back, my sister died when she was ten and I was twelve. That was thirty-eight years ago and obviously far too young for anyone to die.

The question arises: what is the best age to go? When do you outstay your welcome and become a burden upon those you love?  Recently it has been a question much in the media. Michael Jackson dead at fifty and Walter Cronkite dead at 92.  Which is the age that works?

Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 and then slowly descended into the twilight of Alzheimer's disease, no longer aware of his own achievements and his own life, including his dutiful wife, Nancy who remained by his side well past the end.  Would it have been better for him to die younger, in his heyday?

Ironically the world remembers the young James Dean, the rebel, dead at a young age and yet cast in history, while few remember the bloated end of Marlon Brando, embroiled in the tragedy of his children's poor choices, no longer the masculine lead that man men envied from his youth.

There is always death. Death is the blanket of life. You can no more avoid it than you can ignore it. And as much as people do not like to discuss it, there is a purpose in the existence of death; the value that is placed upon life is based upon the finite existence offered. If we lived forever no one would care.

As I get older I begin to understand why the elder generation seem to get more miserable. The world in which they lived slowly fades away, replaced with each death of that generation, with something that pales in comparison. Can we compare Johnny Carson to Conan O'Brien?  Hardly, and yet it always changes. Socrates would have thought the modern philosophers to be boring.

For the elderly, after a life of living, family, raising children, making that mark and then passing through adult children moved away, the death of a spouse, the death of friends, the decay of the body until leaving the house to go to the store becomes a major chore, how could it not be anything but depressing?

Humphrey Bogart is well remembered. Who still thinks of Lauren Bacall? She was with him in his movies and in his life as his wife and she lives on today. Who seems to notice? But lose a figure in his prime, a Heath Ledger or a James Dean and it seems so shocking and eternal all wrapped up in one iconic image.

I wonder when is the time that my life should end; not that I have a say when that may be. I know that I want to be old enough that I will not ruin my children's lives. My best friend in my college years, who died not long after, grew up in the shadow of his father's death while he was young. And yet I wonder whether I would want to be 113, like Mr. Allingham, all wised up and nowhere to go. At some point the world you know vanishes and you are alien in the remains. At some point the shadow of the past has outlived its usefulness, like Walter Cronkite who, no matter the solid body of work he left behind, or the foundation for the news we take for granted, had already reached a point where he was not in the mainstream.  There is a sadness in that. All ends should be in glory. And perhaps the glory of a death in battle that is often spoken of in classical poetry, makes sense in that context.

For now, I am glad to feel like I am still keeping pace with the cycle of life, even as my children surpass me in height, even as my hair follicles laughingly shrivel into baby fluff, and even as I see in the mirror my eyes that hold no innocence or naivete, still vibrant yet distinctly older than those bright baby blues that still shine in the baby book.

But I guess, that is the way it is. Thank you and goodnight.

MisterWriter