Aging

A Son’s Goodbye

August 31, 2009

Regardless of your opinion of Ted Kennedy, this eulogy by his oldest son is something you won’t soon forget. I heard it today, on my father’s 81st birthday, while driving home from Seattle. Hard to see the road through tears.

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Employees of the Heart

August 4, 2009

I saw my heart beating today from behind its walls. In darkened chambers easily mistaken for underground rooms, a handful of workers labored without pause. The workers are valve gates, flanges of flesh regulating blood flow with relentless precision. It’s easy to see why one day they might quit from fatigue or boredom. [...]

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Why of War Fades

July 25, 2009

The last European survivor of World War I has died at age 111. Harry Patch’s late-life interviews are cautionary. Reading this story, I’m struck by a glaring hole: unmentioned is why nations sent millions to be slaughtered. A close friend of Patch said the veteran stressed two messages: “Remember with gratitude and respect those [...]

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Cancer With Wry Smile

May 9, 2009

I’m a big fan of a guy’s blog. He’s a storyteller, and a damn good one. Even if he wasn’t, he’d win my award for best blog name: And I Am Not Lying.
Jeff Simmermon hasn’t posted much lately, and I just found out why: he apparently has testicular cancer.
His account of learning about the tumor [...]

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Moved and Alive

April 17, 2009

In February on a rare sunny day, I helped friends dig up and move a Japanese laceleaf maple from their backyard to their front. No chance the tree was going to survive the unavoidable mugging at our hands.

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Life is Short

March 31, 2009

In an interview broadcast today, singer John Mellencamp described to NPR’s Terry Gross the inspiration for the song “Longest Days” on his 2008 CD, Life Death Love and Freedom.
He said his grandmother called him Buddy. She lived to 100. Late in life she often asked him to lay in bed with her as she rested. [...]

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Clueless Time Traveler

February 27, 2009

A writing professor I know often uses time travel as a plot device. His novel about Abraham Lincoln involuntarily appearing in Chicago in the 1950s bring him to life in a unique way. More intriguing is the professor’s unpublished story imagining himself as an adult occupying his boyhood body and mind.
That’s a journey I would [...]

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Living Longer

January 28, 2009

We could live much longer if we really wanted to. Or maybe we want to but can’t get our act together, individually or collectively, to take the steps that forestall death.
I’ve been pondering longevity since coming across two items recently: a study that shows reducing smog adds an average of five months to lifespans and [...]

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Time Changes

December 10, 2008

I’m busy contemplating how to use the extra one second bestowed upon us at the moment 2008 ends.
The addition of a so-called leap second last happened in 2005, not that anyone noticed. But reading about this latest adjustment, I imagine life shifting into slow motion at 23:59:59. What dramas or epiphanies will burst forth in [...]

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Never Forgetting

December 2, 2008

Who hasn’t wished for a chance to remember their distant past. Not just details but emotions dulled or lost in time. And remembering events so intensely that they feel relived.
Such a chance would be a priceless gift. Call it limited immortality, an oxymoron but accurate description of vividly experiencing one’s mortal life over and over.
Pondering [...]

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Musical Erasure of Time

November 21, 2008

My forty-year high school reunion in September didn’t make me feel old. In fact, I felt young again surrounded by my long-lost friends.
It’s always that way when I’m with my two brothers. In a way, we never age no matter how many lies the mirror tells and how far our attitudes diverge. How could it [...]

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Taste-Bud Time Machine

October 30, 2008

People in their fifties sometimes long to be in their early twenties again. Now that’s a revelation. But do I want to wake up to remnants of this post-midnight snack on my night table: beer and chocolate ice cream?
My chef-in-training nephew, living with our family for a time, might have been testing the palate’s response [...]

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Blown Far on the Wind

October 3, 2008

I have a high school friend named Jim. I haven’t seen him in nearly four decades. In fact, none of our other friends have seen him in years. This protracted absence gives Jim a leg up on the rest of us: he’s frozen in our minds as he was back then, young and good-natured and [...]

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