WE ARE ALL SUDDENLY SEVENTY-SOMETHING

 

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

 

Seventy-something is like mid-month of the ninth month of pregnancy wherein it is super smart to keep a bag packed so that when our water breaks in the middle of the night, it is grab-it-and-go. Our seventy-something travel kit is different, though. It holds our Last Will and Testament, Medical Directive, and other end-of-life documents. But now, in this now of a worldwide killer pandemic, my guess is that Legal Zoom and private attorneys are cashing in on providing documents of the kind for individuals of all age-groups. In response to the call to “OPEN THE SCHOOLS,” we have seen this phenomenon play out before our very eyes in a flood of twenty-, thirty-, forty-, fifty-, and sixty-something school teachers in one or more of America’s states, freaked-out professionals who are committing their final wishes to paper—just in case!  

 

This catastrophe is testing our faith big time. It seems to me that we are falling into two main camps: either our faith (in God or whatever the basis of our faith) is reaching an all-time high, or our faith is leeching out of us drip-by-drip. And why not given that life is currently a daily meditation on death?! Freud taught us that it is impossible for human beings to imagine their own death. Au contraire, mon frère. Maybe not all, but an enormous swath of us are hyper-aware that we are living in a mine-field of death bombs, and one little false step, and BAM! It could be curtains! To date, it has been the case for 159,000+ Americans in fewer than six months. And those are the deaths from Covid-19 we know about. That is 9/11 multiplied 53.4 times. Another screaming calculus records that as of this morning, Covid-19 is killing an American every 80 seconds. If you think toilet paper was hard to find, just wait until we get to the place of finally “burying our dead”—and I invoke that term in all its various meanings. I fear the coffers have gone pretty low in physical, emotional, and spiritual reserves we will need to process the carnage.    

 

Do you remember the days when death was a normal part of life; when time was set aside each week, or nearly so, to reflect upon our dead and to visit their resting places; to decorate our walls and tabletops with framed photos of them? Do you remember when their stories were relived regularly at dinner tables; when children carried their names forward, when their memory was honored and kept alive?

 

I submit that we lost touch with our dead because while we forged ahead building our electric and hypnotic society, we misplaced our powers of reflection, not only in terms of reflecting on our dearly departed, but in every other aspect of our lives. We have grown too busy to stop and notice much beyond the end of our own nose or the reach of our own arm. It is simply a bridge too far to expect us to think critically and for ourselves. It is so much easier and time-saving to just swallow whole the concepts of our favorite political party, or politician, or minister, or parent, or teacher, or cable news outlet, or social media site. And now, we are asked to face up to death and dying again?! We are harried and macho Americans. We do not deal well with death and dying anymore. That is creepy, old-timey stuff. Tonight’s dinner menu; our son’s sports scholarship; our daughter’s ballet recital; our retirement portfolio—fine; we can do those things. They fit quite nicely in our over-crowded wheel-house. But death! NEVER! Let’s just settle in on the couch tonight, a de rigueur glass of red in hand, turn on “Wheel of Fortune,” and stuff that scary subject!!!

 

And besides—modern life is hard! What more do you want from us? We break our backs out there in that dog-eat-dog world every day; our taxes support half the world; we fight everyone’s battles for them—so okay we like a home life that is a bit more lighthearted than it was way back then? We have earned the right to take it a little easy. So we kid ourselves—even convince ourselves that we will live forever. So what? Thinking about dying is a drag.

  

Forgive my sarcasm, and know that even I recognize that on balance, of course it is better to concentrate on life than on death. But the fallout from Covid-19 is forcing us to take a second and serious and sober look at the fate none of us can escape. I know in my gut, and I’m thinking you know in your gut that the best death is one in which as many loose ends as possible have been tied-up and in which we feel satisfied that we have met some meaningful purpose. That opportunity is only available to some of us, however. If we are taken-out prematurely by Covid-19, or are sick, poor, starved, homeless, abused, disabled, death might be our friend, and a purpose in life a futile commodity. An uncomfortable truth is that given the current state of our wrecked economy and defective healthcare system, hordes of us are now or might soon find ourselves among the ranks of the “untouchables,” as a coterie of America’s citizens label (under their breath) the nation’s underserved and underprivileged. A humbled mass of us might even get an inside look at one of those “not-in-my-neighborhood” homeless shelters.        

 

If there is to be a silver-lining in this situation, and there must be a silver-lining if we are to come out on the other side of it with our resolve and sanity intact, it just might be the resurrection of our lost art of reflection. Human beings are hard-wired to take stock, but in the hustle and bustle we got short-circuited. Over the course of the last several decades, if we bothered with it at all, we relegated the act of reflection to our golden years. I am here to tell you, folks that the golden years are upon us! We are all suddenly seventy-something, metaphorically speaking. If our newly-embraced state of contemplation manifests in making amends for our past sins, and in mending those fences or building new and better ones, might we make some sense of all this? Might we shape some good out of it? Nothing can justify the loss of life and health and treasure wrought by Covid-19, but if it moves us to expand our heart-space and let more people in, to recharge our brains and keep them charged, and then to institute critically needed human rights reforms…well then?!©

 

Image: Watercolor, “Caplinger Siblings” by Linda Lee Greene

 

Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase on Amazon.com.

 

#Coronavirus, #Covid-19