Birthdays are celebrated and I am not sure why except that they mark the march of a person from the cradle to the grave. That is serious business, so we find the birth date marking more of the ending than the beginning. Although present at the beginning, I don’t remember my birth. I do sense my death. During years of awareness the individual, if wise, prepares for the closing years and the ending of them. If done well there is a legacy for his or her family (not primarily financial), an example for life to those who regard this person, and a sense of fulfillment that relates to self and others. We are inspired by effective life models and evasive of poor ones. Among those who compliment with their emulation related to us we can hope that one is God. During the ninth decade of my life I gave considerable time, but not excessively, to what it means to grow old. The preoccupation was introduced on the death of my wife, and the decision to write four years’ worth of Today’s Page to my family and to Christian collegians relating to the college calendar seasons that have been standard in formal education to daily life for two hundred years or more. This project of Pages is my primary business to the end of my life. At this editing I have been at it for well over fifteen years, even drafting a valued former student of mine from sixty years past to read, offer opinion, and edit my Pages. Members of my family are participating. I have no morbidity about death, and, with my faith, do not fear it. I heard references to aging when I was young, but didn’t pay much attention. Now I read relevant literature, and spend modest time cogitating on the assertions, even concepts left out that ought to have been included. Much of what I read is excellent, worthy to pass on, but I am sure that much is wishful (some of it noted elsewhere in these Pages as the truths and untruths of some eminent persons who expected better contexts than they received or are receiving); too restricted (fitting for some, but not for the masses); and, other contexts including serious humor about life, fear. aging, bravery, guesses (prophecies) and death. Emotion is usually implied as strong. Some time ago I saved one as illustration for this date as I launched the tenth, very likely the last, decade of my earthly life.
Through the decades articles describing the aging process even to death have been numerous, reviewing the opinions of persons about the context of life, attitudes, growing old and ending. The differences in opinions and emotions range from despair to euphoria as the writers look ahead to an age when they will need direct support to function through their last days, and then death itself. I find the most touching to be from mothers and fathers, who knowing death will come soon because of some incurable disease, are trying to prepare their children for the inevitable. There is sadness that they will not see the children into more years, and a realization that dependent children will likely be different than would have been the case if the parent lived – because they did not have the departed parent in life formation. My father died at thirty-six years of age. Had he lived and remained a part of the lives of my twin sisters and me, we would likely have been different than we became. My mother, distracted from some of her Christian ideals by my father, returned to them after I made my Christian commitment, quite separate from her influence. She wept when I informed her of my Christian conversion, and revealed some suffering when she informed me that she was deeply hurt that I had found spiritual life from other influence than from her. I saw her pain, and did what I could to alleviate her sense of omission, perhaps sense of guilt. She was pleased with my affirmations, and became as saintly a person as I have known. And, I have known many saintly persons.
It is a major matter to maintain attention to what we are becoming. I counseled with a couple who had made a major goal of making a million dollars in savings by the time they were thirty years of age. To ask their children what impressed them about their parents, I would likely have been told: They made the goal of saving a million dollars by the time they were thirty years of age. Suddenly the couple and children felt that their emphasis was wrong. The family was stalled in neutral. Christian values were present but had taken a reduced status in their thinking. They needed to start over. They needed to give all they had to the poor and start over. The man noted: I thought you might say that. They went away sorrowful. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020