It is sometimes said that some of us are lucky enough to get old. Of course, that might be just one perspective. It might also be said that those who die young are the lucky ones, unspoiled by life’s trials and tribulations. After all, it is said that only the good die young. Billy Joel’s music has more recently popularized this notion, but it does go way back in time. From Greek mythology those favored by the gods will die young preserving their beauty and innocence. The Bible shares a similar rationale, wherein the youthful dead are spared the evil and suffering that their elders enjoy. But now that I, myself, am old, I have to admit that I see this as lucky.
There once was a newborn boy by the name of David, who had only six days before he passed away, due to a medical condition that science would not develop the capability to operate on for decades. If he had lived, he would have eventually known me as his little brother. I once proclaimed that if David knew love, and felt loved, regardless of how short the duration, he missed nothing of life and living. But now I feel differently. I think I was the lucky one of the two of us. All of the memories that David would never know, amount to something of considerable value. Billy Joel, the Bible, and the Greeks were all wrong about this.
As I begin writing this piece, a movie icon from my past has died this week. She was 75, a year younger than I am. Shelley Duval was a starlet who I will continue to remember as a beautiful young woman. This week I have seen photos of her as an old woman. But for me, Shelley Duval will always be that starlet from The Shining, looking shocked and shaken with Jack Nicholson coming through the bathroom door the hard way, quoting Ed McMahon. Shelley Duval had the most wonderful eyes, with a beauty and depth that were unbelievable. Shelley Duval had “those eyes.” And those eyes will remain a lasting fond memory of mine, for at least as long as I continue to live. David never got the chance to remember them.
Memories are a mysterious factor in the experience we call life. If you are lucky enough to be old, you have a wealth of these things to look back on.
Memory – The M-word
Memory is not as much a key component of our mental existence as we might suspect. It is far more a component of physical bodily existence. Yes, of course, memory happens in the mind, but perhaps it is far more connected with just the physical brain. Memory is heavily related to the concept of time consciousness, which itself is highly related to physical bodily existence. Learning to use memory begins with learning to manipulate our bodies. Only a bit later do we adapt this learning to include the learning of thoughts and ideas.
The primary initial function of memory is to make our use of the physical body more fluid and coordinated, more functional, predicable, and adaptable. A finely tuned professional athlete is the perfection of this process. Newborn babies are highly uncoordinated. They have no memories of bodily control except for stretching maneuvers in a very limited environment. They need to learn and then remember just how their bodies work and how to effectively control them, using the physical tools available. Babies must first learn how to use their muscles, and how to develop and strengthen those muscles.
Since memory seems to be so effectively tied to bodily existence in its earliest usages, it is at least possible that memory and memories have little applicability in any sort of life after death, since the body definitely does die. All of this makes memories that much more valuable, as it is more than just possible that once you are dead, memories may not even exist anymore. Which emphasizes how valuable they are in our old age, when facing the inevitability of physical death.
Memories take on more significance in old age for another reason, as well. It is a fact of life that memory becomes noticeably weaker in old age. We forget a lot that in younger years, we would easily remember. So memories become more valuable since they are no longer quite so automatically retrievable.
I have been quite lucky to “get old,” having collected a valuable repertoire of fond memories, stretching over seven decades of life. But I have been lucky in another way, as well. It does matter what period in time your life happens to fall. I was quite lucky to have lived in a time when some really wonderful things occurred, offering me the possibility to remember them. Now, I admit that most times and many places offer some intelligent minds and beautiful people. Most times offer major life occurrences to be appreciated. But my good fortune was to be born into a time that offered me the opportunity to experience, and to fondly remember, things like a man on the moon. There were people whose lives mattered greatly to all of humankind. People like Einstein, Muhammad Ali, JFK, Churchill, Obama, and Martin Luther King Jr. While it is true that I was never contemporary with Gandhi, Aristotle, or Shakespeare, I was afforded the opportunity to learn about, appreciate, and remember how iconically important these people were to the development of the human race. None of these many wonderful memories did my would-be brother David, have a chance to remember.
As I type these words, a news flash tells me that one more relatively famous contemporary of mine has died. The exercise and fitness champion Richard Simmons has passed. And he was 76, my age. The clock continues to tick. Few of us look forward to the “time” when it stops ticking.
Special moments in my own personal experience have enriched my life immeasurably. There was the moment when my first-born child took his first steps, and I was lucky enough to be there with him. We were both in complete awe of what had just happened, and we shared the feeling. David would have been maybe seven when I took my first steps.
My wife, Sandi, departed this life at 49 with cancer. She had expressed to me that she didn’t know if she would have the strength to go when the time came. I assured her, she would. Then, when it finally arrived, I was there for her, looking deeply into her eyes. I validated her departure with a single word. She continued looking into my eyes for whatever strength I could muster. Then she just chose to stop breathing. Leaning on my gaze, she just went away. I watched as her life force appeared to recede into the depths of her eyes. I walked that path with her until my weakness forced me to turn back toward life, itself. I remember your strength, Sandi.
David never got to know a wife or a child of his own, two of the most important joys of this life. And today I also have a grandson, ready for his senior year in high school. Many memories, indeed.
There were at least two moments when my life could have easily ended much earlier than it eventually will. The first was at the age of perhaps eight. I was standing on the entrance to a private lane, awaiting the bus to take me to school. The bus lost its right front wheel as it braked for the stop. The wheel came threateningly toward me with a sort of fierceness in its bouncing roll. Then, for no apparent reason, it veered to the right, into the ditch, striking the culvert instead of me. I was too young to fully appreciate how fortunate I was at the time.
Then there was the time in 1970, a half-century ago, when the Kent State massacre of college students happened while I was, myself, a college student. A day or so later when campus unrest swept the nation, my school, Southern Illinois University, told us all the school was closed, everyone go home. I instead went out after a curfew to “get the photo of a lifetime.” I found a place where a moving phalanx of police in riot gear approached up a deserted downtown street. I snapped the shutter as a tear gas canister struck the steel mailbox on the corner. It struck with considerable force, just behind my right ear. He might actually have been shooting it at me, not the mailbox. Or maybe he just hoped he would miss me and hit the mailbox. I will never know. Either way, I got pretty lucky that day. Neil Young’s song about “four dead in Ohio,” could have had a version that added, “and one more in Illinois.” David was not lucky enough to have lived through any of these remarkable experiences.
Only the unlucky die young. This is sad, but unfortunately true. We want to give to those around people dying young, some measure of reassurance, some value to be appreciated, so that the grief becomes more bearable. It is not entirely a fool’s errand. Feelings do matter. But as I await the Grim Reaper, I know that I have been the lucky one, to get to be the old man. Perhaps the brother that I never knew has given me the contrast to fully appreciate my good fortune. Unlike the results for David Eugene Cooper, or for Shelley Duval or Richard Simmons, the clock still ticks for me. And I can still hold out hope that the memories somehow come along for the ride when the ticking stops.
