Eighty: Reasons To Live

Recently my Dad marked his twentieth wedding anniversary. The celebratory party packed a festive punch, with lots of family and friends coming from as far away as California, NYC, Chicago and BC. Young and old, all celebrants enjoyed the day, appeasing palates, filling bellies, meeting new people and lauding the happy couple for their matrimonial achievement.

Amy is Dad’s third wife (and he her second husband). This marriage is his longest, doubling the previous high-water mark. For me, these highlights speak to a couple things: one, that the celebrating couple have put in the requisite hours and effort to stay together (you can’t not work hard at it; no relationship worth keeping comes easily); and two, I guess it’s true what They say about age. Namely, that it brings experience, and of course experience fosters wisdom. I’m not convinced Dad would necessarily have succeeded in this marriage had he entered it earlier in life. It took the cumulative lessons of not only his previous marriages but other life experiences as well for him to finally find peace and happiness with a better half.

Like most people, Dad has learned as he’s aged. Through his failures and reinventions, he’s shown anyone willing to pay attention how to embrace age and experience as learning tools. He used to be a hothead and a showoff. Eventually accepting that those attributes get you nowhere, he gleaned new approaches to conflict resolution and dealing with success. Historically late for things, he started setting his clock ten, then fifteen minutes early. Previously a wreck when it came to finances, he learned how to better manage his money. (In all fairness, Amy is the financial wizard; so, really, he learned to let her manage their finances.)

I myself have begun to understand that age is nothing to fear, but rather something to embrace. I caught a particularly revealing glimpse of this truth at the anniversary celebration.

There are five cousins: my Dad, his sister Mary, his brother Bill, and their cousins John and Jim. With the exception of Mary (who’s ten years younger than Dad), all the others are around eighty years of age. A few years ago they started getting together one weekend every spring for a social outing. My Dad’s anniversary party gathering certainly qualified as one of those weekends; indeed, over several days in town, the quintet got together to catch up and reminisce and generally enjoy the company of the extended family they grew up with.

When I was younger, far younger, I thought eighty seemed positively ancient. Far beyond anyone’s best before date, far too late to start anything new or achieve anything of significance. I was afraid of eighty in the same way I was afraid of death.

But I’ve worked in a hospital long enough to know that eighty is by no means a death sentence, or even the beginning of the end. At work, I see a lot of sick and infirm people. Many, but not all, are north of eighty. I also see many octogenarians who present as youthful, spry and ambitious. Eighty, then, might be on the cusp of getting old. But it can still offer plenty of potential for life.

There are many ways to stave off age’s inevitable cruelties. The key seems to be to stay active—physically, mentally and especially socially. My Dad is living proof that you can survive retirement by staying active. He’s proof that even approaching eighty, you can find success and happiness, whether in marriage or anything else, so long as you believe it’s possible and work hard at it.

He’s also discovered two other qualities that go hand in hand with age and wisdom: confidence and serenity. The more you know, the more confident you feel about doing your thing, and the less you need to prove yourself, or to showboat. And the older you get, the more you realize what’s important, and the less you stress out about unimportant stuff. Over the years, I have seen firsthand Dad’s hotheadedness disappear, to be replaced by a much-welcomed serenity. I think, also, the more confidence you have, the less anxiety; and less anxiety allows more room for serenity.

And the cousins? Age be damned, they will continue to live their lives, meeting up once a year (or more, when celebrations permit) to catch up and reminisce. They will seek reasons to remain active, physically and mentally and especially socially. Heck, my Uncle Bill comes all the way from BC for these gatherings. As my Uncle John told Praveena and me, “When you’re retired, you look for excuses to get out of the house.” I took that as proof of the itch to keep living, to keep finding things to do.

One final note about the party: I saw the young cousins, my brothers’ and sister’s kids, getting to know each other and playing together throughout the day. It was a thrill to watch, like seeing the start of something new yet also the continuation of valuable tradition. I hope they continue nurturing their relationships throughout the years, hopefully well into their eighties. It will lead to a life of fun, joy and fulfillment, and a later-in-life urge to keep finding things to do, together and apart. Because that’s the not-so-secret secret to maintaining that insatiable itch to live, the closest thing we currently have to a fountain of youth, right?