Lately I’ve been having these thoughts about if my life ended today I would die happy.  Rather than giving me peace, it makes me nervous, because maybe I’m looking forward to a lot more life. I have plans about going to Scandinavia in the fall and Israel next spring, and I don’t want to miss out on those. I’ve been re-married for three plus years, and I’d like life with Victoria to go on. Maybe I’d like to write my piece d’resistance.  Lots to look forward to.

But tomorrow is my seventy-fourth birthday, and I’m grateful for what life has brought to this date. So, I’ll say it out loud: if my life ended tomorrow, I would die happy.  The Psalms say “The days of our life are seventy years (three score) or perhaps eighty (four score) if we are strong;” (90:10). So perhaps my time is borrowed from here on in.

Maybe the capacity to optimistically make plans is part of the enjoyment. Fulfilling the plans is a bonus we may claim or not.  Sometimes I feel my breathlessness walking up hills is a sign of mortality, and the neuropathy in my feet a sign of decreasing mobility. Friday I walked uphill with better endurance, and yesterday I started a medication that seems effective against neuropathy. So on Saturday I feel more optimism.

But on Friday night I felt the terrible abruptness with which ten-year-olds lost their claim on life. How one girl’s dream to be a marine biologist was snuffed out without notice.  Some of us are very short of the allotted three-score and ten. No guarantees. I wept for that ten-year-old girl’s aborted dream. What claim do I have for another year of  living?

Robert Browning lived long and relished every moment. From him we get:

Grow old with me

The best is yet to be,

The last of life for which the first was made.

That’s a comfort for someone re-married, retired, and relocated at seventy.  I am living a distinctly new chapter of my life, which makes me feel it has its own trajectory, full of its own expectations and milestones.  I’ve gone to more baseball games at Busch Stadium than in all my previous visits to Comerica and Fenway Parks. I’ve been to New Zealand, Key West, and Yellowstone Park in short order, wedging them in around the pandemic. I’ve received the blessings of two writing groups, and I’ve acquired a back yard frequented by deer and bluebirds.  I’ve discovered Dewey’s Pizza and a loving marriage partner. It doesn’t get much better.

So, yes, if I died on my seventy-fourth birthday, I’d feel grateful for my three-score and ten. Even so, Lord,  I’m looking forward to my four score.