When reading-to-edit what I write, sometimes I hear a voice that sounds like Andy Rooney reading my words.  I offer this as a compliment to Mr. Rooney, rather than any indication of the condition of my mind.  Andy Rooney passed away recently and I wanted to say so long…

The Obituary Pages

Somebody knows these people.  You know some.  I know some.  For some of us, losing a friend or loved one is, thankfully, a rare occurrence.  The greater your circles of connectivity are, the more loved ones and acquaintances you inevitably lose.  Conversely, having such a large circle means that there will be more who will grieve your passing when your time comes, and to celebrate Life with, while we are still here.  Such was the case with Andy Rooney.  I never met him but I kind of think that I knew him.  I certainly liked him, and his passing I grieve.  Contemplating one’s own mortality is singularly unique to Man, within the greater animal kingdom, so far as we know.  Grief, though, is not Mans’ exclusive purview.  Death, like it or not, is a fact of Life.

Most of the recently departed have left behind others who grieve them, and it is fair to say that most dearly departed were loved and will be sorely missed.  Some were rich, some were poor.  A few of the names I read in the obituaries are famous, like Andy Rooney, but most of us will be known only to family, friends, golfing buddies, old classmates, and neighbors.   Some were young, some were lucky enough to have grown old.  The obits are a never ending roll call of the overweight, the skinny, and the in between.

Not a day goes by when I don’t read three or four on-line newspapers, and each and every one of them has an obituary page, and none of them is ever blank.  For most of us, our obituary will be the last public acknowledgement that we ever lived.  

Living in a large American city, as I do, I am distressed by the sheer numbers, day after day after day.  A hell of a lot of us go off to meet our maker each time the earth makes a revolution.   These recently living people interest me precisely because they aren’t and because they did.  Maybe I’m just looking in the rear view mirror of life or trying to peak around the corner, into the future.

I understand the reality and the theories of our passing on, I grasp it in general, even though I wish it were otherwise.  In fact, I just finished watching re-airings of Bill Moyers’ extraordinary one-on-one conversations with the late, widely lamented, and absolutely brilliant Joseph Campbell.

Many of those interviews took place at George Lucas’ Star Wars Ranch.  Perfect, because in the reasonably foreseeable future we will be living for 150, even 200 years.  That, to me, seems like a fairer arrangement.  More reasonable. I can tell you that you don’t count the years when you are under 30, and only the big birthdays until you are 50.  Then those birthdays seem to come faster.  I am in my early sixties and I wonder where the last twenty years went.  Time seems to quicken appreciably, although that is obviously not scientific reality.  A year is a year whether you are 21 or 61.

But living longer seems inevitable as science marches on.  Concomitantly, the assumption would follow that overall, our health would remain pretty good for a lot longer.  Maybe one of these days, reaching the age of 100 will mark only the start of middle age.  We might not feel old and burdened with the diseases of later life, like arthritis and hearing loss, until the last few years of a very long life.  If contemplating death is depressing you, I suggest the aforementioned Joseph Campbell DVDs (PBS) for the comfort and understanding they provide.

Like you, I want to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  Dramatically extending life expectancy will mean greater opportunity for travel, more personal productivity (assuming good health, which includes sound mental capacity), greater communal knowledge as more experienced people work on the myriad problems we will face with with ever increasing longevity.  And yes, there will be more services required and consumed, less room, more demands on decent food, potable water, and healthy air.

When this happens, not if  but when, the whole paradigm shifts.  In fact it is happening now.  Incrementally.  Back to the improvements in life expectancy.  There are going to be necessary trade offs but hopefully the quality of life on the planet will be vastly improved by technology and rethinking how we operate on a communal level.  One would hope for complete international cooperation in eradicating hunger and making available tools, including medicine to treat the ill.

A paragraph on the Health Care Debate currently before the Supreme Court in the U.S.  Some of us receive extraordinary health services.  Should you have health insurance, you can count yourself among the best cared for, at least in the United States.  I don’t want to get off on a political and social tangent, but the Health Care Debate seems pretty simple to me.   As it stands right now, in  2012, in America, if you get sick and go to an emergency room, you will not be turned away even if you have no health insurance.  Who pays for the coverage for the uninsured?  All of us who do have health care.  The costs are passed along to us.  And what of the many tens of thousands of us who work, pay taxes, have health care, get sick and are dropped by our insurer.  They too should be able to get health insurance for pre-existing conditions that would otherwise either bankrupt them or force them to receive sub par care.  This should not be Democrat vs Republican.  On this one issue, we should be united.  Children should be covered until age 26, perhaps even until they are married if they are unmarried and living at home past age 26.  Yes, I know the argument against an expanded and bloated federal government requiring things of its citizens.  I understand the broccoli argument too.  I think they are both missing the point.  You are required to register to vote.  You are required to have a drivers license, get a marriage certificate with the required blood tests, you are required to go to school, including home schooling, until you are of a certain age.  Our government protects us and defends us.  Quality health care should be a right, a given for all of us.  We will all need health care now and then, and I cannot foresee hospitals, ambulances, and emergency rooms leaving the uninsured to die in the waiting room or out on the street.   They will seek treatment and it will be given to them.  The system absorbs it which means it is paid for by the insured.  In a civil society there are reasoned, necessary responsibilities of a national government and this is one of those.  It will cost far more, overall, to not have coverage for all of us, young and old, healthy and sick.  I know the burden of expense is placed on the healthy who use it less frequently.  I, for one, will be glad to pay for health care and never have to use it.  I would be among the very lucky in that case.

I don’t read obituaries to make sure that my name isn’t there, as the comedians say.  I know, as of today’s paper, that it isn’t. We all wonder about death and dying.  We all wonder, now and then, about Just Rewards and the afterlife.  Faith is its own reward.

My health is pretty good.   I’d like to live into the middle of this young century.  In the meantime, if you do read about me, someday, in the obits, please know that I had a fine time while I was here, and I expect you to update me on what I missed if we meet in the by and by.  Oh, and along those lines, so long Andy Rooney; well done, pal.    HL