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April 05, 2008
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"We are born thinking that we'll live forever. Then death becomes an intermittent reality, as grandparents and parents die, and tragedy of some kind removes one or two from our own age cohort. And then, at some point, death becomes a normal part of life -- a faint dirge in the background that gradually gets louder."
Michael Kinsley, 57, former L.A. Times editorial page chief, now facing Parkinsons, writes about longevity in the New Yorker this week. Death is a barely intermittent reality to me so far. I've known more cats and dogs who've died than people, though that equation is slowly shifting.
"If a hundred Americans start the voyage of a life together, on average one of them will have died by the time the group turns sixteen," Kinsley writes. "At forty, their lives are half over: further life expectancy at age forty is 39.9. And at age sixty-three the group starts losing an average of one person every year. Then it accelerates. By age seventy-five, sixty-seven of the original hundred are left. By age one hundred, three remain."
Kinsley's essay is a bit meandering. He's baby boomer naval gazer, which is a rather boring category. He eventually touches on Parkinsons, but there's no foreshadowing or thesis or hint of where you're going until you get there. Still, mortality is an interesting subject.
In the past few months, I've turned 30, my dad's turned 60, my grandmother's turned 90.
"If you're feeling older, note that Grandpa and I are three times as old, and still enjoying life," Grandma Sherwood wrote in a note I received on my birthday.
Isn't that what matters more than any of it? More than longevity and statistics and disease and generation warfare? Finding joy in life? I hope so.
Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at April 5, 2008 04:35 PM