This is the backstory. I danced with death twice in 2008. I was able to lead death while we danced on both occasions. My dances were due to a traumatic brain injury from a fall and prostate cancer that had metastasized beyond my prostate. Those two traumatic events morphed into blessings. The result was transformative. My Weltanschauung changed once I realized that my clock was ticking loudly.

We all know that we are finite intellectually. Nevertheless, dance with death; you can feel it in your gut. Interestingly, that realization took me time to grasp in my life. It wasn’t until I talked to someone over dinner. He could tell I had done the dance even if I didn’t grasp its impart.

Therefore, this essay parallels my first two dances a decade and a half ago. As with the first two dances, I didn’t fully grasp the life-changing experience of either dance. The same lag time was apparent in processing the third dance.

Also, my third dance with death was not something that I could have died from immediately or in a few months. However, the lag time gave me several months to understand my third dance fully. Interestingly, not understanding why I was so driven forced me to question why since I hadn’t experienced a near-death event. I hadn’t been hospitalized. It didn’t dawn upon me that I had been doing the dance for several months.

Are you confused? Trust me. I was. I experienced the same high and drive as I had due to the first two dances without a traumatic, life-threatening experience. One of the handful of idiosyncrasies I possess is wanting to know why for every question I have. My questions cover the gambit from my cosmological questions, like what is there beyond the end of the universe, to much smaller questions, like why Kipling was a racist. Believe me, I wanted an answer to my haunting question about being driven. I could have written off my query if I had some near-death situation, but I didn’t.

I would jump at an opportunity to sit down and discuss with a psychiatrist or psychologist my idiosyncrasy of needing to have answers to all my haunting inquiries. I don’t want to know some DSM code number for some psych issue. I want to keep my eccentricity; I merely want to know why I need all the answers to all my questions. In the absence of a shrink, I use my Rogerian-esque style of psychotherapy. Carl Rogers developed a passive type of counseling. He would begin a session by asking open-ended questions to his client, such as, “Well, how are you today?” His style allowed his client to figure out what was troubling the client. I have used that Rogerian technique often in the past and also this time. However, my Rogerian style is that I am both the therapist and the client.

I would ask, “So, you are driven without a trauma occurring. Tell me more about that.” I have done that many times over the past several months. In the last couple of days, I mulled around in my mind about the contradiction of being very driven without a near-death experience.

Finally, a eureka moment. I’m a healthy 81-year-old who exercises nearly every day for 30 minutes first thing in the morning. I follow my doctors’ advice, take some prescriptions, and eat properly. According to Social Security’s Life Expectancy Calculator, I have eight years and one month left on my yellow brick road of life.

Contrary to Social Security\'s prediction, I plan to live longer than George Burns, also born on January 20. However, George was born several years before me. Burns reached March 9 in his 100th year. That means I need to live to March 10, 2043.

None of the doctors I see regularly have any particular medical conditions that pose significant life-threatening situations that loom over me. That is true, but I’m 81. In high school and college, I ran cross country. I can’t even jog today without looking like a WWII veteran jogging at the 80^th Anniversary Celebration a couple of days ago. Even though I exercise daily, it takes me time to get on the floor to play with my Irish Setter and even longer to get up. Therefore, my third dance with death is hopefully very long and extended.

Recently, I wrote about Longfellow’s A Psalm of Life. Longfellow discussed life and death with someone in the poem. He wanted his listeners to live life in the now. Act today, and tomorrow, you will have improved your life. We will all face all sorts of obstacles on our yellow brick roads of life. Longfellow wrote that poem due to the death of his wife during a miscarriage. Near the end of A Psalm of Life, Longfellow wrote about great people. They live lives reaching out to assist others on their journey through life.

That stanza is a nicely written poetic comment unless you are around my age and have done the dance. For me, it is as if Longfellow was yelling at me. “Campbell, wake up. Think about the footprints in the sand that you are leaving.”

I have much to do in my life. I need to take care of my physical life; without doing so, it will shorten the time that I have left. I need to care for Ginger, my Irish Setter, who parallels my journey. She has had a couple of dances with death.

However, I need to spend my time helping my family in Myanmar as they struggle to survive in a civil war. Additionally, Ti Ti, my granddaughter, is trying to get a student visa at the US Embassy in Myanmar. She has been interviewed three times. A woman did the first time. However, there was a man also in the room. They stopped recording the interview. The man talked privately to the interviewer and shook his head, indicating that Ti Ti shouldn’t be granted a student visa. The woman returned and said to Ti Ti to try again.

You should be wondering about how I knew what happened at Ti Ti’s interview. She emailed me a summary of the interview. Several months later, Ti Ti again went to the embassy; this time, only the man was in the room. Again, the man rejected issuing a student visa to Ti Ti, without providing a reason. He said to try again. Several months later, Ti Ti went for her third interview and was rejected by the same man who rejected her on her two previous attempts.

I made a video for Susan Stevenson, the head of the embassy, along with all the documentation from all three interviews. However, the embassy gatekeeper didn’t give Stevenson the video and the documentation.

So, I went to my congressman with the video and the documentation. He was able to send it to the embassy. This time, I got a letter from Stevenson. She didn’t mention the video or the documents but wrote that she was briefed on the situation. That means she was not given access to the video and documents I provided related to the three interviews and my emails to the gatekeeper.

Ti Ti is applying to Valparaiso University, less than half an hour from my home. I have talked with Elaine Kildsig, Director of International Students. She has sent Ti Ti all the instructions for applying as a student. The only question remains whether Ti Ti finally gets her student visa this time. Let me give you a little hint: I won’t stop trying.

In addition to assisting Ti Ti with the student visa to attend college in America, I am leaving footprints in the sand, which will help Ti Ti on her journey down the yellow brick road of her life.

My footprints in the sand during my twilight years

I met my granddaughter over a decade ago while we played Scrabble at her home near Inle Lake. Ti Ti was a nine-year-old kid who wanted to beat an old guy from America at Scrabble, and she did. But, I discovered my granddaughter.