My Third Dance with Death

My Third Dance with Death
And Its Effect

I had to renew my driver’s license, which involved taking a field of vision test. This is what the test is like. I sat in a dark room, looking into a device with a small light in the middle of the screen. I was to concentrate solely on the light. Whenever I noticed a smaller light appear, I clicked on a small hand-held device. This video is similar to what I saw.

The first time I took the test, I missed a part of my peripheral vision in one eye. I had to retake the test; this time, I concentrated more than I did the first time. After my second test, I asked my eye doctor how I did. He showed me that I had improved my peripheral vision, which meant I passed the test; my doctor faxed the results to the license bureau. Had I not passed the test, I wouldn’t be able to renew my driver’s license.

Not passing the test the first time had a profound effect on me. While I don’t do much driving other than for getting groceries, shopping, and going to doctor appointments, being unable to do those routine tasks would have been problematic.

In the midst of retaking the eye exam and waiting for the results from the license bureau, I emotionally revisited both my two dances with death. One dance had to do with a subdural hematoma and the other with prostate cancer. It was a déjà vu feeling like I felt a decade and a half ago after my two dances. In many ways, taking the eye exam was my third dance.

A couple of days ago, I had an appointment with my primary care doctor. I have no significant health issues. I am healthy and energetic. That being said, I just turned 81. I have a strange habit of going to the Social Security website and clicking on the Life Expectancy Calculator on my birthdays. The actuarial tables expect a male born on January 20, 1943, to live another 8.3 years, meaning that I will be 89.3 years old when I go belly-up.

Therefore, I assume I will reach my 89th birthday at the very least. If the projected date of my mortality is accurate, I have 8.3 years remaining on my journey down the yellow brick road of life. Even if I hadn’t done the dance with death twice, that projected date rattles me. Talk about a clicking clock.

The clicking clock for someone 81 or more gets louder and louder as time goes by. The clicking clock is essentially an attempt to wake up that person. Now, some people will hear the ticking and respond negatively. They will see it as unfair from their mindset. Someone railing over the injustice of death lurking in the near future doesn’t make any logical sense to me.

The first issue is that the person complaining about impending death was extremely lucky they were conceived and born. People knowledgeable about male sperm cell counts claim that 300 million wind up in a woman as the result of sex. That means anyone born on January 20, 1943, was fortunate to be the one sperm cell of 300 million that united with one egg.

Therefore, the person complaining about a handful of years left in one’s life should be eternally grateful to have been the one sperm cell of the 300 million to have fertilized the one egg creating that person.

Each of us is lucky to be alive. It seems to me that we ought to live life in a proactive manner rather than with a negative mindset. My two physical dances with death, a subdural hematoma and metastasized prostate cancer, caused me to be engaged in life. I wouldn’t want to go through either dance again, but I wouldn’t delete them from my life. I am more alive than ever before because of those two dances. I am living in the moment and am not complaining about my mortality.

This dance with my renewing my driver’s license parallels the other dances. I am not at the end of my yellow brick road. However, I can see the end more clearly than I could with the other dances. Recovering from those two dances showed me the value of being alive. Nevertheless, those two dances were nearly two decades ago. While I would like to outlive George Burns, who died a couple of months into his 100^th year, I wouldn’t bet too much on living a couple more decades.

George Burns

George Burns left us with this thought, “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.” Another George, George Eliot, said, “It is never too late to be who you might have been,”

Carpe Diem. As your days dwindle down to a precious few, live in the moment. I don’t want to be on my deathbed with a litany of tasks not addressed because I was complaining about problems in life.