'Vant-ages

by John Loofbourow, MD

                                        In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life.
                                            It goes on.                                                      Robert Frost

Centenarians are the fastest growing sector of our North American youth-worshiping society; more than one million are expected early in the next century. It seems ironic that so many of us, who fear old age and its companion, death, may be condemned to contemplate both for many years. That's a dreary prospect considering the prevailing attitude on aging, reflected in high suicide rates of those older men who find that what they know is worse than what they don't know. We betray our fear of age and death when we prefer puerile euphemisms like "Funeral Home" or "passed away." The expensive and futile act of draining out the blood of the dead and replacing it with preservative, painting and dressing the body, and burying it in an elaborate and hermetic box is contrived to pasteurize the fact of death; it comforts only the living, or so it seems, for the dead probably don't notice. In pointing this out I do not intend to imply that comforting the living is not worthwhile, particularly when a young person dies. However, where the dead person is one of great age, the pathos seems misplaced. Like the winning of an Olympic Gold Medal, a functional and happy longevity is more the result of effort and design than chance, and it should be celebrated.

When my father's father was in his 90's, he adopted an Asian method of counting his years.When he was 91 he was in his 92nd year. (Westerners are not one year old until 365 days after birth, though it would be equally true to say we were, at birth, in our first year, just as we are in the 20th century in 1996, and soon hope to begin a third Christian calendar millennium.) At about normal retirement age, my grandfather realized that age and experience were attributes. He noted that few people around him had personally recalled the 1890's; as a young man he began a lifelong habit of keeping a journal. I imagine that people had more time then. As he grew older, he found that people tended to take great interest in his recollections. For the next 35 years he lived modestly from his writing and speaking. His method was to spend a year or two writing and researching a book, which he then published himself, followed by another two years traveling about speaking and selling the book. He remained fairly healthy and active, claiming that he could do almost anything as an old man that he could do earlier, except that it took him much longer.

Old people are often imbued with a breadth of experience and wisdom which may or may not be merited; but it can be enjoyed nonetheless. " 'Vantage number one!", as Rudyard Kipling's Bi-colored Python Rock Snake said to the (in)satiably curious Elephant's Child.¹

A nine-year-old girl watches with great interest as her mother's father pours his cream- and sugar-laden coffee into a saucer, picks up the saucer with both hands, blows across the steaming liquid, and slurps at it with obvious pleasure, ending in a satisfied exhalation. Her grandmother explains that in old age, this is allowed; when and if the child ever lives long enough, she will earn the same right. (I'm still waiting, of course, even though I'm a grandfather!) So the aged are often treated with some affection and tolerance, at least by grandmothers. 'Vantage of aging number two.

As an ambitious young physician, I was resentful when drafted into the U S Navy, interrupting my residency in surgery. Having graduated from medical school at age 22, too young for my own good, I was chock full of those humoral and spiritual mediators that make young men do things, both great and foolish. Worse, coming off a typical insanity promoting 36 hours on, 12 hours off surgery residency schedule, I suddenly found myself on a Seaplane Tender,² responsible only for the (usually genital) health of several hundred young men. At the time, aircraft carriers were commanded by pilots rather than "line", or Naval Academy Line officers. The navy would select promising pilots with the rank of captain and put them in command of our seaplane tender, even though as aviators they had never before commanded a ship. Twice a year we took on a new hot-blooded pilot captain who was being groomed for command of an aircraft carrier. His job was to learn the art of sea captains, and in the process introduce himself to the Fifth ( then the Pacific Theater) Fleet and the various ports of call in the Western Pacific. The job of the ship's personnel was to assist in that process. Excepting for minimal involvement in the ongoing problems between Taiwan and mainland China, we saw no conflictive duty.

A typical six-month period involved visits to Honolulu, Manila or Cebu, Okinawa, Yokosuka, and one month duty in Hong Kong as Station Ship. As (Hong Kong) Station Ship Medical officer, my duties were to assign watch duty for visiting USN ships in port, to try to limit social, toxic and infectious illness among sailors, and to maintain medical liaison with the very British people at the Royal Naval Hospital. During most six-month tours, we were required to lay over several weeks in some port while repairs were made, due to the learning curve of our captain trainee; handling a ship is quite at variance with handling a jet aircraft.

The principal military role of Seaplane Tenders was anti-submarine warfare and Seaplane support, which required considerable electronic gear and a large supply of aviation gasoline. The Seaplane Tender prepared and swept the sea lanes of obstruction and provided fuel and support for the planes and their crew. Among my other duties were those related to seadromes, like the manning of ambulance boats during sea plane operations. In order for ship-bound pilots to maintain flight currency, arrangements were often made for them to fly while in port, and I was invited to accompany them frequently, delegating medical watch to capable corpsmen and the in-port medical team.

Despite my rather consciously passive-aggressive un-nautical attitude and behavior, I was treated kindly and tolerantly by my fellow officers. I was resentful and bored; I read all of Will and Ariel Durant's 11-volume History,³ (offered by the Book of the Month Club for $1 as inducement to membership) and much of the 50-volume Harvard Classics,⁴ (which, like Robert Maynard Hutchin's and Mortimer Adler's Great Books of the Western World, is devoted mainly to the writings of DWM⁵). I played chess and the classic guitar. I was completely unaware that I would never again have the opportunity to live such an indulgent and extravagant existence, or be paid to do so. Unaware of what real hard time was, I felt abused! Through the perspective of these past 35 years, I know how well those "wasted" years in the Navy have served me. If one survives and learns, no life experience is wasted. To the contrary, the more difficult periods serve us best. I'd later learn that when one has failed miserably in a great cause, and accepted responsibility for that outcome, the experience promotes tolerance, equanimity, and strength. 'Vantage number 3 of aging is Perspective.

Why is it that people with the least life left to live, seem to have the most time for living life? My wife's mother, Lala, once an active lawyer, sits at the beach and tells stories to my daughter. The stories are varied: a cow swallows a little girl who didn't mind her mother; the movie plot of "The Exorcist" or "Damion" or "Gone With The Wind". The details of the story aren't critical, nor are they exactly those of the original, and the story inches forward slowly along a convoluted path, with frequent interruptions and comments from a growing audience of children at the beach, who have gathered around over the past hours. She speaks slowly and clearly, with much inflection, animation, and facial expression. I, on the other hand, often rush through a story I am reading aloud, skipping a piece here or there, because I'm in a hurry. Old age has allowed Lala to get back to basics. Her life in retirement is simplified. She has little and needs little. Her wider obligations are limited to her family and friends. Beyond the demands of her personal ambition, beyond obligations to her own children, she is content in the knowledge that in the timeless telling of a story can be found all the truth and beauty of human experience. And her listeners, on some unconscious level, hear her deeper message. I like to imagine the message is something like this:

"We have come to life from the unknown, on a wonder-filled journey. We are all the living dust of stars. You and I share the experience of being closest to the extremes of our life journey. That is why we can take time to wonder. That is why we like to hear and tell this story, which makes no sense excepting in context of the unknowns of living on earth."

'Vantage number 4 of old age is to be more free to focus on the basic mysteries of existence. After all, it may be the last chance we have.

¹The Just So Stories. Rudyard Kipling. "How the Elephant Got His Trunk"
²USS Orca, AVP-49
³The Story of Civilization, Will & Ariel Durant. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1957
⁴The Harvard Classics, Charles Eliot. Collier & Son, New York, 1909
⁵Dead White Males, who appreciated the beauty, but seldom the power or the potential or achievement of women, and nonwhites. These include Kipling; despite his moving poetry in The Sons of Martha and Gunga Din, he will not be forgiven for his "White Man's Burden."