Life hits the gas pedal

Life comes at you pretty fast sometimes.

I don’t believe for a minute the notion that everything slows down as you age into your senior years.

Which is fine by me. I'd rather have exciting than dull, adventure than commonplace, an unexpected future than repetition of the past.

A new grandson, my daughter's first wedding anniversary, the death of a friend and other events have collided in the last couple of weeks to prove that life doesn’t stand still.

Speaking of a grandson ...

He is Bradley Joseph, born to my stepdaughter Kelsey and her husband Jeremy. This kid is long, long as in string-bean long, and you get the sense of a baby who will become a boy who will become a man who is tall and lanky.

Bradley’s older sister Rylin is a few months short of 2, and she suddenly went from being the baby to being the older sister, more engaged, more talking, more animated. It was like the birth of Bradley switched on something in Rylin that made her almost instantly more grown.

And all that makes the grandparents more engaged, especially in these early weeks as we try to lend a helping hand, not only with Bradley but with Rylin as well. Jane and I will be taking Rylin to water babies swimming lessons starting next Saturday a deja vu moment all over again, reminiscent of my water baby classes with my daughter Elizabeth and son David at the YMCA pool in Beverly, Mass.

Speaking of my water baby ...

Elizabeth and her husband John celebrated their first wedding anniversary by making a trip north from their home in Connecticut to the Colony Hotel in Kennebunkport, Maine, site of one of the best days of my life.

And speaking of life ...

We can't go through life without its companion death.

As I often do at a time of someone's passing, I think to the advice of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives," he said. "But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived."

My friend and Seacoast Media Group colleague Tom Davis passed away on Wednesday. I didn't know he was sick, had even exchanged emails with him that morning on the sale of the group.

We spent many years at work together before our retirements - he has finance director, me as director of operations. He was the money guy who understood more than anybody how the money was earned and how it was spent, which he would sometimes calculate on a big electric adding machine on his desk, fingers a blur as he could touchtype on a key pad the way I could touchtype on a keyboard.

These new chapters in the book of life don't end, really, they seem to unfold into deeper levels of characterization and subplots, one that require us to keep living, keep reading ahead.

Living with mortality

Jean-Luc Picard, starship captain who
knows a thing or two about mortality.

We live with our mortality, we just don’t think about it very often.

It’s the in-your-face reminders that put our mortality top of mind and, for those moments, make getting older difficult for Baby Boomers.

Two examples were in my face this week, both involving former co-workers at a Massachusetts newspaper company where I worked for many years.

I went to the wake and funeral of one of those co-workers. He was my age, of my sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll generation. He engaged in two of the three to the max and still managed a long career at the paper before lung cancer killed him.

We say to ourselves: That can’t happen to me. I’m different, we say. I take care of myself, we say. Yet, in the seeming randomness of it all, it can happen to us -- to any of us.

It was at the wake that I learned that another co-worker is battling a brain tumor.

Here is someone, while older, took care of himself, was active in retirement, has good medical care.

And yet - the tumor, the seeming randomness of it all.

Certainly, we prefer the more pleasant in-your-face reminders that we’re getting older:

When our kids have grown-up jobs. When our kids get married. When our kids buy their first house. When our kids start having our grandbabies.

In those cases, when we get up in the morning, we can still see the 20 and 30 year old behind the lines in our faces.

When we get up in the morning for the funeral of a former co-worker the same age, we see every line, wrinkle and fissure for what it is - a path to mortality.

It’s how we walk that path that determines how we live with it.

We can’t run from it. We need to come to terms with it in whatever way helps ease the journey.

I take my cue from, of all people, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of the starship USS Enterprise.

In the 1994 movie “Star Trek: Generations” he speaks to his first officer, William Riker:

“Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey — reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all, Number One, we're only mortal.”

A time for every purpose

Every Christmas I look forward to that Moment that helps redefine and remind me what the season is all about.

It didn’t happen this year, and that’s okay because instead of a Moment helping remind me of the meaning of the season, various events of the season reminded me of the importance of family.

And when I talk of family, I’m talking about family in the broadest, most extended of terms.

Our extended family in the course of eight days experienced a death and a funeral, a Christmas open house for 30 people, and a birth.

And through each emotional phase, family leaned on family for support and it didn’t matter if it was child or stepchild, husband or ex-husband, wife or ex-wife, husband of ex-wife, or wife of ex-husband, mother or mother-in-law, father or father-in-law.

The extended family has been redefined by marriages, divorces and remarriages. Families become a blended blend of far-reaching ingredients.

As it was, this was going to be a Perfect Storm Christmas.

My very large family gets together every other year to celebrate the holiday, usually at my mother’s in Maine with the opening of presents and feasting on roast beast.

This year, however, my wife Jane’s family was also gathering here in anticipation of a Jan. 1 due date of a first granddaughter.

So Jane and I volunteered to make our home Christmas Day Central for an open house and buffet for about 30 people.

But, during the run-up in our preparations, Jane’s ex-husband’s wife Cheryl passed away, fighting the good fight against cancer for as long as she could.

Focus shifted. Emotional strength marshaled. We cried at the loss. Celebrated the life.

All this against the backdrop that Cheryl’s daughter Jenn is getting married on New Year’s Day.

And then we immediately upshifted to celebrate Christmas Day with food, drink, the din of conversation and the merriment of Christmas songs.

And wouldn’t you know? The baby that wasn’t due until New Year’s Day decided she wanted to be born on the day after Christmas.

Stepdaughter Kelsey and her husband Jeremy headed to the hospital within a few hours after our party ended.

So focus shifted again. More emotional strength was marshaled. And family gathered at the hospital to await the birth of Rylin Anne, the newest member of our extended family.

Now Rylin shares the same birthday as her aunt, Reilly, Jane’s daughter and Kelsey’s sister.

Through the week, as events shifted and emotions ran from high to low and low to high, the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds kept spinning around in my head:

To everything Turn, Turn, Turn

There is a season Turn, Turn, Turn

And a time to every purpose, under Heaven.

Taken from Ecclesiastes it was one of the readings at Cheryl’s funeral mass.

And I guess if there was a Christmas Moment, that was at close as it came:

… A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

We did it all in the course of eight days.

Heaven can wait … for a long while

The lack of Judgment Day on Saturday, May 21, got me thinking.

Does mankind -- and womankind, for that matter -- need an official day for The Reckoning?

Don’t we, as individuals, face certain judgments, face certain reckonings at various parts in our lives?

We don’t need a firm date in order to be ready, we just need to be ready.

I think we Baby Boomers think about this because, well, we have more yesterdays behind us and fewer tomorrows ahead of us.

We’re the generation that believe we could live forever. We intend to be, after all, forever young.

But we’re aging, and that gives us some pause. It doesn’t stop us in our tracks certainly, but it can get us to thinking.

My thinking is that Harold Camping is full of crap. The world didn’t end, as he predicted, in a rumble of earthquakes on May 21. It won’t end in a ball of fire on Oct. 21, as he says now that he’s recalculated his dates.

It isn’t going to end on Dec. 21 as told by the ancient Mayans.

There are enough other Days of Reckoning that just happen, not because they’ve been foretold by a Doomsday prophet or some strange calendar.

Look at the floods and tornadoes and other weather events over the years.

I’m not saying they are products of a Rapture, but are natural events that, sadly for some, is a Judgment Day.

A visit to a doctor might reveal news of an illness that might be terminal.

I always get a little jittery on my annual visit. I’ve tried to keep myself in good health, have tried to eat an apple a day, but you never know.

My father died at age 64 of complications related to a pulmonary infection.

I’m close to 58.

It’s a weird thing with men, I think, but we expect to live longer than our fathers, but some don’t. I can’t tell you the number of stories I’ve heard or read about sons who don’t live past the age of their dads when they died.

My Day of Reckoning on that score will be June 19, 2017.

I reckon I’ll live longer than that, a lot longer is the plan. I’ll take after my mother in that regard, thank you very much. She’s still going strong at 85.

My point is that we need to live our lives the best way we can day in and day out, not according to some whack job's deadline.