Stayed at the party too long

When you live in the Southeast, you get a couple of nice snows each winter. Because it was infrequent, it always made me giddy. Even with just a few inches of snow most things shut down for the day, and it was always a good reason to play hooky, warm the house with comfort food, or get the sled out.

Tim had bought a real toboggan, from LL Bean or some such place, when Leyla was young. After one of the great February snows, long after Leyla had grown, Tim and I grabbed the toboggan and our neighbor Katie and her young girls, Maggie and Riley. There was a perfect hill on the Davidson College campus across the street from our home. It sloped from the student union down to a practice field (which has since become a parking lot). I think we were able to get four of us at a time on that thing. We had an hour of fun before others left, and only Tim and I remained.  When we thought we’d had enough, we dragged the toboggan to the other side of the field as we headed toward home, but we both stopped when we noticed a double slope – two small hills which flattened out briefly in the middle where a sidewalk cut through. We looked at each other and said, let’s try this before we go home! Tim got on the front. I got on the back. You always put more weight on the front for speed!

So off we went, down the first slope, and as we leveled out on the snow-covered sidewalk, we took a hard bounce. We both let out a groan as we continued over the next hill when the same act of physics occurred. We rolled off onto our sides and moaned. With bruised tailbones, we slowly rose and walked the rest of the way home shaking our heads.

This became known as the time we stayed at the party too long. It’s that moment where you have had so much fun and you think, well, maybe I can be even more content if I stay one more hour or day, have one more serving, or do “it” one more time. There is a line. The law of diminishing returns. Reward isn’t infinite. And this brings me to life and death.

Many people say, as long as I have quality of life, I want to live. That’s certainly how I feel. But there is a problem with that ideal. As we age, there may not be a clear line. Where is it? We may end up staying at the party too long, as quality of life diminishes around us, and not have a choice about when we leave.

As an adult, I have lost two grandparents, the Dad who raised me, a biological father, and my husband.  Each of these losses happened in different ways and had their own brand of grief for me. My grandmother passed at age 100. She had a long party. And I am not here to question or debate how good those last 20 years were for her.

By all accounts my Dad died too young at age 67. And due to the circumstances of his illness, he certainly suffered during his last year. To what degree, I don’t think I can really say, but I do know, he still had a lot of life that year too.

Tim’s death is the one that has shaken me and shaped me. And it’s the one that conjures up the deepest questions. As said in a previous post, Tim anticipated dying young. And when it came right down to it, I know that he wasn’t exactly ready to die when he did. But, I also know that his biggest fear (besides heights!) was aging. Physically and mentally diminishing. And all of the unknowns that lay ahead were all too well known for him because of his own experiences as a physician.  

Watching people suffer fed Tim’s desire to rewrite the rules of the Universe. He said, “if I was in charge of this whole thing, everyone would live to the age of 100. Everyone. Guaranteed. Healthy all along the way. There would be no disease, no trauma, no violence that would end your life before that. And then on the eve of your 100^th birthday, your family and friends would have a blowout party with you. You would get tucked into your comfy bed, go to sleep, and never wake up.”

This may be hard to understand, it may even seem inappropriate, but within a few weeks of Tim’s death, I began to feel a sense of relief for him. Tim left the party before growing too old or too ill. Before his quality of life diminished. Before, he was unable to make choices. And since Tim believed that aging was overrated, I am comforted in knowing that maybe his stay at the party was just the right length for him.