Those Bright Sparks Burning Out

I had a new thought about death today. Or maybe it's really about aging.

My friends may think I dwell on aging--obsess, even--because about 100 times a day I mention that I don't like it. So fine, if they want to call that "dwelling on" it, let them. I just hate this whole growing old thing. The physical aging part. The wrinkles, the aches, the disappearing eyebrows (why is this one for women only?). You know the list. In contrast, I like the psychic aging. Gaining wisdom (anyway, enough to know I don't know anything). Gaining self-knowledge. Gaining perspective.

But back to death. The new realization I have refers to "celebrity death," for lack of a better term. The pantheon of actors and singers and politicians I grew up with are dying off. The inevitability of death seems stronger as their stars twinkle out. I know, I know. If something is inevitable, how can it be more inevitable? But there it is. They were alive to us, and then they died. Elizabeth Taylor, Esther Williams, Nelson Mandela, Mike Wallace, Jack Lemmon. 
It's "What, you, too? You died?" Even George Burns--and he offered such hope for kicking the habit. 

This inevitability of death thing doesn't apply to the young deaths, the deaths that sock us in the gut with their untimeliness. Marilyn, Elvis, Janis Joplin, John Denver, Marvin Gaye, John Lennon, Philip Seymour Hoffman. (And I'm all too well aware that my sense of "untimely" has changed as I've aged. I once thought age 60 was pretty old--time to die. Now 70 is untimely. Give me another decade and age 80 will rock my world.)

As I grow older death seems closer. As it should. As it is. But it seems closer as the light of these people flickers out. 

Hoarding? Not so much

I've often thought of myself as a hoarder. Certainly there is the damning evidence of my overflowing basement and jammed-full file cabinets. And there certainly is the Grandma Myrtie gene. But recently I realized that hoarding is very different from accumulating, which is what I have done.

In truth, I'm quite the cleaner-outer. How satisfying it is to take a load of clothes to Goodwill. How liberating to give the younger generation a bunch of old jewelry I no longer wear, to throw out files no long needed. I have my share of personality disorders, but hoarding, as I understand it, is not among them. 

I've given some thought to this lately because a month or so ago I unearthed  the daily calendars I have been saving for much of my adult life. The oldest I've found is 1975, but I think a small cache of little Hallmark calendars from the late 60s and early 70s may yet turn up. I'm not hoarding these calendars. I'm saving them--the fossil evidence of staff meetings and doctor appointments and book club get-togethers.

I've started a project of extracting a modicum of information from the calendars to record brief summaries of the years of my life. When I finish a year (10-12 lines of text), I throw out the calendar. Ah, de-accumulating in action.

And what fun I have been having! I had totally forgotten about being on a volleyball team in 1978. And I coached Rachel's Odyssey of the Mind team! (It took me a while to decode "OM at my house.") It's been very satisfying to remember old friends I had not thought about in a long time: Diane Keaton (no, not that Diane Keaton) and Barb Nykoruk and Suzanne Hunt

Some calendar artifacts have remained a mystery. What does "Rainbow," occurring once or twice a week during 1987, mean? And who was Annette Bourget, whom I met on Saturday mornings or on weekday evenings? A massage therapist? A chiropractor? A counselor of some sort? Really mystifying is Velma Jean Glowacki, whom I noted was "off" on some Monday's and Fridays. How could I forget a name like Velma Jean, who was so important in my life I had to remember when she was "off?"

I've had to ask myself why I am devoting this time and energy to looking backward instead of forward. Do I feel the important parts of my life are over, and I'm trying to capture them? Am I afraid of becoming demented and losing my life in the process of losing my memory?  In truth, I don't think it's that dark. Mostly I just want to clean out the basement and preserve some data that would otherwise be lost forever. Important only to me.