When my wife, Pammy, and I read an article in the October 2014 issue of the Atlantic we were stunned at first and then the light came on for me. Pammy was an oncology nurse for most of her career so she understood already. We discussed the article and it made sense to me as well. We understood it. At the time the article was written we were 61 years old and now Pammy has been gone, dead from lung cancer, for two years. Ezekiel Emanual, the brother of Rahm, wrote this life-changing article, WHY I HOPE TO DIE AT 75 adding its subtitle, “An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly.” We read it and reread it. We talked about it together and with friends and family. The article opened up life for us. It still makes all the sense in the world.
Whoa! Stop! For your own sake and your children’s sake and for the good of all please don’t dismiss my essay out of hand. Put my words aside for now and read and then reread the fucking article and think about it. You believe it will be different for you, don’t you? You will be the exception to his nonsense. Your life will be vastly improved with the next medical step recommended for you, eh? Why are you one of the lucky ones who will remain vibrant and healthy with a vastly improved life after a heart surgery or vascular procedure? Why? We cannot all be outliers in this world where age and death creep up on us only to have modern medicine give us a few more months and years at a horrible cost. By definition outliers are the exceptions.
You are not the exception to the rule. I am not an exception to the laws of nature. You and I are the rule. Simply put, for every apparently vibrant 90 year old you see there are ten thousand more living desperate and hollow lives because medicine extended their life far beyond anything resembling quality. So stop. Please stop. It may not seem so right now but read between the lines and open yourself up to examination. Mine is an uplifting story, a tale of hope and celebration. When Pammy died I gradually grew to know that my living was and is a gift. Not a gift from Pammy. A gift from the universe, from the cosmos, from life itself. I took matters into my own hands deciding that I was not going to waste a moment as I continued my journey, my final seven years, to make way for the living. I had said it before but now I chose to live it. Yes, I am on the short end of the runway but I still have a horizon to explore and foothills to fly over and river valleys to paddle through.
I decided to do one thing per month that was outside my comfort zone. I decided to do things where risk is involved. I decided to “date” women and make new friends and travel a bit and learn more about what I will never learn fully. I decided to live as though I would die at 75 years of age. Simply put, I decided to live and embrace the last 7 years of my life. So, fuck yes, I am going to die soon enough but for the past two years as well as the next five years I am living life and loving it.
I will not here rehash the minutiae of my journey these past two years. You can find a record of much of it on social media. I have used Facebook to record some of the pics and people and chances I took. There as well is the grief I slogged through getting to where I am now. I will only refer back to some of it in reference to what I am doing today or this upcoming week or next month. I may reference my past to explain my plans for my future. I am too busy living to rehash it all. I am not a novelist nor a journalist nor a person inclined to autobiography. I am nearly 70 years of age with some acute ADHD. I am intense and I am hard to live with at times. I also have a penchant for moving on quickly without allowing the present to become a regrettable past. Do I meditate? Yes, quickly though. I paint in broad strokes and I can leave a fairly sizable wake. I am grateful for my past and for now.
Today it is March 15, 2023 and I have just returned from four months at the house Pammy and I built in the Yucatan. I sold our house in Michigan last year. Now I am planning a packrafting trip for June this summer in far northern California, a two month-fall trip to Portugal and Spain and the Azores, then I’ll be heading back down to the Yucatan for several months next winter and planning to build a second, smaller home there. I will have plenty of time to think about it all when I go on my third road trip of the past 18 months from LA to Michigan. It starts on Sunday. I left my car in LA and my “teardrop” trailer in Tucson when I flew last fall to Cancun and then took the bus to Valladolid. I have driven 18,000 miles since Pammy died and part of it was going to visit my closest and younger sister, Marie, in December of 2022 right before she died. This next month of April 2023 though I will rent an apartment in Grand Rapids and visit with some of my oldest friends and family there for a couple of months. I need an American home base from which I can depart and explore life.
I’m writing these essays to remind myself that life is worth living fully and that it is vital for me to follow my impulsive ideas in order to fight inertia and indifference. I also hope to inform my grand-daughters, Noa and Avery, about how utterly crazy and happy and sometimes sad I am about moving on after their Grandma Pammy’s death. It has been a wild ride and even through intermittent tears I am loving it.
A cross country infatuation kept me afloat for the first year after Pammy died. 
Exploring all that is new and possible.
Pam asked for her ashes to be spread with the ashes of a dozen dogs that she loved. Beautiful rendition of “Make Way for the Living” by Harry Manx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxwak-kV40A