by James Wallace Harris, 4/12/24
My father died at age 49, so I always thought I would die young too. I share a lot of his physical qualities, including heart problems. However, at age 72, I feel like I’ve been proven wrong. Dying before my wife is another lifelong assumption I’m starting to question. Both my grandfathers, and all seven of my uncles died before my grandmothers and aunts. What if my lifespan is more like my mother’s, who died at 91? Susan’s parents both died at 78.
I thought the reward for dying young is getting out of watching my loved ones die. Plus, I wouldn’t have to deal with getting rid of my possessions or figure out the legal aspects of what happens to my savings. I admit, one of my biggest faults is my mastery of avoiding stress. I’ve always worked on the principle that being remembered is the effortless way out.
However, what happens if Susan dies at 78 and I die at 91? I think a lifetime of deferred stress will come due all at once. Being the one to stay behind to remember all those that died must be depressingly hard. I remember my grandmother once telling me about a tontine her high school graduating class formed. It was a small group of around thirty-five, I think. My grandmother was about my age when she told me about this, and she talked about how she was one of an exceedingly small dwindling group. I never learned who was last, and I’ve forgotten what the prize was.
I’ve been feeling something like that lately because over half my cousins on both my father’s and mother’s side of the family have died. I am the oldest male cousin on my father’s side, and the youngest male cousin on my mother’s side. Of the total of twenty-six of us cousins, only two males are still here.
I often think about all the family and friends I know who have died. But up till now, the living has way outnumbered the dead. But that’s changing. I wonder about being one of those people who all their family and friends have died. To be the last of their generation. I imagine you spend a constantly growing amount of time remembering.
Susan and I don’t have children. Most of our friends don’t have children. Of my family and friends who do have kids, I can sense a stark difference in our lives as we grow old. People who have children are links in an extraordinarily long chain that continues in the future, while folks without children are the last links in an exceptionally long chain that doesn’t make it any further.
Being the end of the line must have its psychological costs, ones I can’t even begin to imagine fully. I think being that last link must come with a heavy weight of remembering. Because we don’t have children, I don’t imagine we’ll be remembered for long after we die. I’m starting to wonder about being the one who must remember.
I assume if I died first, Susan would remember me until she died, especially when she needed something done that I always did. That might be getting colanders off the top shelf or being a companion to watch Jeopardy. She will especially remember me when the cats wake her up at 5am begging to be fed. (Susan fixes their dinner.)
I want to die a natural death, and fulfill all my responsibilities, but I can’t help but think getting to leave early might be a blessing. Like I said, I’ve always believed the woman went second. Who knows, maybe they even prefer a few years without the burden of fixing dinner for a man. My mother found a kind of peace after my father died.
But another thought has occurred to me. I was always taught to let women go first. Which is the true gentlemanly thing to do at the end of time? Go first, or let her go first? I’m much better at taking care of things than Susan. She’ll be pissed off at me if I go first and leave her with all the work of closing out our lives.
And we both worry about what will happen if she and I die before our cats Ozzy and Lily. I bet anything if I died, and it was 5am and Ozzy couldn’t wake me up, he’d just start breakfasting on me. Some mornings I do wake up with Ozzy sniffing my face.
I can remember two generations that came before me, my parents and their kin, and my grandparents and their kin. But I also remember my parents and grandparents, each remembering people from two generations before them. When I’m gone, will anyone remember any of them? When my sister and I are gone, who will remember our parents? I know my sister and I are probably the only people left who think about my father. I know my cousins still think about my mother. My sister has a son, and he will remember my mother, but he never knew my father.
I don’t worry much about being remembered. Maybe that’s why I didn’t try hard to have kids. But I do like remembering.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
You should get a couple of timer-operated cat food trays and put some kibble in them. Set the clock for 0445. Should buy Linda another couple of hours in bed if she’s lucky. Works for me.
Ozzy had a urinary problem from eating too many crunchies, so we have to feed him more wet food. They get their wet food twice a day and they’ve come to expect it. They demand it. So, an automatic feeder won’t work.
Well leave wet food in the trays then.
We put money in our will for our friends to take our dogs. Not only do we have to remember, we have to provide for those who are left. Our dogs will not wind up at a shelter after we’re gone because no one could take them.
I’ve been thinking about how to do that too. I’d like to leave the cats our house since cats don’t like to change habitats.
In most states animals cannot own property so you have to do trust or leave to someone to provide care.
I’m in your shoes..sorta. I have no children and my husband went first, but early(68). It’s been almost 11 years. I had a marriage that was strained in the later years, so for me it has worked out well. I’m happier, have a few close friends and a home I enjoy and share with my ex SIL.
But my friends are all older than me and I too think of being the last one of the group. As for passing on a long line of links, I have two brothers who did that and children who will, as well.
The only thing I fear about getting older (I’m now 77) is ending up in a nursing home..trapped not wanting to live and not being able to do anything about that.
Being not religious, I don’t worry or want any afterlife. When I feel I’m ready to go, I just wish I could say “hey doc give me some pills”.
My parents fought the last seven years, so that’s why I said my mom found peace after my father died.
I worry more about paying for a nursing home. I hate the idea of wasting a bunch of money just to live a few more months or years living in misery. If I end up in a nursing home without pain, and can still read, I might be happy enough, but still I think there are better ways to spend money.
I do wish our society had had human recycle centers so when you felt like it was time to go, you could just visit a recycle center and say, “Take what you can use, and burn the rest.” And if the only uses they could find for my old body was as chicken feed or cat litter, I’d be fine with that.
Agree totally about the waste of our money so it can go to the fat cats of big Pharma, nursing home conglomerates and the like. If only we were in Europe where they have a more fair and sensible healthcare system that doesn’t send people in the poor house.
Hi Jim:
What a lovely article.
What is it about our ego that we want to be remembered? Is this a healthy desire from a spiritual perspective?
With long term special relationships, who leaves the relationship first for the other to grieve the loss of is an interesting question to consider. Death is final corporally, but the loss of partners through divorce and estrangement also provides the opportunities for grief and most people are familiar with.
Life is a classroom of sorts and if we leave the relationship first we don’t have the opportunity to learn from it as we would if we are left to grieve and reflect on the meaning of it when we lose the other person.
Our legacies extend to hundreds if not thousands of people beyond the person we have had the special relationship with and they will remember something of us, if not our physical person, something of the experience of coming to know us, about us.
I would be sad if you pass before me. I am 78 and so chronologically should die before you. If that is the case, I don’t care if you remember our online association or not, but I will miss you you if you die before me and have a huge sense of gratitude and feeling of being blessed by your ideas and sentiments expressed in your writing.
Thanks for such kind thoughts, David. I think all of us in the nonfiction book club would miss you and think about you if you go before us. It’s interesting, but I’ve known several people on the internet who have died, and it does leave a hole. Until you brought it up, I didn’t think about it. But I remember a lot of people I’ve never met because of the internet.
I try to be grateful for everything. I feel very lucky. For every bad experience I’ve ever had, I was always aware that there were other people have similar experiences but way worse than me. I have nothing to complain about, and everything to be thankful for.
Wonderful post! Being privy to your train of thought is like enjoying an actual scenic train ride.
For me, pondering the “who goes first” topic is like you pondering the care of your kitties. I’m the single parent of a challenged grown child. Any thought about my exit is frightening for them. Thankfully I have a younger child who gracefully accepts that some day they’ll be taking over from me.
These thoughts sometimes keep me awake at night until I recognize the anxiety is a waste of time — I’m making myself experience something that I won’t experience when it happens — because I’ll be dead! Eventually working my slow-witted way to that conclusion (for the umpteenth time!) is a comfort, making me realize that while I’m alive I can only do what I can and beyond that it’s out of my hands.
All this is just to say, I’m with you in not wanting to linger on, dependent on others for my care*, but sometimes I think it would be better if I at least linger long enough so that the transition from myself to a new caretaker isn’t sudden and traumatic. I mean, of course most of us would vastly prefer making a sudden departure!**
*Somehow I read your more recent post about deleting apps before this one, so now when I picture being an old helpless person at a care home, I also picture my gnarled old hand tightly clutching my cell phone. That image is going to stick in my head for awhile. It’s already been popping into my head when I pick up my phone, which I do a few times a day. hahahahaha Did I say a day? I meant an hour! 😉
** I love that Will Rogers quote:
“When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.”