I'll see you in Lavendar.

That means the same as “Sure as the coffin lid closing” and this blog is just as serious. It’s probably a good sequel to the last one where I talked happily about puttering aimlessly all day in the sunshine.

For the past five years some of my friends and acquaintances and other people in my age group whom I know, and younger, have cashed the big check. Died. (It won’t jump on you if you just say it.) Four months ago I asked a casual friend what was new and he said he had a brain tumor and had been given six weeks to live. He actually lasted eight. It was quick.

One of the non-drinking guys that I worked with, who is two years younger than me was cut off at the pass by lung cancer a year and a half ago. I was fortunate to be with him when he died to wish him a safe journey. His granddaughter and I had a hand on each leg and he sighed and died. Peacefully. There was a nice lingering moment before all the women started screaming and crying where the kid said “Guess he’s with Jesus now,” and I said “Yeah with cookies too.”

Couple guys older than me died this past year. Some of the dead smoked, some didn’t, some inhaled welding fumes. Some ran a mile a day and ate turkey for lunch and birdseed in their cereal for breakfast. Sometimes it was a Big Surprise. But in the end, they all lost that momentum and left this life.

For all of those years most of my waking time was taken up by somebody else. Before that most of my waking time was taken up by being a dutiful son at home, a studious kid at school and a pious kid at church. After that for thirty and some years I worked for somebody or other to make money to pay bills, raise a family, provide food, initiate good times.

Than I retired. And I had a plan for retirement because I watched my Dad work until he was sixty, make a lot of money, retire with the plan of traveling with Mom. And die from cancer two years later. Leaving Mom with all that money and no traveling companion. So my plan was to retire as early as possible, have less money, but more time for me to do all the stuff I couldn’t do in my home life, school life, work life. And I have done that.

Except for the occasional doctor’s visit my days and nights are my own. Like in the previous blog. I answer to my desire to do numerous and silly things without constraint. Just because I want to. In the last eight years I have taken a lot of naps just because I could. Have dated a zillion women (I don’t care if you disapprove, go stuff it!) because I love women. I have fallen afoul of one truly evil woman, a couple crazy ones and lots of really nice ones. I have gone to model railroad shows, driven to Cincinnati and Hanover just because I wanted to and (Hanover) just because I’d never been there. (Not much there.) On the spur of the moment. I like being the master of my time and I thirst for more of it because I’ve waited fifty seven years to get here.

So you can love me or love me twice or marry me or cohabit with me. Or have intimacy with me. But the ultimate plan is going to be how stifled I feel in having the freedom to plan my odd little projects, to take photos of the absolutely ridiculous , to visit somebody whose name I don’t know in a nursing home. You may be angry at my single mindedness or I may break your heart but biology and degeneration and some physician’s announcement is going to stop my life mass one of these days and I want to get all the experience in that I can, for good or bad, while the mass still has some momentum. I’ll be your friend forever but you can’t have most of my time.

And that’s just how it is. You can call it “My Way or the Highway” and I won’t be offended. All good things in this life come to an end with death and I want to be able to say that, for this limited time, I did what I wanted to. Ta!