Point of View
Turning 80--it's all gravy, 'and don't forget it'
80th birthday is no less a blessing than a soldier turning 21
By Carl Heintze
My doctor used to tell me that "passing through your 70s is like walking through a minefield."
And it was.
But it isn't any longer. This month I walked out of the minefield. I turned 80.
I find this almost unbelievable. I never thought I'd live to be 80. In fact, when I was 20, I never thought I would live to be 21.
That's because my 21st birthday arrived as I was on my way to Europe to be an infantry replacement during World War II.
I never expected to come back.
But I did and it taught me a lesson. Ever afterward, as the years went by, my birthday became another blessing. And it still is. I had lived another year.
I felt like a poem by Raymond Carver, the short-story writer, who died far too young, of cancer. He called life (and the poem) Gravy. The work was found in his papers after his death.
Carver wrote: "After all, it was all gravy, every minute of it ... I'm a lucky man. I've lived 10 years longer than I or anyone expected. Pure gravy. And don't forget it."
And that's what each birthday after my 70th was: gravy.
I suppose that shouldn't have been so surprising, but it was. I kept moving though my seventh decade. I had friends who were the same age, friends who grew old along with me. I thought most of them would live longer than I would. I thought most of them probably were healthier than I was.
They played golf. I didn't. Some had been football players in high school and college. They worked hard at staying in shape. They were confident--or so it seemed to me--that they would live forever.
Having been close to death for a year, I wasn't so confident. I thought of life as a gift and myself as finite.
But as we moved into our 70s, I found the doctor was right. One by one, they began stepping on figurative mines. One by one the minefield of life got them.
For some reason, it didn't get me. I don't know why.
Good genes, somebody told me. I suppose that's true. From lack of venture, from playing it safe. Maybe. I'm not sure what happened, but it has. And being 80 is no less a blessing than being 21.
Indeed, it doesn't really seem much different.
Oh, I do need a nap once a day, and I find I go to bed a lot earlier than I used to. The expenditure of energy takes longer to replace than it used to. Memories of the distant past often seem fresher than those of what's not far away. I think that may be because nothing much memorable has been happening in the last few years except the passage of time--no great triumphs, but no great tragedies either. Time seems to have speeded up, however, as if it is getting impatient to be done with me.
I can understand that. I'm not doing much for time but passing it. I know I should be doing more, but somehow it seems more important to take things more slowly, to contemplate, to dream a little.
I wish I could say that reaching 80 has given me wisdom and insight, but, alas, it hasn't. I am no more sure about the meaning of life or death than I was when I was 21. I only know I am still in the midst of living, as much puzzled by the world as I was when I first perceived it as an adult, as much thrilled by life as I was when I was not yet able to vote.
Still, it's an important question: Why has God allowed me to live to be 80? I am still looking for the answer.
But more and more I have come to believe that that's what I am supposed to do: continue to search.
Like all men and women, I have been challenged to try to find some reason for living in a world that often seems to be without reason, to understand that love, not hate, makes us survive. I have seen that in every day there is beauty and majesty, that life should be as interesting and challenging at 80 as it was at 21.
My doctor also told me that those who live to be 80 have a better chance of making it to 90.
I don't know if I believe that or not. I don't know if I want to live to be 90. But I'm trying.
What I do want in whatever time is left is to have as much enjoyment from life as I have had the 80 years until now.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
