Done Too Soon

This is going to be a short treatise on the nature of growing old. This year, if all goes well, I’ll celebrate my 70^th birthday.

I’ll be honest. I had to read that again. Out loud. Birthdays start piling up on you after a while. Then they get sneaky and surprise you. I can’t remember ever actively thinking about living long enough to celebrate my 70^th birthday—yet here it is. It’s right around the corner, peaking at me when it thinks I’m not looking. The white-haired, bearded fellow in the picture I'm including today had black hair once-upon-a-time. Life is about change.

As I’ve aged, more and more of the people who raised me, taught me, served as examples to me, and helped me discover who I wanted to become have left this world for whatever lies beyond. For example, I started working at the Oklahoma Department of Human Services back in 1978. Virtually everyone who was there when I started has since passed away or retired. The people who work there now are strangers.

My memories of those early days as I carved out the future lying ahead of me are fond ones—for the most part—but even the unpleasant memories have been softened by the passage of time. I owe a lot of who I am to a few of those people. They shaped my attitudes, taught me skills I still use, and they bring a smile to my face when I think of them.

I was an English major, and I taught school for a while. Literature was my forte in those days, and I still remember quite a bit of it. I have a number of favorite poets, but let’s start with John Keats. One of his most well-known poems starts out:

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has gleaned my teaming brain…

He’s talking about unfinished business. While we may start out with enthusiastic glee as we begin the race life presents us, we eventually realize we may not be around long enough to do everything we envisioned.

Songwriters are also poets. Neil Diamond has a powerful song named “Done Too Soon.” After providing a list of historical figures, he concludes with:

And each one there

Has one thing shared.

They have sweated beneath the same sun.

Looked up in wonder at the same moon.

And wept when it was all done.

For bein’ done too soon.

In his poem “Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth talks about the process of life beginning before birth and returning to that beginning after death. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” leads on to “clouds gathering around a setting sun.”

In our youth, many of our life decisions and actions are made with an unspoken belief we’re going to live forever. As we get older, we understand we’re not going to be around forever.

We’ve all had loved ones and friends who have passed away. Some of those deaths were expected due to the person’s age or health, but a good number of them arrived without warning. All death is inescapably tragic in the sense that a life that once was vibrant and filled with wonder and expectation is now just—gone. When we think of those we have lost, our memories bring them to life again for just a little while, and we’re comforted by the belief we may see them again someday.

On the positive side, there’s much in life to bring a smile to my face. I love my wife, and my heart skips a beat when she looks my way. My granddaughter is young enough to see the world through the same youthful eyes I saw it through when I was her age. I smile when I think about the wonders awaiting her. She’s growing up in a far different world than I, but I appreciate the excitement of discovery.

That’s just how life works.

We’ll all be “done too soon” someday. I hope those who remember us take a moment or two as they sit back and close their eyes to allow those memories to bring us back to the world of the living—if only for a short while.

Take care. Be safe.

cma