Date: 2010-01-09
To: Musings on Life
Miles today: 0.0

In a recent journal entry, I stated my belief that ¢when it¢s your time, it¢s your time.¢ This morning, as usual, I was reading the Washington Post as I drank my first cup of coffee of the day. I always read the obituaries last. If I¢m not in there, then I get a shower and go to work. So this morning, I¢m reading about this Japanese guy, Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who just died at the ripe old age of 93. According to his obituary, he was in Hiroshima on business that August day in 1945 when the U.S. dropped the first-ever atomic bomb on the city. Mr. Yamaguchi suffered burns on his upper body, but survived. He remained there overnight, and then fled the city, returning to his home town. Three days later, the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Mr. Yamaguchi¢s home town. He became the only officially recognized survivor of both bombings. When it¢s NOT your time¢¦ I rest my case.I don¢t usually read whole obituaries, just certain parts. I read their name, sort of out of respect for the dead if you know what I mean. And then I check their age. If the person is really old ¢ in their ¢90s or better ¢ I take heart. They are my heroes, especially the ones over 100. If they are in their 50¢s or 60¢s, I feel sort of badly for them, but statistically, I need them. It¢s a game of actuarial odds, you see. For me to live to be 100, I need for a certain proportion of my peers to, well, sort of drop out of the race early so to speak. To them, I shall forever be grateful.   I also check the cause of death, mostly out of curiosity. My favorite is the one where the person is like 105 years old, and the obituary says: ¢No cause of death was given¢. And I¢m like: ¢GUYS! He was old as DIRT. He died of OLD AGE!¢ Another favorite, for really old people, is ¢failure to thrive¢.   Wull, yeah, if he¢s like DEAD, I¢d have to go along with that one. I then quickly peruse all of the exciting things the person did with their days here on this spinning orb, mostly looking for the tabloid material: How many wives, husbands, ¢companions¢, ¢prior relationships¢, etc. did they have? Any jail time? Did they get their 15 minutes of fame? If so, why? Did they do something really brilliant to advance the cause of humanity? Or something unbelievably stupid? Or were they just in the right/wrong place at the wrong/right time? Every story is different, and every one has something to commend it. Finally, I check to see if they were still married when they died, and ¢ if so ¢ how that relates to their age and gender. Here¢s what¢s interesting about that: if you¢re a guy, and you¢ve died relatively young, I¢ll lay odds that you were never married, or you were married, but divorced, and there¢s no ¢surviving companion¢ listed. According to some studies, if a guy at least has a dog to keep him company, he improves his longevity. Obituaries, however, never mention pets. Unless, of course, the pet was the cause of death, which sometimes happens, but that¢s another story.   (See ¢The Bear Whisperer¢ in an up-coming journal entry.) On the other hand, if you¢re a guy and you¢re, like, really, really old when you die, then I can just about GUARANTEE the obituary will list a wife or long-term companion as a survivor. Let¢s face it, guys: we don¢t do that well on our own. Don¢t ask why, ¢cause I don¢t have a clue. And don¢t take MY word for it, read them for yourself. You¢ll see. There will be some dude who just died at age 101. He fought in a couple of World Wars, survived the Great Depression, pandemics, earthquates, fires, and I don¢t know what all, and the obituary will invariably end with ¢He is survived by his wife of 87 years, Mrs. Ida Mae Jones.¢ Oh, that¢s another thing. They WILL outlive us. In fact, if it¢s an older lady who has gone on to her just reward, you will rarely find a surviving husband. I wonder if that has anything to do with the Guy Upstairs deciding that they should only have to put up with us for a certain reasonable period of time, and then they get a break. I don¢t know. I probably shouldn¢t make light of all this. There are a whole lot of really special relationships out there, all of which I salute and applaud. Some might argue that my attempt at bringing a bit of humor to a morbid subject like obituaries is like ¢whistling past the cemetery¢. Maybe. But I just figure life is too short, no matter how long it lasts, to take ourselves (or others) too seriously. Plus, I happen to believe that stress is what really shortens our lives, and that the best stress-reliever is to laugh out loud, as often as possible. Preferably at some really stupid human trick you¢ve just seen ¢ or performed. The A.T. will provide ample opportunity to laugh at ourselves, and in that aspect alone will probably add years to our lives. If you don¢t believe me, read the Journal entry from my ¢05 hike of Thursday, March 17.I rest my case.