I have subscribed to a SubStack sight called OLDSTER MAGAZINE for well over a year now, mostly because, well.    .    .I AM OLD(ER) and they give all kinds of great advice on aging/becoming older/adjusting and learning to live this ever changing DIFFERENT LIFESTYLE.  They interview a host of folks, both know/unknown; famous and just ordinary folks, usually by asking these following questions, yes of which I will now too answer on this my 70th Birthday:

HOW OLD ARE YOU:
I’m just now 70 on August 6

IS THERE ANOTHER AGE YOU ASSOCIATE WITH YOURSELF IN MIND?  IF SO, WHAT IS IT? AND WHY DO YOU THINK?
31.  I just had remarried that year a couple of months before turning 31.  I was in the best shape of my life, still running up to 10 miles a day and completing marathons; the excitement of the new beginning of one of the most life changing relationship in my life, combining with merging our kids/family together with all of our hopes/dreams/wishes literally at our wildest imaginations, in the actual making was at its height and it was an intoxicating feeling I’ve never recovered nor sought to change.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT BEING YOUR AGE?
FREEDOM; not so much from responsibilities but from some of the things I have imprisoned myself to like expectations, or how I am seen, liked; I feel more alive than I did when I was training and running marathons; I’m much more creative now and feel almost weightless doing more (love being a chaplain at hospice now for 31 yrs, serving a small congregation, preaching, teaching, visiting, and conducting nearly 25 funerals every month and about a dozen weddings every year.  My relationships are deeper with my family and my friends, and just when I don’t think I could ever love Erin more than I do, she does something that makes me not only fall in love her all over again, but dearly love her more deeply than my mind or heart dared imagined.  I LIVE AN ENCHANTED LIFE

WHAT’S DIFFICULT ABOUT BEING YOUR AGE:
The dreaded physical limitations, aches/pains (I think I pulled a muscle in my back turning over in my sleep and lets not talk about a stiff neck if the pillow’s not in the right position).  Running has long been gone and trying to find ‘that runner’s high’ well.   .  .it’s only a dream, literally, a dream I have that I actually wake up sometimes out of breath because I dream that I am running.  Aside from that, as a hospice chaplain and a funeral officiant I am painfully discovering how many folks I serve that am younger (sometimes significantly) than I am who will never get a chance or the ability to have another Birthday, holiday, anniversary and makes me wince as I ask myself very silently, ‘WHY ME?’  This sometimes is very emotionally painful; it actually aches but also inspires me to make the best of my aches/pains/limitations.

WHAT’S SURPRISING ABOUT BEING YOUR AGE, OR DIFFERENT FROM WHAT YOU EXPECTED, BASED ON WHAT YOU WERE TOLD?
Seriously, THAT I MADE IT?  I always thought, because I was inadvertently shown or told by my grandparents and parents that anybody over 60 and retired was OLD.  I don’t know what the ‘perfect age’ to die for me might be, but I have huge hopes knowing that there’s a physician who’s 103 from Case Western University and University Hospital who still goes to work every day.  HOPE, I tell you, HOPE!  I’d sign up for that right now; show me the dotted line, I have pen in hand and will sign right now!

WHAT HAS AGING GIVEN YOU?  TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU
Clarity.  I love who I am.  I love the life I live.  I love who I’m living my life with and the relationships I have.  I feel like I don’t have just a purpose or a meaning, a reason or some mystical destiny; I know that they are now plural, not singularly for me and I know that with such clarity I’ve never known or experienced before.  It’s my big, ‘Ahhhhh-HAH!  And as for what it’s taken away, well, it’s not the mental or the spiritual or emotional, social aspects of my life, just the physical.  Damn those down the basement steps or that not so steep hill going down that makes my knees bark like a junkyard dog in a meat market.   .   .    .

WHAT IS YOUR NUMBER ONE REGRET IN LIFE?  IF YOU COULD DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN, WHAT IS THE BIGGEST THING YOU’D DO DIFFERENTLY?
Wait.    .   .what?  Do I have to answer this question?  (OF COURSE, I DON’T HAVE TO, AND IT’S NOT EVEN BECAUSE OF MY FEAR OF PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN AND LETTING YOU SEE WHAT’S BEHIND IT)  The pain of REGRET is a deep, existential pain, that even with forgiveness, THEIR’S AND MINE, I’m not so sure can be taken away or maybe, full disclosure, that I want to be forgiven, even though I believe it should be freely given and more than amply applied ALL-WAYS.  For me it’s that I got married when I shouldn’t have right out of college and before seminary because I feared more of being alone for the first time in my life than making a bad decision.  CLARIFICATION: I do not blame my first wife for this, we had plenty of blame to share, but even though I didn’t fully realize what I was doing and to bring first two beautiful daughters into this world and that chaos, EVEN THOUGH ALL HAS TURNED OUT WELL, they are wonderful and my first wife has married someone who she is completely deserving and served so often for the father I was absent of being just because of geographical distance (WOW, am I forever grateful and appreciative of him and tell him so) yeah, that still haunts me.  Forgiveness has been exceedingly given and accepted and all relationships are well and beyond cordial, yet pain was caused/experienced and has made my heart always beat differently and most likely always will and would I do it differently.  .  .well, that would mean I would never have these two beautiful daughters and three of the six grandchildren I have–quite a price to pay, huh?  NO.  Frank Sinatra and I will keep singing, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention.    .    .”

IS THERE A PIECE OF ADVICE YOU WERE GIVEN THAT  YOU LIVE BY?  IF SO, WHAT WAS IT AND WHO OFFERED IT TO YOU?
I am a huge fan of Broadway musicals and without a doubt I think my favorite Les Misérables.  There are many great songs in that play that are so powerful to me like ON MY OWN and BRING HIM HOME, but I think my favorite is near the end of the play in one of the final scenes where Jean Val Jean is actually dying and the angels of Mercy, people that he’s known, who have gone before him in death and now come to greet him, to take him home.   There’s this beautiful line: “TO LOVE ANOTHER PERSON IS TO SEE THE FACE OF GOD”  I have always strived to live my life by that; To love another person, and that means ANYBODY, and yes EVERYBODY,  to love them, really love them, is actually to see the face of God; yeah even before you die.

WHAT ARE PLANS FOR YOUR BODY WHEN YOU ARE DONE USING IT?
It may shock a lot of people, but when I die, even though I conduct over 20+ funeral services a month, I do not want a funeral service. I don’t want a goodbye party or celebration of life or any long drawn out ‘remember when’s or even big bashes where we come together to eat, drink, kibitz and finish those beautiful sentences, ‘I REMEMBER THE TIME. . . ,’   ‘I’LL NEVER FORGET THE TIME. . . ,’ and, ‘WHAT ABOUT THE TIME. . . .’   It’s much more simple; Erin and I have agreed that we are going to be cremated and whoever goes first will be saved until the other one is cremated and then together with our beloved pets that have been cremated, we will have all of the ashes mixed together and scattered on a nice windy beach; to have the wind take us where it may interminglingly mixed together; always in the air to settle and to be scattered and blown about again again and again. I’m a big rom-com kind of guy that kind of  has a little Hallmark/Lifetime  feeling to it,  doesn’t it?  ROMANTIC  with a Ha-Ha.    .    .   .

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN TO YOUR SOUL OR SPIRIT AFTER YOU DIE?
I’ve always believed that when we die, we only begin living in another way; the Mystical Next.  After working in hospice all of these years, this feeling has only gotten stronger and in many ways, solidified.  I can only give you an opinion not a certainty, but it’s not so much of what I believe as what I have come to know and what so many others have affirmed for me in their dying.  There have been too many instances, too many people, sharing the same story while there are no connections between them;  they don’t know each other and it doesn’t matter if they are agnostic or atheist or Buddhist or Muslim or Christian. It doesn’t matter if they’re Jewish or any other form of religion or lack of; these folks have proven to me that there’s something that happens to us that’s beyond us  Call it what you will~~but don’t call it over!
Well.      .     .I hope that this helps you to realize that Birthdays are more than just another casual trip around the sun.  I hope that even your Birthday has yet to come this year or has just passed that these questions and even some of my answers will inspire you to take your own test, to answers the questions and yes, to share.    .   .ALWAYS SHARE YOUR BEST, TRUEST SELF, even the things behind the curtain…trust me, they are not that bad and ALL-WAYS, Forgivable, yeah, even by YOU!

And if you haven’t had enough reading yet, may I recommend a little guide by one of my all time authors:

L          I          V         I         N          G
W  E  L  L

AND KEEP CELEBRATING