Mortality? Stuff it!

It's about two years since I started this blog. Slightly bewildered about turning 70. Feeling some vague responsibility to accept and understand how old I was—even to believe it, that would be a start.

This odd urge to become conscious of my chronological age was stirred up by the strong memory of my mother's choice: she always swore she didn't want to live past 70, and she duly died before that self-imposed deadline.

At this point, I say stuff it. I have tried. I will never be a Buddhist monk. And I've gone back to living my funny little life with no more age-awareness than the next person. Today I feel about 41, a sprightly 41.

I meditate and do Tai Ch'i and I've lived with tea masters in Japan. So I understand—theoretically—the idea of coming to terms with one's mortality. My friend Maja Milcinski used to lecture on 'The Void' throughout the world, and what intense debates we had. But she is a fey, funny genius with one foot in the spirit world, and I am just me.

Without her permission, I'm going to quote my sister Lesley, one of the wisest people I know.

Me: 'When will we be ready to die?'
Lesley: 'When we die.'

Game, set and match to common sense.

And now the cabbage tree is flowering in sunshine. The cat is searching for mice in a pile of stationery. With friends I'm going to Pina in 3D this afternoon. My family, health, business and life are all thriving.

Mortality? What's that?

Life? Bring it on!

Coffin put to good use: memento mori

Why spend money on a coffin that you'll never see, never knowingly use?

The owner of Hyde Central Hotel uses hers as a jolly green display stand.

Brilliant, and totally zen.

Grandchildren's poems

One of the amazing privileges of being older -- a privilege not granted to everyone -- is being a grandparent. I have three grandchildren. Three!!! How lucky is that? They're all fabulous.

Younger people read that paragraph and move hastily away: ho hum,boring, banal. Only grandparents understand this life-changing miracle.

Elsie (6) lives in my town, so every Monday and Wednesday I run down the hill to her school and whisk her back to my apartment for a couple of hours.

Sometimes I write down what she says, knock off the edges and call it a poem. In fact I hardly bother to write my own poems any more, because (like every child I've ever known) Elsie says enough wise, fanciful, crazy and musical things for both of us. Here's what came out of Elsie's mouth on Monday.

Morning is pink

Morning is pink
(says Elsie).

If it's pink, it's morning.
And if it's not pink,

you have to go back to sleep
for a long, long time.

To an old lady laughing, this also seems like a short meditation on death.

Read more of Elsie's poems on C-for-Blog.blogspot.com

Three score years and ten

Meet Celia Taylor in her youth: my gorgeous mother. (Notice: I didn't say in her prime. That came later. As it does for us all.)

In this blurry photo she's probably 19 or 20, and it's around 1934. Glamorous even after climbing a mountain -- and obviously fit. Rebellious. She had a dark, sulky beauty when young, and men of all ages relished her company until she died. And she had six daughters of whom she was proud.

Celia was always adamant that three score years and ten was quite sufficient as a life span. She quoted the Bible in support.

"If I'm going gaga and I'm nothing but a burden," she told us occasionally, "Take me to a beautiful mountain, take me to a glacier, take me to the edge of a crevasse, then turn your back." Yeah, right. But she meant it! She was sufficiently realistic (or ethical) not to make us promise, which is just as well.

Fiercely independent, and passionate about the pleasures and powers of her life, Celia's worst fear was of being a burden. She positively wanted to die at 70, latest.

And so she did, on New Year's Day in her seventieth year. Some people can do that, I believe. Of course she had to work up to this death, by smoking (considered daring and glamorous when she was young) and getting a degenerative disease. You can't make a stroke happen out of the blue.

Well, that was strange even in those days. Today's 70 is yesterday's ... 50? Yet her mother and grandmother lived into their 80s, all guns roaring until quite near the end, I believe.

Regardless of logic, 70 was her deadline. Maybe I started this blog because next year I'll be 70 and I never felt less like dying.