Our Three Horrible Years

1250 words, 5 minute read

By most accounts, my parents had tolerable lives: average longevity, average health, above average income, a suboptimal offspring (but that’s a subject for another day). In both cases, however, the last year of their lives was pretty awful, not the worst possible, but bad, really bad.

They were warned! Nature came calling years before their final demise, but they elected, or someone elected for them, to soldier on. With the ‘help’ of modern medicine, they put the Reaper on hold…and he was not well pleased.

Why hang on? Did they anticipate some marvelous event that would make up for a year’s worth of suffering? Or were they, like all of us, understandably afraid of death?

No less a figure than Hamlet considered whether it was better “to be or not to be.” He got his answer centuries later from Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, “Life is worth living!” But neither Hamlet nor Sheen was in his last year of life. (Well, actually, Hamlet was…but he didn’t know it at the time!)

***

I am 78 years old and in ‘suboptimal’ health (there’s that word again). I can hear Eliot’s bar man calling, “Hurry up please, it’s time.” I’m in no rush; but I’m prepared to let nature take its course. I mean, what am I waiting for? Another Patriots’ Superbowl?

I’ve done it all…more or less. I have a forever spouse, the best, and wonderful children; and my grands and greats are just beginning to make their marks in the world. I had a career that allowed me, don’t puke, to ‘do well while doing good’.  So what am I missing? The meaning of life? (For that I have Aletheia Today.)

Yet when I tell my doctors that I wish to be listed as DNR, they are shocked and appalled. “You have years of life left.” Well, maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but it is almost certain that the sentinel event of those years will be my death. Can anything top it? (Maybe a Lynwood pizza…but other than that) I doubt it.

I expect and accept that the last year of my life will be my worst. Should kindly Nature offer me a quicker resolution, I certainly won’t say, “No.” I won’t do anything to shorten the runway but I won’t extend it either.

***

This will not be my first rodeo. 78 years ago, I exited my mother’s hopefully nurturing womb and entered your world as a tiny, helpless, mucus covered blob, unable to articulate my needs or to address them on my own.

Plus, “What is this? Where am I? What am I?”

I am told that I cried most of my first year. Things only improved once I was able to move around on my own and utter my first words. Makes sense: I haven’t stopped moving, or talking, since. Case in point!

You’re probably not surprised to see the last year of life on my list of anni horribiles and the first year of life makes sense too when you think about it. But I promised you 3 horrible years. Where’s the third?

Is it age 6 when you start school, 21 when you have your first hangover (as if), 35 when your first divorce is finalized, or 65 when they drag you kicking and screaming out of the office where you’ve worked for 40 years at a soul destroying job? None of the above… something much worse! 

The magic number is 12 (give or take) and the event is full onset puberty! Ok, not great memories, but is puberty really in a class with death and birth? Yes, it is! In fact, puberty is death and birth, the death of a child and the birth of an adult.

You’ve been trained to think of age as a continuum; it’s not! We age in stages. Quantum like, we leap. Age 12 marks the end of one such stage and the beginning of another.

And because this is our first reincarnation (second incarnation), it is the most traumatic.

Adolescence is our version of metamorphosis Once a caterpillar entombs itself in a chrysalis, it does not then ‘grow’ into a butterfly as children imagine. Rather, it dissolves into a biotic soup, reorganizes into a fresh organism, and emerges as the proud Monarch of the garden.

You should be so lucky! Unlike the caterpillar who gets to reincarnate in the privacy of its chrysalis, your chrysalis is Middle School. Plus when the butterfly emerges, it enjoys all the perks of adulthood. When you emerge from puberty, you’re still a child, at least in the eyes of society.

Every child is unique. That said, up to the age of 12 children share a lot in common. Every child is a polymath bursting with imagination, creativity, and energy. After 12, differentiation accelerates. Just look at the social organization of any large suburban high school:

Athletes, mathletes, freaks and geeks,

drama kids, drama queens, and just queens,

s/h/it and they, goths and sweat hogs.

It is no accident that cultures throughout the world celebrate the onset of puberty with a variety of initiation rituals. Consider the Jewish rite of Bas/Bat-Mitzvah. It marks your becoming an adult in the eyes of the religious community…except of course you’re still treated as a child on everyday matters.

After puberty you are physiologically able to start a family, hold down a job, and care for yourself, and many young teens do so, even today; but sociologically, you’re still ‘just a kid’.

The cognitive dissonance is literally unbearable and an adolescent’s reaction to the disconnect is likely to be life-defining. We constantly read about young teens starting businesses (or charities), performing in Carnegie Hall, leading political movements, etc. Sadly, we more often read about substance abuse, delinquency, and self-harm.

Jack and Jill grew up together and they sit next to each other in 7^th grade homeroom. “Peas in pod”, their proud parents/teachers say, approvingly. Unbeknownst to everyone, Jill will graduate MIT at 20 while Jack will drop out of school immediately following his 16^th birthday.

When the time comes for Jill to celebrate her 10 year high school reunion, she already has a Fields Medal to her credit while Jack is still working on his GED…following a brief stint in jail and two rounds of rehab.

Society has a problem; it’s called adolescence. How do we get our pre-teens across the roiling waters relatively unscathed? We build bridges, of course: activities meant to mimic adulthood but without the irreparable consequences:

High school sports, science club, debate team, model UN, volunteer work, summer jobs and  internships, and even ‘college’ itself.

Unlike sandlot pick-up games, these socially sanctioned activities have a certain ‘importance’… but normally they are not life defining. Rabbit notwithstanding, you can drop a forward pass and still go on to own a successful car dealership in your home town. But on the flip side, these activities can appear fake…which to some extent at least, they are.

So how do we fix it? After all, “philosophers only interpret the world…the point is to change it.” (Karl Marx) So…how do we fix adolescence? Well, tell me how we fix ‘birth and death’ and I’ll let you know. But step one is to recognize age 12 as our ‘third horrible year’.