'I’m Still Alive; the Gods May Be Confused'

I don’t remember old people complaining about being old when I was a kid. It might have been joked about in passing but I recall little indulgence in self-pity. My maternal step-grandfather was a joker who loved his beer and, after retiring as a house painter, volunteered as a school crossing guard. He was one of the funniest people I knew when growing up. He was not a blood relative but we called him Uncle Kelly. When he talked about serving in the Army during World War I, he recalled having a turnip fight with other doughboys in some French field. The same went for my mother’s mother. In 1962, at age seventy-four, she suffered a stroke that left her left side paralyzed. She lived with us for several months. No complaining. She was a gentle soul, rare in my family. Now it’s common to hear my contemporaries, men and women, bitch about having reached their seventies. At the same time they want to extend their longevity, seemingly forever. I sense a generational shift toward self-…