Judith Viorst still 'has it'

 We were sent a copy of Judith Viorst's newest book, "Making the Best of What's Left," last week, where she once again did a smashing good job of holding attention and providing great insight into lives, maybe especially ours at our relatively mature ages.  She has written, what, maybe fifty books over a lifetime, many of them incredibly insightful for whatever topic she has chosen.   Well, at 94, she's done it again.

She at 94 has moved into an RC (Retirement Community) and she is clearly not thrilled by her new neighbors and companions.   So she makes a book about them, their foibles, and how they represent the issues for anyone over 80 years old.   In particular, she described one whose spouse (an important Washington D.C. personage) had died and she now found that "no one calls, no one invites me to dinner, or lunch, nor to events."  Viorst was amazed by the utter non-recognition by this woman that the colleagues and friends that they'd had for years weren't really friends--they were political friends, in it for the name connection, not for the bonhomie.  Another version of the "Previously Important Person" syndrome that I've remarked on several times.

Some cannot let the past go.   I am, sad to say, one of those folk.  I still tell the old stories, as though they matter.  They DID matter, but they don't now.  I still think of them as great stories, with meaningful punch lines, and trenchant insights, but I am mostly alone in such thinking.  Viorst goes on to explain this by saying, "once you reach a certain age, you become invisible to people.  You can talk, but they don't hear you."   Damnable situation, she sez.  Yup!

But once in a while, the light does go on for me.   Like the post last October, where I was prattling to my daughter and grand-daughter about "THINGS IMPORTANT" like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and COPD being more than just a Smoker's disease, and they could have cared less.   The fact that I realized it is notable for me; the fact that it took an extra day is not so impressive.

So what do you do with these stories?  

Forget 'em?  Hard to do, especially if you've been mostly a storyteller all your life.

Write 'em up in a memoir?   Who would want to read it?  And if you did write it, how much of it would be true (or does that even matter?).  My dad always claimed that his mother had a remarkable memory, "why, she could remember things that never even happened."

Get sore about the whole thing, pissed at age passing us by?  Who would even notice you are pissed.  Or care, for that matter.

So, the net net of it all, according to Viorst and my own recongizance, is that anyone in this last Fifth of Five Life Periods (each roughly 20 years long for the most fortunate of us) is essentially condemned to living a major version of "youth will be served"      

Sports heroes face this earlier than most.  Ask Novak Djokovic how it feels, or Roger Federer who just couldn't stand the loss of #1 capability.   None of you probably recall that Ted Williams (one of the crustiest baseball players ever) did indeed "go out on top" but Joe DiMaggio (perhaps more famous and certainly much more well liked) just stayed on the field and in the line-up until it was pathetic.   Tom Brady did defy the odds, and so too Djokovic for a while, but both are struggling to quit gracefully.

Is there a lesson here?  Well, my good wife Jenny sez "Why are you doing yet another start-up?"  And I don't answer, but I'm thinking of calling up Clint Eastwood to ask, "why one more movie?"