Turning 70

Turning 70 

This morning, at 8:45 am, I slipped into the eighth decade of my life.  That is not a fact that makes me happy.  Grateful, yes, but happy, no.  I have turned 70 and that’s incredibly hard to say in public, let alone acknowledge to myself. 

I was born March 30, 1949 and on that day a star danced especially for me. From the beginning, I was positioned in a place of privilege.  Early on in life, I became aware that my whiteness, my maleness, my education and my financial comfort, to mention but a few, put me at an advantage in the world.  In these 70 years I didn’t die from an infectious disease, I didn’t die in a car accident and I didn’t die “suddenly” of some freak illness or a heart attack. How many I know who didn’t get out of their teens, their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, 60’s?  How grateful I am.

l look around and wonder how I got here, landed on some foreign shore that once seemed impossibly distant.  So now I have just crossed into a decade that, by most standards, defines me as “old.”  Despite the angst, turning 70 has been one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.  I simply showed up.  I drew breath, exercised, ate well, had a long and satisfying career and bam, here I am—a newly minted septuagenarian.

On this birthday, more than any other, I feel as if I’m standing on a mountain top, at whose foot the ocean of eternity is audibly rushing; below me, life moves on--life with its deserts and flower gardens, its sunny days and its stormy days, all spread out green, wild and beautiful.  Age is not measured by years.  Some people are born old and tired, while others of us are still going strong well past the cusp of youth and even middle age. Contrary to what some people say, seventy is not the new 50.  It’s 70!

I will heed Alexander Pope’s advice: “Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look behind, and count each birthday with a grateful mind.

Ten years ago, at 60, I wrote that 60 was a good age, free of the ravages of old age.  It certainly was a decade where things were relatively tranquil.  I recently made a list to help me reflect on the notable things—both good and bad—that shaped my 60’s.

I have lost my mother and brother within three years of each other. I have financial security, good health and enough time to do the things that are still on my never-ending bucket list of life.  Both knees were replaced during this decade thus allowing me to resume hiking and walking.  Minus some parts, I’m still moving forward, intact.  I am grateful to live in a time when these things can be done.

I have learned a second language, did long term substitution jobs teaching it, spent two winters traveling in South America and eight winters living in Mexico City where I worked with two refugee centers and helped developed their libraries. Often, I lived solely in Spanish. There were challenges and triumphs.   

I’ve learned that the words “I love you” and “I’m sorry” can never be said enough, in whatever language. I made new friends around the globe, lost some as well and I have realized that those who left me were never friends to begin with. I have enriched friends and they enriched me.  

I’ve learned that listening to my heart is as important as listening to my head, because ignoring either leads to dangerous decision making. I’ve learned that questions are often more valuable than answers, and that when the questioning stops, life in some important measure ends, even though I’m still breathing.

I’ve learned to listen more and talk less. I’ve learned that life is basically less about having then about doing and being.  I’ve learned to listen to the different voices that guide me at this juncture of life, and I’ve learned that these deeper voices will sound like risk, surrender, trust, destiny and love.  I’ve learned to be kind, even to the most miserable person, because one never knows what one is going through at that moment.  I’ve learned that these voices of an intimate stranger that’s from somewhere else is the still, small voice of God that Elijah slowly learned to hear.

The second half of life asks us, and ultimately requires of us, relinquishment. Relinquishment of identification with property and role status. It is time to embrace inwardly confirmed values.  The second half of life presents us with the time and space for personal development. I am never going to have greater powers of choice. I am never going to possess more emotional resistance, more insight, into what works for me and what doesn’t.  Jung’s most compelling contribution was the idea of individuation--the lifelong project of becoming more clearly the whole person that God intended us to be.  This is the time to reexamine life and make necessary changes as well as experiencing the quiet joy of life in relationship to the soul.  

A closer-than-desired brush with death at 69 forced me to face my own mortality.  The outpouring of love around me allowed me to see the Incarnation of God in their compassion.  I learned to listen to the messages in my body, to slow down, to live in the precious moment of now.  I learned that to be is a blessing and that just to live is a holy act.  I am a better, happier and stronger man than I before the incident and more appreciative of every day.  Not a bad lesson to learn at the cusp of a new decade.

There is still much to do and achieve.  If the agenda of the first half of life is social, meeting the demands and expectations society asks of us--establishing friendships, finding one’s place in the world and establishing a career--then the questions of the second half of life are spiritual, addressing the larger issue of meaning.  Our belief system at this juncture of life is finally not a moral matter; it’s a mystical matter.

I’ll be 70 for a full year and in my seventies for a lengthy ten years.  That means I’ll have to adjust my expectations.  To know how to age well is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most challenging chapters in the great art of living.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve skied my last black diamond off the summit of Whiteface.  It’s doubtful that I’ll buy another necktie or suit. The long-ago bucket-list of hiking the Appalachian Trail no longer holds the same appeal it once did.

Even though my body has been betraying itself for some time, so have stamina, capacity and resilience. I can no longer multitask.  I need more time to do things, more time between everyday responsibilities and more time to recover.  It’s been a humbling experience.  I now have a front-row seat to the spectacle of my own deterioration.

Still, I’m grateful for so very much. I will be hopeful, cheerful and reverent. I will continue to blow out candles, play, nap, go to the gym, volunteer, and binge. I will continue to dream, dare, imagine, push my limits, wonder, forgive friends and do more than I think I can.  I’ve never given up, or used the word “can’t,” and I’m not going to begin now.  

At this point I’m perfectly comfortable walking in mystery and paradox. I will travel and Travel Big!  Not only will I continue living in Mexico, now’s the time for the Silk Route from Istanbul to Delhi, to travel from Johannesburg to Nairobi, and to enjoy longer cruises. Big Trips, multi days.  “Old men should be explorers” T. S. Elliot said, and I intend to follow his advice.

Most of all I will celebrate myself and express thanks to the God who has maintained me for all these years.  

This new decade of my life will hold interesting challenges, joys and sorrows.  I know the fragility ahead, but I also know that I am privileged to gain membership in the three score and ten club.

Happy birthday to me!

Dan Ladue

March 30, 2019

People Remembered: Margaret Ladue Kennedy

My Aunt Margaret was my father’s youngest sister.  Unlike my dad and his middle sister who started life on a farm in Beekmantown, Margaret’s memories only existed in the city of Plattsburgh.  Her reference points were quite different than that of her two other siblings. She was, to the month, exactly thirty years my senior. Had she lived, she’d have turned 100 on March 12, 2019.  She died young—younger then than her children and nephews are today.  She was only 67.

As a family, we did not seem to be as close to Margert and her husband, Jim, as we were with my dad’s middle sister, Catherine.  Their son, John, was an only child and I was often included in their family outings. None of that happened on the Kennedy side of the family.  We never spent holidays with them no did we do anything with them.  I’m sure my father had an intimate relationship with his sister, but my brother and I, and our mother, seemed to have a rather distant relationship with them.

My earliest memories of my aunt is of her sitting at the kitchen table in the back of the house.  She always seemed to be nursing a bottle of Topper beer and smoking a cigarette.  Did she do this every day?  I just don’t know.

What I do know is that the aunt I remember in the last decade of her life is one who’d been transformed.  I was still a new teacher when she had her hip replaced.  Surgery for that was still relatively new.  1974? The date seems right to me.  In my memory, she’d always led a very sedentary life—up to the point of surgery.  After weeks of physical therapy to gain back mobility, she just continued what she’d already started.  Gone was the sedentary aunt I knew.  She now swam, walked and exercised on a regular basis.  She lost weight; she gave up smoking and drinking and became a new woman.

Her husband, my Uncle Jim, retired and, like all Ladue’s before her, relocated to Florida for the winter months.  They’d leave early—long before Thanksgiving—but would return home by early March.  I never could figure that out.  But her birthday was mid-month and she told me several times that she liked being home to watch spring emerge.

In September of 1985, my parents were celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary.  I’d planned a big party for them for the actual date of the anniversary.  I was on sabbatical studying at SUNY Albany.  Logistics were important.  My mom called to tell me that something had happened to Margaret that triggered a diagnosis of brain cancer.  The Prognosis was grim, and she was essentially given a death sentence.  For the moment, however, she was OK.  I got on the phone, called the relatives and a decision was made to move the date up a week, thus allowing her and my uncle to come while she was still in good health.

The following week a small miracle occurred.  She was offered a new protocol, some new treatment, that was still experimental.  She agreed to try the new drug; within in days she noticed a positive difference.  She’d bene returned to life.  She and my uncle were given the gift  of another winter in Florida, but by spring she began to fail again.

I graduated, Steve finished his semester at Laval University, we were homeless and could not get into our home until August, so we went to Europe for three months.  On a gorgeous summer’s day on an island in Greece, on a day when we’d rented motor scooters, my Aunt Margaret died.

We didn’t learn about this until we returned home.  My dad was devastated.  His youngest sister was dead at 67.