Live Forever

One of the most shocking experiences of my life was when I realised that I was now the oldest person in my family. It happened four years ago when my father died.

When I was young, I expected to live forever. Nothing could affect me. I could drink, I could smoke, I could walk across the railway lines, I could jaywalk with impunity. I could walk through a storm tunnel and not drown, I could swim in a river, I could cycle anywhere. I would live forever and I would always be young.

I missed the bit when I changed from young to old. It was probably when I was having too much fun. But I didn’t feel any different, I didn’t feel older. I still don’t. At least mentally I don’t. Physically, I noticed the tell tale signs when my children were in primary school and I came last in the dad’s sprint race at the annual sports day. And when I found my legs could no longer make up for my natural lack of football ability. They both came as a shock. I expected the decline to be slow and gradual and maybe it had been. Perhaps I just didn’t notice I was slowing down, until one day I had slowed down and whatever I did, I would not be speeding up again.

I was aware of death. I knew from an early age that my grandfather, my mother’s dad, died before I was born. Well, what you don’t have, you don’t miss. What a load of tosh. As the years went by, I wished more and more that I had met the Rotterdam carpenter Marinus Verburg. Each passing year seemed to bring another loss and as I entered middle age I found the crematoria of Bristol familiar places in my life and someone else’s death. I lost friends and colleagues at work, in particular a lovely bloke called Cliff with whom I worked in Bedminster. I reckon he was 27 when he died. A lovely bloke who had just married the love of his life and he was a brilliant guitar player. He had everything to live for until one day he collapsed in a lift, was taken to hospital and subsequently diagnosed with a massive malignant brain tumour which took his life despite an heroic effort on his part to recover.

Throughout all this I was, I imagined, indestructible. Others were dying but I was still here. I was the lucky one. And then the truth hit me: I was the lucky one. By the accident of my birth, I was here. By a further series of accidents, or more likely avoiding accidents, I outlasted some people, but would not outnumber others.

I was never religious, never a fatalist believing that some things were meant to be. There has never been any evidence that proves to me we are under the power of some omnipresent celestial dictator above the clouds or that he, or someone else, has predetermined our lives and what happens in them. Put simply, there is no grand design, some complex plan. We’ve just been lucky enough to be born on the only planet in the universe that can sustain human life and what happens is, well, what happens.

I long realised that I was not going to live forever and one day my number would be, as they say, up. It was a bit of a disappointment, but then I was disappointed as a young boy when I woke up one morning and realised that I would never be able to fly like a bird. (I genuinely believed when I practiced the long jump along our road that I could remain in the air because of the gift of flight. What a disappointment that was!)

Recent events have reminded me that ours is a but a fleeting visit to this incredible planet and we have to do and be the best we can and to ensure that our children, where possible, have better lives than we did.

We do need to live for today but we also need to plan for tomorrow, whether we are there tomorrow or not.

If I am not going to live forever, then I’m trying to be the best I can with the limited talents that are at my disposal. Time passes so quickly as we age, I need to make use of it because I won’t always be the oldest person in my family.