SIL - Nov / Dec 2019

A Note to Baby Boomers
Change Comes for Us All
Southern Indiana
Holiday Events & Happenings
Imay be cremated.
So may many of you. Cremation
seems as hot, excuse me, as mango
milk or whatever else elbows pork
rinds from the grocery shelves.
Will I rest in peace in an Amazon-ordered
urn? Or might that be me, sprinkled
atop the hellacious crabgrass in the backyard?
Should I be OK not to lay for eternity
in an overpriced box, a good blue suit not
left instead to Goodwill?
I inherited cemetery plots in my
parents’ will. Mom and Dad assumed I
would wind up alongside them. I figured
likewise.
Now I refigure.
I never figured to spend more time
refiguring — about stuff both profound
and mundane — than I do flossing. Not
that I ever will be on the same planet as
trendy. I dropped out of disco dance class.
Yoga ended up little better. Sneaky prisoners
probably place more cell phone calls. It
wouldn’t bother me if drive-through windows
had not been invented.
Change and I get along about as well
as change and many of you get along. I
would swap my new car’s camera for a
compact disc player in a second. I almost
bought a particular model simply because
it played CDs.
I had these thoughts about getting
older and retiring. I was way off. Decisions
just keep coming. Change does not
give seniors a discount. Being buried was
but one choice I had penciled in before I
knew better.
Or before I finally gave it thought.
None of us get to choose to be old,
suicide aside. All of us get to choose how
to be old. Some seniors do make it look
easy. For them, every question has an answer.
These aren’t the “why” types. They
are the “why not” types. Getting old never
seems to get old for them. Do they head
off to Australia or Africa or both? What
gets replaced first, the knees or the hips?
Do they eat dinner at 4:30 or go crazy and
wait ’til 5?
When do they downsize? Not if.
Meanwhile, I am in a my third year
of deciding if I should pull the plug on
my pricey life insurance. I put off visits to
the outlet mall, much less to the outback.
“Same” is not a four-letter word. “Different”
is.
I try to take hope when I can get it.
A man recently came to the house and removed
the wobbly, worn-out basketball
goal from the driveway. Plucked it right
up and out like it was a baby tooth. My
kids and I had shot a whole lot of balls
at that hoop. Sam and Allison got better
and better at it. Their dad got worse and
worse. If I ever pretended to lose at h-o-rs-e,
those days were long gone.
Nonetheless, it was sad to say goodbye.
How do you, some of you, part with
all the stuff on memory lane? How do
you gear up to gear down?
I am not nearly trainable enough.
But, hey, I now follow the IU women’s
basketball team more closely than the
men’s. That’s change. I eat less red meat.
I make coffee by the cup. I enjoy the call
of doves more than I do most TV shows.
That’s change.
I confront aging by exercising up a
storm. I reconcile aging by at least glancing
at all those ads for hearing aids and
walk-in tubs. I confront aging by continuing
to write here and there. I reconcile aging
by making sure I have days with absolutely
nothing on the schedule — except
maybe lunch with friends.
I am a lunch all-American.
I do draw lines. I never expect to
own a gun. I believe my loved ones and I
are safer that way. Perhaps even safe. You
may believe otherwise, of course. You
have a gun. I do not. Who knows who is
Change and I get along about as well as change
and many of you get along. I would swap my
new car’s camera for a compact disc player in
a second. I almost bought a particular model
simply because it played CDs.
right?
I also do draw silly lines. I often park
in a different ZIP code from the store or
ballpark or wherever. If not walking a bit
extra is that crucial, be my guest. And I
stockpile underwear and shampoo and
ballpoint pens and grape jelly, even those
doodads that stop bleeding when my razor
attacks. None of it are on an endangered
species list, I confess. All of it makes
me somehow feel better, though, ready for
anything.
Thank God Southern Indiana Living
does not insist that its columnists be sane.
Give me the occasional German
week at Aldi and I am happy. Give me the
early-season reruns of most any classic sitcom
and I am happy.
I am never all that happy to make
decisions I did not expect. That is central
to getting old, though, I have learned.
Travel, health care, downsizing, simplifying,
all of it and more awaits. It’s the same
ultimately with death itself. So burial?
Maybe. Cremation? Maybe.
I could flip a coin. Remember
coins?•
After 25 years, Dale Moss
retired as Indiana columnist for
The Courier-Journal. He now
writes weekly for the News and
Tribune. Dale and his wife Jean
live in Jeffersonville in a house
that has been in his family
since the Civil War. Dale’s e-
mail is dale.moss@twc.com
10 • Nov/Dec 2019 • Southern Indiana Living Southern Indiana Living • Nov/Dec 2019 • 11