My father, Everette, age 83, was in the Aurora
Hospital in Two Rivers, Wisconsin dealing with health complications relating to
his Parkinson's disease. It was the first week of November, 2001. I’d traveled from
Virginia to see him.
My mother Helen, then 77, told me how, in her
20s-30s, she'd read obituaries in the newspaper where people in their 50s and
60s had died. Back then she felt these people were old and “had led a good long
life”.
I responded with something like this, "Old is
106; people aren't ready to go and families aren't ready to let them go, even
if they want to go."
"That's right," said the nurse who was in
the room and had heard our conversation, “old is 106”. In the years since then
this has been confirmed by my doctor, chiropractor and cardiologist.
This culture judges age harshly, giving you black balloons on the 30th, 40th and 50th birthdays, if your life is over because you are old. Actually, once beyond those years life usually gets better. Having survived a lot, over reaction is rare. People have taken care of themselves, so looks really can't tell how old a person is.
The Smucker’s label birthday celebration goal came
from my personal planning course, "Plan-Do: Defining and Achieving Your Life Goals” that I first taught in 1988. It included an exercise for people to
consider their lives on a 100 year Life Perspective Chart, beginning with their
birth date.
Then, Willard Scott, the NBC Today Show weather man, would celebrate
the birthday of a long lived person with their picture on the label of a
Smucker’s jar. As the daily recognition went on, the clear trend was for people honored
to be 100 or older. Al
Roker continues the tradition and you can apply.
Relative to goal setting, the future may be limited
if you don’t expect to live a long time. By giving yourself a longer runway for the future,
there is time to learn or do those things you might have missed early in life.
If you want to learn the piano, at age 50, you still have 50 years to do so. You have more time to work on that Elvis impersonation.
Reaching 106 just means you've made it to being old, it isn't a point to keel over. If there's a lot of competition on your birthday, you may have to go to 110 or more to get on the label. Having paced yourself to get to 106, you may coast a bit. A woman recently told me her goal was 120 years. No problem, it is your goal.
No matter how long you go, just don’t be the person who says, “If
I knew I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.”
My father made it to February 23, 2002, a week past
his 84th birthday. Flu was the culprit. My mother almost made it to December 6, 2022, her 98 birthday, passing September 18. She survived two heart attacks in 2017. For many years, my
sisters and I thought she would outlive us. In her assisted living facility, three women were 100 or older..
Since 2001 I’ve used "old is 106" as my “good
news,” the Gospel of Tom, to reframe old age. Finding Smucker’s label template online, I began
wishing people a Happy 110th Birthday from the Future,
posting it to Facebook or sending them a print in a card. Doing this for others took time, so I made the generic image above, using my Aunt El doing her Elvis impersonation. Because I could only show it on my phone, I made a business card that I could hand out.
Getting there, much #DivineDisorder will be
experienced. Being able to recognize the Divine in the disorder is a key means
of making it as far as one can.
The Smucker’s label can be used to honor people.
You can make your own template in PowerPoint along the lines of this example:
Do spread the good news: Old is 106. Pace yourself. Persist through Divine disorder.
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Feedback is welcome via comments, but the intention is not to create a self-help discussion. Stumbling into one's own planning process and learning by doing is slow but effective. Planning and doing results in learning, from both failures and successes, your own and those of others. Recommended corrections and clarifications will be considered.
Cheers.