Six Before 80? My Cat May Know

(The author has lived in Costa Rica for 30 years, where she has taught languages and worked as a translator and environmental activist. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals, websites, and her own blog, Writing from the Heart.net. Her travel memoirs detail Atlantic crossings on cargo ships and a swing through Europe. She just published Evelio’s Garden: Memoir of a Naturalist in Costa Rica. – Jay Niver, editor)

 

Six before 80, 16 before 90, 26 before 100. Doubtful I’ll make it.

I have thoughts like these ever since I almost died three times before I turned 70. Death is a familiar, like my cat, Cali, who rubs against any part of me she has access to, to show she understands our mutual dependence. Lately she’s been catching me as I climb out of the shower, and she rubs against my wet legs to give herself a bath, too, on the bathmat. I have to be careful not to step on her.

Lately, she’s also been climbing on top of me as I do my physical therapy exercises on the bed in the morning. She searches around for a comfortable spot, digging her claws into my clothes (and into me), until I finally pick her up and put her on my chest, which is the place least likely to discomfit her.

I do yoga breathing exercises first: belly-breathing and holding to a count of 15 (by my heartbeat), then bellows breathing – which is her favorite because it involves flipping the diaphragm up and down, which bounces her gently up and down as if she were on the ocean, if she knew about the ocean, which I doubt, because she was an abandoned cat here in the uplands of Costa Rica. I am the one who loves the ocean, so maybe she’s intuited that?

The most challenging exercise for her is The Bridge, where I raise up my body with my shoulders and feet on the bed and hold it for a count of five, five times. Then she has to figure out how to hold her position without falling off. She is quite determined to be dignified.

So, I’m wondering about this six before 80 thing. The crises I suffered in my 60s are all gone; only my faithful friend Pain remains. What will carry me on, I wonder? On, out, beyond, six-feet under – what?

There are two death themes running through my family: heart and cancer. Heart seems to be mostly on one side, cancer on the other. Whose genes predominate?

There was a wonderful article in The Atlantic a while ago by Ezequiel Emmanuel (brother to the renowned mayor of Chicago), who was head of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania medical school. It was about how, after the age of 75, he wanted to avoid any major medical interventions. In fact, he was 68 when he wrote the piece, and he had just had his “last colonoscopy.” I loved that. I was 68 and had just had what I could then call “my last colonoscopy.” Terrific. Thank God I don’t have to go through that again.

And I started to think of other diagnostic procedures I was now free to let go: pap tests, mammograms, lab tests, endoscopies, electrocardiograms, stress tests, ultrasounds … why, the list at my age is practically endless and you can waste a lot of time doing them, and for what?  To find out what’s most likely to kill you? And then, at this age, to go into prevention mode to try to live longer? With medications highly likely to reduce your quality of life?

No. It was so liberating to think I didn’t have to continue to go through all that! I’m lucky I experienced all those medical emergencies in my 60s, because now I can look Death squarely in the eye and see there is nothing to fear.

In Costa Rica, when someone dies, they say Eso es la vida, That’s life. And pretty quickly they move on, because their faith tells them the dead are still living in the Más Allá, the Great Beyond, where they’re likely to run into them sooner or later. A dear friend, whose friend and business partner committed suicide when she turned 60, has had her thoughts on death for 20 years now. She’s four past 80 and still active and vibrantly creative. We talk about dying a lot.

The problem with most of the foreign laws permitting euthanasia is that they are over-burdened with conditions. You have to be a resident. You have to be within six months of death anyway. You have to be compos mentis, not only when you write the end-of-life directive, but also when you say to the doctor with the IV already in your arm, “Ok, now.” And the doctor may have the choice of deciding yea or nay.

Now, that’s not fair. If you’re as close to death as all that, couldn’t you be a little out of your mind?

In the US, in jurisdictions where aid in dying is permitted, the same requirements apply but with one more huge hurdle: You must be fit enough to take the lethal drugs yourself. No one can assist, not even a caring physician.

You see where my thoughts lead. Six before 80. Let’s see if I make it. My life has been incredibly rich and, as I said to myself the other day, “useful.” I think one can go out on that note with a clear conscience.

Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan and a joint producer of the Cosmos series (among other creative scientific communications projects), took her life when the terminal illness became too much for her. She planned it beautifully. She obtained the barbiturates from a Mexican pharmacy (by mail, if you would believe), poured herself a glass of wine, and died with her new husband by her side. There was so much love in that story, and, as a cosmologist, perhaps she knew something the rest of us don’t. No importa, it doesn’t matter, as they say here.

People here who call themselves Christians believe that taking one’s own life is a sin. To do it early is probably an expression of rage against God. But in the calm of age, the best and the worst behind you, with love in your heart for all the good that surrounds you, I can’t believe it violates any divine directive.

Six before 80. I would like to see 80, only so that I could say I’ve done it, with all my yoga breathing, physical therapy and water aerobics – all of which make me feel better, but likely are not lengthening my days to any significant degree here on this beautiful Planet. And, as a footnote from someone who has planted more trees than she has multiple lives, I don’t want to witness the inevitable.

When, is the question, my friend and I ask. How do we know we’re still of sound mind? Of course, there are all kinds of things to get done first: giving away precious books and music, a testament favoring those who come after, considerations of fairness, the desire that those who love you will be able to understand. But choosing the time, yes, is yours alone to do.

I suspect my cat will know when.