End of Year Reflections

Time to pause and reflect. This year I am not going to write one of those brag letters people send about how great the kids are doing, who visited whom and where did we travel during the year because, frankly, nobody cares and those letters are incredibly boring.  Nor am I going to bore you with what they call “organ recitals” here at this old folks’ home, e.g. “How’s your gall bladder?” You don’t want to know our infirmities. Instead, as I approach my 84^th year which begins on January 1 (not a hint for a gift, as I need nothing), let’s think about the meanings of growing old. It has its awesome memories, and profound losses.

The awesome aspect of hanging around this long is that we are history. We have experienced history and have a sense of it that people under sixty simply don’t conceive of. In fact, kids under thirty must find it puzzling and mysterious. You see, I remember.

Consider this: during the brief period when I taught at Southern Illinois University I took a couple of classes from Adjunct Professor Cutright. He was a big man, a genuine capitalist of the type that the Soviets most feared and respected, for he had overseen the installation in Moscow of the American printing presses that put out Isvestia, purveyor of Communist news on an American web press. Cutright was a veteran of World War I and had been in that fearsome battle of the Marne where in hand to hand combat he had bayoneted a German kid and suffered from PTSD for years afterward. He had also been part of the 1914 mine strike in the coal fields of Appalachia. And I knew him. I had shaken the hand of a survivor of the Marne. My God!

I remember the German invasion of Poland in 1937 and the fiery crash of the Hindenberg, described at the time as a terrible tragedy, yet only 24 were killed. Compare that with 9/11 when more died than we lost at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

 I remember the letter my father got from Poland in 1940 reporting the slaughter of his family in Warsaw, a pogrom that happened before the Holocaust got under way.

I remember Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and listening to the news announcing it while we stood by my father’s radio in the fur shop on South Michigan street in South Bend, Indiana, a building long since torn down. I remember circus elephants parading trunk to tail down the main street announcing the arrival of the Barnum and Bailey circus before the big top burned down. I remember the side show with the bearded lady and the sword swallower but didn’t have the dime needed to see Fatima and her dance of the seven veils. But then, I wasn’t over 18, either. .

I remember the afternoon in a rental cottage in Michiana Shores, Indiana,  in August 1945 the  announcement of the atom bomb bring dropped on Hiroshima, news I heard while writing a sci-fi story (never published).

 I remember the news my brother Morton got in 1950 or 51 when he learned his friend from Central High School in South Bend had been killed when the Chinese came over the Yalu River in Korea by the thousands, a war we missed, thanks to college deferments which lasted until the shooting had stopped.

I remember demonstrating against the Vietnam War while we were being photographed by FBI men looking for agitators. I remember the First Iraq War. I remember the day the Iron curtain came up in Berlin as a simple barbed wire fence, the blockade and the air lift, and later when the subsequent wall came down.

Those who can’t remember all this have missed out on History.

But there are also profound losses. In life there are many passages. There are bar mitzvahs, weddings, baby showers, retirements and, ultimately, deaths and funerals. We expect to outlive our parents, but not our friends. One of the sorrows of growing old is the death of friends. Few of my old pals are still alive. At this writing I think Bob Priest of high schools days is still playing golf in Santa Barbara, but best friend of all, Bob Reinhold, is long dead. So are Duane Burnor, who wanted to be an Ojibwa and Bill Dupree, cave explorer, doctor, and alcoholic.   Alex von Seld and Lenny Rozansky of my days in the Army in Heidelberg are still around, but Richard Ziff died last October. Jay Hutchinson, Ray Bradfield, Patricia Kelso, Sonja Barron and Sven Huldt of Stockholm days are still alive, but Fred Hetter who spotted me as a potential CIA agent, is long gone.

We have very few real friends in life. We have many acquaintances, but not many people who, like us, have experienced the same history. We can talk about World War II, because we were around then, even if we did not personally participate.

Living here among the elderly where the average age is 86, we are like neighbor John Cooper who flew a B17 in the first daylight raid on Berlin and returned alone to the barracks while most of the others were shot down, dead or taken prisoner. In that situation, and in ours, he hesitated to get too close to replacements, for who knew would be the next to go? Because an average of two residents die here every month, we hesitate to make strong attachments..

To sum up: there are awesome memories, which give us perspective on life and politics and human folly. There are also solemn losses and regrets as we see the same errors repeated. We are enriched by our experience and there are fewer and fewer survivors who share that knowledge.

The end of the year is a time of reflection. May your next year be one of peace, health, and prosperity.