Stick It Out

Today I drove 77 miles North from Los Angeles to attend the first 100^th birthday party I have ever been invited to.  I stopped at a drug store to buy a card for Bill, the birthday boy.  Finding no greeting cards for a 100^th birthday, I bought two cards congratulating him on his 50^th birthday.  The cards were funny and turned out to be a hit. 

I have been a guest at Bill’s birthday parties for more than twenty years.  At first there was a dinner at the home of one of his two daughters, but in recent years Bill has lived in a bed, mostly reading or sleeping, in an assisted living facility.  He was born in 1914, before the start of World War One, and has been a friend of my father’s for more than 80 years. My father will celebrate his own 100^th birthday in five months, and I’m looking forward to mine on March 5, 2040.

After our birthday lunch in the dining room of the facility, from the other side of the table Bill’s grandson asked, “Bill, how do you live to be 100?”

Bill stared into space.  I thought perhaps he hadn’t heard or understood the question.  All of us wanted to help, but waited.

“Stick it out,” he finally said.

Stick it out.

I thought about the harsh economic times of the past few years — people losing their jobs, their homes, their self-respect.  I still recall my own reluctance, for the first time in my life, to go to work and face angry telephone calls and e-mails from investors.

Stick it out.

I thought about romantic love and its gradual descent from rapture into familiarity, loss, despair.  Bill’s first wife killed herself after failed back surgery more than fifty years ago.  His second wife died more than 15 years ago after spending years alone in her individual cloud of Alzheimer’s.  I stared at Bill’s younger daughter.  We met when she was six.  I introduced her to her first husband when she was sixteen.  She now walks with a cane.

Stick it out.

And yet . . . and yet . . . after the camaraderie of lunch, his grandson pushed Bill, in his wheelchair, back to his tiny room, his bed, and a nurse who delivered one pill.

“What’s that for?” Bill asked.

It must have been the nurse’s first day on the job.  She hesitated.  “Dementia,” she said.

“What?”

I intervened.  “For your memory, Bill.  To help your memory.”

He refused to take the pill.  The nurse left the room to seek either advice or reinforcements.  One of Bill’s daughters said it was time for all of us to go.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“Bill, it’s been a pleasure.  Happy birthday.  See you at your 101^st next year.”

Bill smiled.

I rested my right hand on his shoulder.  I wanted Bill to feel connected. Too many of us lack anywhere near enough physical contact with another human being each day, and I like to be complete with those I love so if we never meet again we are at peace with one another.

“You know,” he said to me, “I’m very happy.  Through the joys, the tragedies, as Zorba said, ‘the full catastrophe.’  I’m happy.”

In that moment the two of us were one.

I left the room with tears of I don’t know what.  Bill’s 100^th, and what he said, are a new and important milestone in my life.

Stick it out.

Alan

P.S.  People Tools is now 5^th on the Publisher’s Weekly Best Seller list, and 7^th on the NY Times Bestsellers List for Advice, To Do, and Miscellaneous Books.  My book was twenty two years in the writing.

Stick it out.