And let us discuss 3/4’s of a Century…

Strange Christmas week in many ways. Saturday I awoke at about 5:00 a.m. but didn’t get out of bed and get active for about three hours. I basically lay there and reflected on the fact that I actually reached the three-quarter century mark less than three weeks ago. This is something in my earlier days I never really contemplated achieving. And that sparked some additional contemplation. For one thing, I am not planning any significant recreational trips abroad. For another I realized that the relationships in my world are changing, and at times not so subtly.

The first thing that has hit me in my current state of reflectiveness: a number of my friends and acquaintances have all reached the same milestone in 2019. One I’ve known from high school days, three more from my UofA years, three from this millennium. Interestingly five are still married to their original spouses and one is widowed and the seventh is in a positive, long-term relationship (note to self: see, at least my friends are stable!!). They all are reasonably healthy although one has a new knee, another has taken to giving up the demon rum (actually alcohol of all kinds), another has had some heart work, another needs better lung care… but never mind these glitches, each is a contributing member of society in a variety of distinctive ways. More important to me, each one continues to keep in touch and most I actually see occasionally. But once again that got me thinking about those who haven’t made it this far – the two prairie elementary school buddies who died on their farms, the three who originally agreed to help with my book – none making it to seventy, the high school friends that cancer took away, the former members of teams of mine who died from battles with disease. As many have noted elsewhere: it never is a foregone conclusion that we will reach this milestone.

So I then pondered over the fact my celebration this year has been quite muted – in part, no doubt, to this realization – it’s a date not an overwhelming accomplishment. Now I AM grateful for getting to 75, in fact I am quietly joyful. But it seems different in a way, made more obvious with the reflection regarding how I celebrated milestones in the past. For my seventieth I was on a special trip I’d always wanted to do since college days during the Vietnam War: Indo Chine – 12 days in Vietnam, 6 days in Cambodia, 3 days in Laos. Five years before that I went to Israel shortly after my birthday. My sixtieth was more subdued – an enjoyable evening with four people at Buchanan’s – a wonderful scotch bar in the EauClaire area of downtown Calgary. The biggest moment around my fiftieth was when my daughter, my son & his fiancée took me to the TeaHouse at Ferguson Point in Stanley Park (Vancouver BC), although my team at an Independent School I was developing did try to surprise me with a cake during the day. My fortieth was in the midst of a relatively busy time when I was trying to establish a new consulting venture in partnership with a Tribal Council, also attending law school and preaching on weekends. Perhaps I had dinner at the Faculty Club on the University of Saskatchewan campus (where I was also a Sessional Lecturer in Educational Administration). My thirtieth is but a distant memory but it came after I had already finished the seminal Okanagan Basin Study project…

When I think about it there really is no pattern to the way I have celebrated milestones except perhaps that my introverted nature tends to make me eschew the big bash instead preferring to be alone, or with a very small group of close friends and colleagues. When sometimes I do travel, even then I prefer to stay away from big group tours and spend the time focused learning as much as I can of the things that interest or impact me. This approach even influences the way I approach these milestones in others. I helped organize two big birthdays for my mother – her 77th and 99th and with the help of a close friend pulled off a surprise 60th party for The Saint. And that is about it for as many such signature events as I can remember. I didn’t attend any of the other 75th birthdays this year and I didn’t get to my son’s 50th a couple years ago, nor my daughter’s 40th several years ago. Perhaps it’s best to just acknowledge the presence of your family, your close friends, your team-mates whenever there’s a good moment. Perhaps milestones are less vital than we think – is one’s 75th any more significant than a close friend’s 26,700th day or a team-mate’s 3,588th week? And worry less about those who have passed or even those who have decided to cease communicating and no longer wish to keep in touch, even though you miss them – celebrate that they were in your life for as long as they were and recognize that you are in the same space for those around you who find you likeable if not fully lovable – at least they are staying in touch!! Eventually each of us will be gone – as Snoopy says (in reply to Charlie Brown’s sombre One day we all will die) That’s true, but on all the other days, we live…

I’m glad I am now seventy-five – I still see the world the same and I see you the same as I did when I first met you. And I am glad that you are still able to see enough that you can read this Epistle – that means you too are seeing the world around you with hope and even a degree of excitement and anticipation – after all it’s 2020… Have a Happy & Prosperous New Year…

Tnx,
g.w.