Depends

How old someone is depends on how old you are. When my grandmother died in 1947 my grandfather was 75, surely the oldest creature in the universe. I was eleven and understood that Pop came to live with us for a while because he was so old. Having Pop at our house was a happy time for me even though Pop, accomplished at many things, immediately set about converting his shop above his garage on E. Caroline Blvd. into a neat little apartment for himself so his youngest daughter and her children could have the adjacent house. He lived seventeen more years, at 75 hadn’t been so old after all.

We don’t really get this. In December 1970 I sat in a funeral director’s limousine with Linda, her mother and our two children, watching as pallbearers lifted her father’s casket out of the hearse in front of us and carried it into the Episcopal church. As Linda’s mother sobbed, I thought, well he was 65 years old after all, loved much, was much loved, and had a good life. I was 35. You just don’t get it.

I seldom feel old, though I don’t recognize that character who gets shaved in my bathroom mirror every morning. How the hell did he get in here, and why did Linda marry that old codger, when she could have had a handsome young naval officer like me,

or that prominent young Birmingham doctor or banker her mother was hoping for. But no, look what she got stuck with.

Billy Graham’s birthday is today, he’s 95. And many more. He’s not all that old, I’m only twelve years from 90 myself.

Tom