The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

As I approach my 70th birthday, I am aware that I am aware.

I am aware that I am -- old.  Worse yet, I am aware that my time on this earth is limited.  For me, the light at the end of the tunnel is red.  It's a stop light.  And I am in no hurry to, as they say, "go toward the light."

It distresses me to be thinking this way, to have these thoughts.  Although it's been coming on slowly, the awareness that there is so little time left has been nagging at me for the the last year.

There are several things that are bringing my mortality into sharp focus.

First, there are the funerals.  I retired in 2008 after seeing co-workers, some years younger than me, die of horrible diseases.  I wanted to live life -- what was left of it -- and not regret having worked right up to the day I experience a debilitating heart attack or stroke.  Recently I attended back-to-back funerals.  The first day, the funeral was for a man just a few months older than me.  Believe me, that got me thinking.  The next day I attended the funeral for the father of one of my oldest friends, a friend who is just about my age.  His father had lived to be 95 years old.  Although he was physically frail, his mind was wonderfully sharp.  I was actually jealous because -- given my frame of mind -- I couldn't see me living that long.  And I wanted to.  I still want to.

But recent medical events in my life have me question my own viability.  I won't go into all the details.  Oh, sure, I have the normal aches and pains that I imagine someone my age has.  I ruined both knees long ago playing tennis.  I tore one shoulder decades ago, falling backward in a slimy parking lot.  I tore the other shoulder -- my right shoulder -- playing ping pong.  That's right.  You read that correctly.  I literally threw my arm out of its socket.  The worst part of all this is that I am a shoulder sleeper and go back and forth, from one shoulder to the other, all night long -- waking each time I turn.

The fact that I continuously test anemic is more than worrisome.  The doctors at the VA have all but given up trying to find out why.  My primary physician back in Texas duly noted it, would mention it each time I had blood tests, and then we would not talk about it anymore.  And the fact that my father died of a blood disorder -- the swift onset of chronic leukemia -- does not give me confidence.

For most of my life I've been deadline oriented.  As a newspaper writer/editor, I tackled three deadlines daily for more than a decade.  When I set goals, I usually meet them.  But it may have been a mistake a number of years ago to set one deadline in particular.  That deadline was my death date.  I was meeting with my financial adviser and, as with any good financial plan, we needed to estimate how long I intended to live in order for my savings to be meted out without running out.

"Eighty-five," I said.  "That sounds like a ripe, old age."

Maybe 85 seemed far away when I was in my early 60s.  But it doesn't anymore.  In fact, 80 seems real close -- like that stop light at the end of the tunnel.  I get the feeling I'm managing my life to meet this final deadline.

I hate this futile way of thinking.  I feel disgusted when I wake up in the morning and realize I did nothing the day before that was remarkable.  I took up motorcycle touring in 2005 because I wanted to put something in my life that made my heart beat faster.

I am going to try harder to live my life to the fullest.  I am going to set some more goals, plan more trips, get more involved.  I no longer want life to just seep into me; I want to go out and embrace it.

Maybe, just maybe, I can change that light at the end of the tunnel from red to green.  And if not, at least I raced to the end instead of simply coasting.

Tampa -- City of the Apes

You blew it up.  Ah, damn you.  God damn you all to hell.

These days I often feel like Charlton Heston in the movie "Planet of the Apes."  In particular it's the revelation at the end, where Heston's character realizes he's never left. Only, everything he's ever known about his world has been turned upside down.

I DID leave.  And that's a fact.  But I came back to Tampa.  I've been in Texas since 1989, and there's a standing joke that Texans inflict on outsiders.  If you're to be accepted at all, you say "I wasn't born here, but I got here as soon as I could."  That's about the only way a Texan would give you any credence.  I kind of feel that way about Florida.

On a particular day, at a particular time, I knew I belonged in Florida.  And I remember it like it was yesterday -- only it wasn't.  I was a man in my early 30s, I believe, when I was driving with the top down into the setting sun.  I was going over the hump on Gandy Bridge, with the radio blasting and the wind in my hair and face.  I was in my 1971 Olds Cutlass.

"Yeah!" I yelled, as my eyes scanned the horizon.  "I'm in Florida!  This is where everyone else wants to be."  And that feeling -- that feeling that Tampa was my home, where I was meant to be -- has never left me.

Back then, it was "Tampa town."  Traffic congestion was unheard of, unless one of the bridges across the Hillsborough River got stuck open.  People didn't actually live in St. Petersburg or Clearwater and go to work in Tampa, having to cross the bay via the Gandy or Howard-Frankland bridges, or the Courtney-Campbell Causeway.  No.  No way.  The three cities were all very well defined communities, each with a character all its own.

Today, we live in the Bay.  Quite literally, the marketing Gods would have the rest of the United States and world believe that residents live in a place called Tampa Bay.  Oh!  You mean "Tampa Bay area?"  Well then, why don't you say so?  Any map will clearly show you that Tampa Bay is a body of water, as is Hillsborough Bay, Old Tampa Bay and McKay Bay.

In this topsy-turvy world today, people young and old are fleeing Tampa to live in -- of all places -- St. Petersburg.  Hell, I wouldn't be caught dead living in St. Petersburg unless I was 65 or older.  At least, that's the way I saw it when I was young.  Clearwater was just a sleepy little town whose claim to fame was its fantastic beach.  Today, St. Petersburg's bayfront district is experiencing an incredible resurgence. Gone are the famous green bus benches and shuffleboard courts that catered to senior citizens.  Clearwater is so popular with the ultra rich that they've built walls of condominiums along the beach, screening off the Gulf waters from everyday people.  Why, even the Church of Scientology is in on the act, buying up as much downtown Clearwater property as possible to go along with its downtown world headquarters.

I live out in the country now.  Well, it used to be country.  Now there are thousands of home sites going in just north of us in what used to be pasture land.  Traffic is so bad on our east-west state road that we may have to drive back roads to a nearby intersection with a traffic light in order to be able to get onto or across the highway.  Developers are pushing elected officials to ignore planning efforts and law so that this rural area can be developed to the point where you can look in your neighbor's windows or stare at the three-story tower of town homes.

I grew up in South Tampa.  I could ride my bike down the middle of Howard Avenue, paved with Baltimore Block bricks, and never fear being hit by a car.  Today Howard Avenue is a parking lot.  In some places our wise city fathers have allowed apartments and condos to overshadow the street to the point that you feel you are in a canyon.

I was away from Florida for almost 30 years.  Each time I came back to visit I became more and more aware that "you can't go home again," as the novelist Thomas Wolfe noted.  Things change, and usually not for the better.  I'm certain young people today love Tampa Bay and all its bars, restaurants, malls and attractions.  But, if they could know what I know, see what I saw, and live the life I had back then, they would breathe a deep sigh, and dream of paradise lost.