Confronting Mortality

"Sentence of Death" by John Collier  ©1908 Photo courtesy of the Wellcome Collection

It's now been nearly two years since my mother of blessed memory passed away. It has been a constant reminder that my time on this planet is limited and will be of a yet to be determined length. I am now in a position to enjoy my life and choose freely what it is that I truly want to do.

But the fact is I do miss her terribly.

I have no illusions. I am almost 70 with a number of interests that keep me constantly busy, yet there is a gnawing feeling that I am keeping myself occupied because I have no one whose life interests me beyond my own and more than those other pursuits. My sister calls me a narcissist. I say I am lonely. We're probably both right.

Since I created it, this blog has always been my most personal, creative outlet for releasing my feelings about a great many things. But the one thing I have yet to consider fully is my own pending mortality. 

I've always had great pluck. That's the term Baden-Powell referred to Scouts who were always cheerful and ready to render assistance to others. In truth I should have never deviated from achieving Eagle Scout, but I made a conscious choice in seventh grade that I needed to concentrate on my bar mitzvah. Imagine how that plays out today when I do so much work with the National Jewish Committee on Scouting and the National Association of Masonic Scouters (NAMS) to help others achieve the rank of Eagle Scout.

Eagle Scout is all about establishing goals in life and seeing them through to completion.

I have now realized a number of goals I could not have imagined 20 years ago. I am an acknowledged theatre critic and a TV personality for the past nearly 13 years. I am the publisher or webmaster of several websites that keep me constantly challenged and I have just completed a three-year position as president of the American Jewish Press Association.

So where to from here? While I am still the president of NAMS, that term of office will end in less than a year and I have only a few remaining months to achieve a lasting legacy for that organization, much of which was obscured due to the COVID pandemic. Once again, man plans and G-d laughs.

I have determined that more than anything else I want to travel. I want to see places I've read about and I want to experience life on this wonderful world with a childhood abandon that only death itself will stop. I am off on a whirlwind adventure and I want to see what else is out there before I have my final breath and release my mortal coil. 

This will not be a cheap endeavor, but to do less would be costly to my inner soul. I feel like Tony in "West Side Story." Something is coming. 

It makes me very excited to know that I can do this at an age that many of my contemporaries are not able to do. I am lucky that I have not so many aches and pains as others. I still have all the original parts working. My hearing is still very good and while my vision is not perfect, my corrective lenses still afford me a good view of my surroundings. The extra package I am carrying around my belly shows that my sense of taste and smell have also not been diminished much. 

So I am off. I am embarking on the first of several planned excursions of what I hope will afford me the memories of a lifetime in what limited time I have left. I hope to circumnavigate the globe and have many tales to tell while still maintaining my other interests. Let's see how this first journey turns out. I am curious to see if the extra effort and cost I am paying is worth the experiences. I truly hope I have made an excellent choice, but it's all about the mystery of life. 

We never know if the choices we make are predetermined by G-d. I would like to think they are and that there is a great protector who knows better than me about what I should be doing with my life. Being productive is doing His work. Being nice is making the world a better place. Using my felicity of writing will make others feel and think about things they may have considered too, but didn't put down in print.

I've never had illusions about my effectiveness as a writer. I know I can write better than most, but I am not elevating myself above others like Shakespeare, Hemingway, O'Neill and Keats whose abilities have established them as luminaries for past and future generations. Reading has always been key to writing and I enjoy reading well crafted works, whether they be novels, plays or poetry.

So for now, I am signing off. Hopefully, this missive will be the first of several to come of logs of my journeys to come. I need to do this desperately. 

Perhaps, on one of these journeys I will find that someone who will make me slow down and concentrate on her (and us). But in the meantime I must say Bon Voyage!