39 Candles

My birthday.

Traditionally, the birthday is as perfect a time as any for a bit of existential angst: thoughts of mortality, an evaluation of one's achievements and regrets (objective and critical, or otherwise), plus a more keen look at one's hopes and fears for the future, and of course general nostalgia.

I have no real need to restrict resolutions to January 1st, or romance to February 14th, or peace and good will to December 25th. I'm also fairly likely to celebrate Halloween all year 'round, too; I haven't taken down my decorations in decades.

So I think I'll exempt myself from the birthday tradition, at least for this year. I'm a little too existentialist on a day-to-day basis...or, at the very least, at frequent but irregular intervals throughout the year.

On the other hand, I'm turning 39. The last year of my 30s. So what does this mean?

Or, to put it another way: if birthdays are relatively meaningless, how useful is it to think in terms of decades? Is there any reason to consider 39 as a 'last gasp' for anything in particular?

It's not like my 30s were spectacular in any way. Ten years ago I was doing more or less the same thing in more or less the same place.

What has changed?

I'm married rather than single. This is a major change, on the face of it, but in all honesty the actual relationship is almost completely the same as it was ten years ago. Apart from three rings and ten more years of memories and familiarity, it could very well be June 2nd of the year 2000.

I live in a house rather than an apartment, which is also a fairly major difference. Though now that I think about it, the move occurred extremely early in the decade. I was fully settled in by 9-11-01 (one of the few dates that I immediately connect with my own memories, for obvious reasons). Without too much justification, one could easily consider the house to be a turning point from my 20s to my 30s, rather than a significant event of my 30s. But all-in-all, my 30s were spent with a mortgage while my 20s were spent renting (or, for a very brief period, living rent-free with the folks).

I have two dogs now, whereas ten years ago I had two cats. The cats are still here, but they're obviously living on borrowed time. As are we all; I think it to be virtually impossible that any of my animal friends will be with me in another decade. In fact, I think it quite possible that one or more of them will not be with me at this time next year.

Just to torture myself: the friend most likely to be gone within the next year (and almost beyond question during the next ten years) is Hamlet, the oldest dog. He's a purebred Bulldog at least ten years old. Since he's a rescue dog, all we have to determine his age is the expertise of our vet. Hamlet was full-grown when we adopted him, and that was not long after we got the house.

He's not doing well. I don't know if it's his bad eyes, his bad ears, or his brain, but he walks into walls and occasionally seems unsure of where he is and what he is doing. Doggy senility. But he seems fairly content most of the time, so that's something...if these are his last days, I'm doing my best to make sure that they're filled with as much love and kindness as I can offer.

The cats are next in line, but only because of their age. We brought them in at almost the same time, less than two years after coming to Las Vegas. My math is fuzzy on things like this (after all, I still think of Titanic as a relatively recent film), but I think they're at least 12 years old...and probably one or two more. That's getting quite near to the end of a normal lifespan for a cat.

Sure, I've known cats that were 15 or 20 years old or even older (I knew a 22-year old cat, but she wasn't exactly hearty). So I'm making myself as ready as anyone can ever be; the odds definitely do not favor either of them still being with me when I turn 40.

Neither cat has been to the vet in the last decade. I suppose ten years' worth of missed boosters and immunizations must make some kind of difference, but both are exclusively house cats. They're a bit skinnier than they used to be, and they both have a lighter and more even coloring overall. Occasionally the smaller cat misses a jump up to the kitchen sink, and the bigger one doesn't play as hard or as long as he used to -- but who does?

My puppy Brutus, now several years past really being a puppy, is the youngest of us but also the most accident-prone. He generally acts like the entire world is either edible or made of foam rubber. He's had two knee surgeries and a serious internal surgery (to remove, from his stomach and intestine, several big pointy things that he swallowed), as well as a minor patch-up or two.

Whatever the case, I would be surprised and extremely saddened to see another birthday without him by my side. He's the closest thing to exuberant youth that we see in our house. However, the odds are that he will almost certainly die in the next decade.

And then there is us. We both smoke, rarely take exercise, and have inconsistent eating and sleeping habits. Not good. Between the two humans in the household, I'd have to give myself a slight edge in the odds as far as longevity goes. Both of my wife's parents are dead, while both of my parents are still alive (we'll get to them in a minute). My wife is clinically obese, while I am just overweight and out-of-shape.

So guess what that means: she'll die first. In a way, I'm glad; I'd hate to put her through all of the emotional and practical bullshit that goes with getting left behind. Of course, that means that I'll have to put up with all of the bullshit that goes with getting left behind, but I'd far rather endure my own suffering than cause someone else's.

Now this is where the tricky part comes in. Her mother died quite young, about the very same time that we first met. I don't really know how old she was, but I'm guessing that she was somewhere between her mid-40s and early 50s. Heart failure, I believe -- she was a smoker, and though I don't think she was overweight, she did have two children (which takes a few years off of your life, and I don't mean that as a joke).

Add the ever-present lurking chance of cancer, which took her extremely hearty father in his mid-60s, and you get a remote chance that my wife will not be with me in a year, and a rather more significant chance that she won't make it through the next decade. Is it likely? I don't know. It may be about fifty-fifty.

If I had to guess, I'd say that we'll lose one of the animals every couple of years (on average) during the next decade. When 2020 rolls around, I may or may not have my wife with me. This is all barring unforeseen accidents or surprise illnesses, of course, which are too far out of my control to consider.

And then there's my family, or what remains of them. My mother has already beaten some odds; her siblings started dropping off when I was a child and the overall level of health has definitely dropped over the past decade. Six of her dozen brothers and sisters are gone already, with at least three in shaky health and three more about which I know nothing (nothing recent, anyway). The age range is pretty wide, but it's not like only the old ones are gone and the young remain; in fact, two of the younger ones were the first to go.

My father's family, on the other hand, are still going (if not going strong, exactly). They've always had more mental and behavioral problems than physical ones, anyway. My grandfather long outlived the other three grandparents, and by that I mean the other three were gone before I knew them at all. Sure, he was more or less incoherent on and off for the last decade or two of his life; alcoholism either caused or exacerbated his hereditary likelihood for mental disease -- a trait shared by both of my father's brothers, though my father himself is (like myself) an infrequent drinker at most. Nor is he insane, though I wouldn't want to put money on his mental stability if my mother dies first.

And my father himself is getting up there. He had a bypass (double or triple?) a few years ago, has trouble with high blood pressure, and god knows what else because he won't mention it and my mother will only vaguely allude to how many pills he's taking. I'm tempted to say that he's probably pretty healthy for a man his age, but he's still his age.

So yeah, my mother will probably go first and my father will probably go a little nuts afterward and this will almost certainly happen in the next ten years. But that's just the most likely possibility; there's all sort of other ways that one or both of them could die, but whatever the case...it will almost certainly happen in the next ten years.

I also can't discount the possibility of my brother dying in the next decade. My sole remaining sibling has decades of alcoholism, drug use, and smoking in his history (though I must add, not in his recent history). Despite the nine additional years he has on me, I think his chances of surviving the next decade are about as good as mine, all things considered...but that's not necessarily a great chance to begin with.

So I'm going to guess that my next ten years will have more than their fair share of sadness and loss. My only comfort is that I'm en route to becoming emotionally dead or insane myself, so that should blunt the impact a little.