Kelly Conaboy, beautiful woman and writer of many popular humorous novels and television shows and movies that everyone loved, died Saturday at one of her homes in a scenic part of Europe. She was 101.

Her daughter, Kelley Conaboy, confirmed the death Sunday morning, reporting that her mother had died of her own will. Not like a suicide, really, because — let me explain. Kelly had spent her last 76 years in her 25-year-old body, except slightly taller and without the health problems, after ingesting something (?) by accident in 2012 that allowed this to happen. It was like Tuck Everlasting, except she was able to kill herself whenever she wanted. So I guess it was pretty much like a suicide. [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, getting older
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In the July 14 issue of the Times Literary Supplement, David Wheatley begins his review of Letters of Louis MacNeice by noting that “the Greeks thought of the past as stretching out before them while the future waited behind their backs.”

I am not sure if I ever knew this, and had long since forgotten it, but I do know that I have often thought this way. It has long seemed to me that when we are born we get in line behind all those who are already here, and those who come after get in line behind those of us who have already arrived.

This is but one of a number of odd ways I have of looking at time. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson
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A friend of mine recently referred to her life as a mountain. Apparently she started climbing it years ago without realizing, then one day looked down and discovered how high up she’d gone. She also discovered that it would be nearly impossible to get down off of this mountain and start the climb up a different mountain. By different, I think she meant the one on which she had assumed she would end up. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, ends & odd, getting older
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My father-in-law recently faced up to the adult equivalent of “there is no Santa Claus.” Specifically, he discovered that, if the shit ever hits the fan, nobody is going to wipe his ass for him. Well … Maybe that’s unfair. He actually realized that, in case of disaster, he can’t count on “the authorities” to charge to the rescue.

Hmmm … I phrased it better the first time. [Read more →]

Tags: damned lies, getting older
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Satirist Craig Brown of the Daily Mail has it for you:

A new biography of the film star Warren Beatty claims that he has been to bed with 12,775 women. The author adds, usefully, that the figure ‘does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on’

Thank goodness. Wait: “drive-bys?” How does that … never mind.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, getting older
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Live long enough and you will start to grow old. As someone who has crossed that threshold I can say that, so far, it isn’t exactly turning out as expected. Not that I expected much, mind you, just what I took to be the usual. I figured I’d put on a bit of weight, get a little paunchy, and have some more aches to put up with. That’s all come to pass, but what I didn’t expect is how, at some point, it all seems to come together into some sort of critical mass, and it’s no longer something that’s happening, but something that has happened. It’s a bit like when you notice that all the leaves are off the trees and realize it’s not really autumn anymore. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson
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What can you say about this case, in which a 98-year-old woman murdered her 100-year-old nursing home roommate? Do you have anything? I don’t, except that it’s sad.

I like the picture of Elizabeth Barrow. She seems happy there, smiling and holding a stuffed animal while celebrating her latest birthday, with “100″ on the cake.

(via Drudge)

Tags: getting older, on the law
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When you read the beginning of this story about Theodore Sypnier, you might be thinking that New York residents are overreacting. Using common sense, you might believe that freeing a 100-year-old pedophile from jail isn’t dangerous, that this man can’t really be an ”active threat” to the community. He’s 100. What’s he gonna do, rape a kid? He’s a hundred. Years. Old. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, on the law
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That’s it. I’ve officially come to the conclusion that I am getting old. When did this happen? It crept up on me so fast that I think I have whiplash. Now I know “old” is a relative term and, to some, thirtysomething is far from entering the nursing home. But it seems like only yesterday when I was riding my bike around the neighborhood, getting yelled at by the cantankerous old-timers who lived down the block. I blinked and that time, like a lot of the past, has become a distant memory. What brought on this bout of age-related depression, you ask? It’s been a series of recent incidents which I now realize are only things that happen if you are getting old. Let’s review. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older
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Ruby,

Why a whisker? Why my chin? Why now?

Middle-Aged in Milwaukee

[Read more →]

Tags: advice, getting older
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They say famous people die in threes. I do not know if that is necessarily true, but it does seem that they die in clusters. Usually three, four, or five famous people all die within a month or two of each other. Then, after all the tributes and remembrances, there are no new famous deaths for another half year or so. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, getting older
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As everyone knows and fears, our final days resemble our first, in their helplessness, in their inadvertent comedy, and in their nearness to an unknowable existence. I am reminded of these patiently waiting realities every time I visit my father, now 95 years old, at the nursing home, and slowly convey to his mouth quarter-teaspoons of pureed rye bread, carrots, ham, and vanilla pudding. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting, getting older, recipes & food
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Would you really  want to live to be 113 years old?

According to Guiness World Records, the previous record holder of the “World’s Oldest Man” title passed away in his sleep on Friday, making a British World War I veteran the new leader. Henry Allingham celebrated his 113th birthday on June 6th, and here’s hoping that he enjoys every single day of his reign.

I also hope I never even approach that number. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older
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Leaving home for work in the mornings, I found I was occasionally leaving something behind. My train pass. My ID badge. My keys, sunglasses, phone, wallet. So I made a list on my phone which I check every now and then — not every day, mind you, but on those days when I have that nagging feeling I must be forgetting something. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, health & medical
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So, everything is sort of falling apart slowly, right? Still sort of trying to work the marriage thing out, trying to get my own business off the ground, still not sure if we can keep the house, blah blah blah. And yet, here I am, for the first time in years, fronting a full four piece band. Here I am, for the first time ever, singing in the type of band that has enough interest to have options. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, music
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“And it is all so sad and yet so sweet to muse over the past.” So wrote the composer Tchaikovsky to his “beloved friend” and patron, Nadezhda von Meck.

Theirs was a peculiar relationship. They never met, but poured out their hearts and souls to each other in their correspondence. The reference to the sweetness and sadness of musing over the past occurs in a letter he sent in connection with his fourth symphony, which he wrote when he was 37 and dedicated to von Meck.

I think the age factor is significant. I was perhaps most conscious of time passing and time past when I was in my 30s, and I suspect that is not unusual. But I was aware of Tchaikovsky’s letter long before that, thanks to the liner notes on the 1958 recording of the fourth symphony by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, which was one of the first classical LPs I owned.

I first heard the symphony when I was a junior in high school, not long before the Bernstein recording was released. I knew what the critics thought of Tchaikovsky’s music. But what they complained about — bombast and emotional excess — is precisely what put it so much in harmony (as it were) with my own adolescent Sturm und Drang. [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, that's what he said, by Frank Wilson
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I was having sushi with a business associate the other day when the subject of regret came up. 

My colleague, who is much younger than me, said, “I really don’t have any regrets.  It’s not that I haven’t done things I wish I hadn’t done, it’s just that I made the best decisions I could at the time based on what I knew, and what I was capable of, at that moment. 

“And besides, I’m in a good place now, and maybe I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the mistakes I made earlier.”

There was something oddly familiar about her comments, and then I remembered that I used to say almost precisely the same thing when I was in my twenties. 

But I haven’t said it in years. 

Suddenly, a wintry image, or rather a progression of images, appeared before my mind’s eye: I pictured myself speeding down a highway through a very light and whirling and intermittent snow, so light that I couldn’t be bothered to turn on my windshield wipers. 

For the first few miles, the feathery flakes just blew away in front of my advancing windshield.  I felt vindicated, in an odd way, in my decision not to use the wipers.

Clearly, they weren’t needed.

All along, of course, a few random flakes here and there would stick to the glass, and a few droplets of mud as well.  But it didn’t make any discernible difference.

Even after 25 miles or so, though the windshield could have been cleaner, I suppose, the view remained completely unobstructed. 

But somewhere around the 50-mile mark, though the snowfall wasn’t any heavier than before, I realized that some terribly important line had been passed, though I hadn’t at all noticed it, many miles back.  [Read more →]

Tags: getting older, religion & philosophy
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Free tequila. It’s all about the free tequila. Not really, although it is kind of nice to have random strangers find real joy in giving me alcohol. It makes them happy, though I could not tell you why. Honestly, I just want to do something creative that no one has any control over. If I could paint I would. If I could focus my energies & thoughts to write a novel, then I would. If I could dance, then I would have a lucrative night job. The fact is, I can sing pretty well, so this is what I do.

I get to go to a person’s house (shout out to Sean) and jam out in their living room (sorry Deb & Cecil the cat). I get to write something that really only takes a few minutes to sort out, and I don’t have to turn it in to anyone for approval. It is lovely and blissful. I can’t get enough of it.

This Friday we are auditioning a bass player/back up singer. Then we move on to getting a drummer in on the game. And finally, it’s time for a gig. People really do say gig. And the thing about playing out is that even in the smallest room, with the tiniest crowd, someone is going to love it. I love that.

Tags: getting older, music
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At 17, getting into a band was as easy as dating the guitar player and learning to play a little tambourine.  At 27 it was as simple as posting a flyer with tear off tabs at Y&T with a list of my “influences” and previous bands.  At 37, I browse ads on Craigslist, and I wonder if the kids that post “no geezers” are referring to me.

Truthfully, it isn’t crazy difficult to find people to play with.  There are just some trade offs.  When everyone in the band has kids (like some guys I sang with for a few months at the start of the year) then the kill time for practice is pretty early.  There isn’t a lot of room for goofing off.  On the up side of that, no one gets so wasted they can’t play.  Playing with people in their 30’s means they have a job and will show for practice, but it also means canceling practice when their son has the flu.  Frankly, that’s only because none of us wants to catch that flu and pass it on to our own children.  I still meet slacker jobless musicians, even people in their 40’s, but now I refuse to play with them.

So, right now, the status of my band-life is that I have found someone with whom I am writing new songs.  He is probably in his late 30’s or early 40’s (hard to tell when someone is a smoker or a sun-worshiper), and is a nice guy.  We both listen to NPR every morning, we agree on subjects political and artistic (not difficult bonding points among musicians), and neither of us drinks to excess.  We also agree on the sound we’re going for, which is a huge part of the battle.  Now here we are, about to start auditioning other band mates.  Cue the scene in the doorway from “The Commitments.”  Seriously, Netflix it.

Tags: getting older, music
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I’m so far past hip that I’ve had a hipster replacement. That’s a middle age joke. And once you have to explain a joke the joke no longer exists. It becomes a duty. Hipsters never explain. Hipster replacements learn to share. Aging hipsters end up like Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons. Over inflated and over the top. A paradigm of ridiculousness. A narrow mind exposed for its failure to engage the rest of the world with an honest gaze.

Actually, I don’t run into that many tragically cool hipsters as I did a few years back. You know, back when guys with hair started shaving their heads. The pioneers of that bald chic hair style had a certain badass cachet about them, almost like they were banditos sneering at the well coiffed: “Follicles? We don’ need no steenking FOLLICLES!” Then there was the whole rockabilly thing going on with guys in Elvis pompadors wearing starched blue jeans with the cuffs turned up and chains on their wallets attached to their belt loops.

I suppose that’s one of the definitions of the hipster dress code. There’s got to be an implicit defiance manifested in what they choose to wear. It can be subtle, it can be outrageous, but it is instantly recognizable as hip. Whenever I wear anything self consciously hip I just end up looking dopey. [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, getting older
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