A U.S. president was in the news again this month.
No, not that one. Jimmy Carter. The 95-year-old ex-president, it was reported, was recovering from brain surgery, needed to treat a subdural hematoma that he sustained after hitting his head in October.
Hearing the news someone re-posted this reminder below. It had originally been posted just after that October fall:
Soon after several of Carter's neighbors in Plains, Ga., were interviewed by USA Today about Carter's latest setback. While acknowledging that the 95-year-old Georgian isn't going to live forever, they seemed to think that the 39th U.S. president would bounce back one more time. One said that it would take more than brain surgery to keep him down. Another predicted that Carter would show up for the town's Christmas tree lighting on November 30.
When I read that, I started to picture Carter's To Do list. Not all nonagenarians, of course, are as active as Carter has been (how many of us will still be building houses in our nineties?), but it occurred to me that inevitably there was going to be something on his list that eventually wouldn't be scratched off. A project that wasn't completed. A party never attended. A gift or letter never sent. A phone call never made.
When my mother died, I thought that she had died way too young. Many people around me tried to tell me that 92 was a good run, but it seemed to me that my mom was just getting started. She had so many plans. I remember thinking: She had so much left on her To Do list.
She had more columns to write (At 86 she had started to write a monthly column for the then St. Petersburg Times, including an article on Dating in Your Eighties and Nineties). She had yoga classes, wine club sessions, grandchildren's birthday celebrations and dinner invitations from her two daughters in Milwaukee on her calendar. She had cookies to bake and letters to write.
She obviously also had planned to take more trips (to Florida and to Washington D.C. to visit her out-of-town daughters perhaps): She had left behind 14,000 unused Southwest points.
My sister Renee reminded me of those Southwest points when I was talking to her about the futility of getting everything done on our own To Do lists. My mother's unused points, which were not transferable, had died with her. 14,000 points. Good for one more trip, maybe two, we figured.
It was a good reminder not to put off anything for later. At our age, later is now. But also that we shouldn't worry so much about getting through our whole To Do lists. No one ever does.
I hope Jimmy Carter will be at that Christmas lighting ceremony in Plains, Georgia on November 30. And if he is able to go, I hope he puts next year's ceremony on his 2020 To Do list. After all, letting hope triumph over experience is what badasses do.
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