Threescore and ten ... and then?

“The days of our life are threescore and ten, and even by reason of strength fourscore years; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

Psalm 90:10

Here I am at threescore and ten, or as we would phrase it today, the Big Seven-Oh. I can’t say that age has snuck up on me. I’ve seen it coming for years, decades even. I know my face and body have aged. I see it and feel it every day. My joints and muscles hurt most days, and some foods tend to tie my digestive tract in knots. My faltering memory embarrasses me nearly every day. I often can’t recall someone’s name, although I know it perfectly well; it just won’t show itself. It’s as if my brain were an overstuffed Rolodex, and some days the right card just won’t pop up.

Nevertheless, I’m grateful to be here at this biblical age. My threescore years and ten have been good, better than I deserve. I have experienced disappointments and tragedies, along with joys and pleasant surprises. Friends from long ago have preceded me to the grave years before they reached this epoch. I have stood by the graves of parents, siblings, cousins, and friends. The Psalm’s threescore and ten years is not a promise; not everyone will make it. Nor is it a delimiter. Some will live past 70. My parents made it to their late 80s, but their last decade was sad and painful.

Genes from my parents might get me through a few more years, but if those extra years involve the kind of dementia and residence in a nursing home that they experienced, I’d rather leave the stage now.

Yes, this span “is but toil and trouble,” and the years “are soon gone,” after which “we fly away.” We will soon get a reminder of our mortality on Ash Wednesday: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Maybe not imminently, but certainly.

I’m hopeful for another decade or two past this milestone if my body and brain will continue working. I don’t want to end the romance that began nearly 50 years ago; we have other things to see, places to go, conversations to have and hugs to share. I want to see my grandchildren, no longer babies, grow into adulthood. I have lived to see “your children’s children” as the biblical blessing promised (Psalm 128:6). Now I want to see them grown and living their own successful lives.

For the most part, I have found that life keeps getting better. I rather dreaded my forties, which began with an “over the hill” party, because I was no longer a young man. My fifties were better. The children were mostly on their own, and our “empty nest” wasn’t at all bad once I got used to the quiet in the house. My sixties were difficult as loved ones died, and my career took an abrupt turn, but our marriage grew stronger as we faced that decade together.

Now I bid farewell to my sixties, no longer joking that “it’s the sixties all over again!” Most of all on this threescore and ten, I am grateful for a life different from the one I imagined at the one-score mark. This life, however long it may last, has been as wonderful as George Bailey’s life in Bedford Falls.

This post originally appeared in The Wilson Times March 2, 2019.