Friday – A Life Lived in Literature, 42nd Installment
I wrap up this memoir with some reflections on what life feels like at 75 and what I foresee going forward.
Sartre writes that, when we die, we become our past, frozen in the minds of those who remember us. At three quarters of a century, I’m not sure that people will see me differently when I die than how they see me now, except for the fact that I will be more infirm. The final years of my father, who died at 90, and my mother, who died at 96, don’t loom as large in my memory as do the years when they were younger. In fact, I divide them into their working and parenting lives when I was a child and teenager; their working lives after I left home; and their retirement lives, which lack the variety of what came before. I see my own life through the same lens: child and adolescent; young married adult before children; working parent; professor whose children have left home; and retiree who life has settled.
All of which is to say, I see myself at this age as having become my past, Sartre’s frozen state, since I don’t see my life changing much going forward. And that’s fine with me.
Although my life has a sameness to it, I don’t find it dull. I play tennis, write my blog, read and listen to novels, do occasional traveling, go to church, correspond with friends and family, and engage in various communal activities. I don’t feel that I need to accomplish more than I am accomplishing, and I don’t fret about missed opportunities. The incessant worry of professors—that we’re not doing as much as we could for our students and that our scholarly work is falling short of expectations—is no longer a part of my life.
In other words, I’m not like Tennyson’s restless Ulysses, mentioned in my last post, who feels that “some work of noble note, may yet be done,/ Not unbecoming men that strive with gods.” I no longer feel the need to prove myself.
Is that a version of the static existence that Ulysses accuses his son of living? Admittedly, I am not out there smiting the sounding furrows so that I can touch the Happy Isles and meet the great Achilles. Nor am I taking on gulfs that could wash me down. I’m not living a heroic life.
Unlike Tennyson’s Ulysses, whose restlessness lands him in one of Dante’s lower circles, Homer’s Odysseus is told he will die in peace. His fate, predicted by Teiresias in the underworld, is not unlike that of my mother, who died in her sleep only a few feet from where I am sitting now:
Then a seaborne death
soft as this hand of mist will come upon you
when you are wearied out with rich old age,
your country folk in blessed peace around you.
And all this shall be just as I foretell.
Living in the house where both my parents grew old and died means that I think about my end quite a lot. This house is filled with those memories—of playing Mozart and reading poetry during my mother’s final hours before falling asleep next to her—and I sense that I am walking in their footsteps. To be sure, I know that my children won’t come to live with Julia and me as she and I lived with my mother so the odds are that at least one of us will end our days in a senior center. It’s easier to imagine it all finishing out here.
Yet if my life is quieter and more reflective, it is far from static. My mind feels constantly stimulated by the novels I’m reading and the essays I’m writing. In a way, retirement has allowed me to shut out the distractions that once made my life a never-ending emotional roller coaster, such as that described by John Wilmot:
But we, poor slaves to hope and fear,
Are never of our joys secure;
They lessen still as they draw near,
And none but dull delights endure.
I am privileged in that my experience of retirement, bolstered as it is by Medicare, social security, and a pension and so far marked by good health, means that I can choose to focus on what brings me the most pleasure. Literature thrills me as much now as it ever did, as does the companionship of friends, on the tennis courts and around the table. And then there are our two sons and our five grandchildren. I am filled with gratitude for all of it.
Of course, life being what it is means that that I can’t remain entirely complacent. The threat of autocracy looms and I worry about the world we are leaving our grandchildren, especially when it comes to the climate. I will continue to participate in No Kings marches and vote and make my voice heard through the blog.
Perhaps I shouldn’t assume that life at 85 will look like life at 75. Perhaps there is still some work of noble note to be done. If so, I’ll report on it when it happens and update this memoir.
Past Installments of A Life Lived in Literature
A Life Lived in Literature: How It All Began (Sept. 5, 2025)
Early Reading Memories (Sept. 12, 2025)
Childhood Confusion: Reading to the Rescue (Sept. 19, 2025)
Confronting Segregation (Sept. 26, 2025)
School Reading vs. Real Reading (Oct. 10, 2025)
Childhood in Paris (Oct. 17, 2025)
My Time at Sewanee Military Academy (Oct. 24, 2025)
Existentialism for High School Seniors (Oct. 31, 2025)
Why I Majored in History, Not English (Nov. 7, 2025)
My College Search for Authenticity (Nov. 14, 2025)
On D. H. Lawrence and a Sexual Awakening (Nov. 21, 2025)
My Life as a Bildungsroman (Nov. 28, 2025)
Grad School: Literary Baptism by Fire (Dec. 5, 2025)
Early Scenes from a Marriage (Dec. 12, 2025)
Bringing Up Baby in Grad School (Dec. 19, 2025)
Grappling with Racism (Jan. 2, 2026)
Journal of a Young Teacher (Jan. 16, 2026)
Teaching and Reading in Yugoslavia (Jan. 23, 2026)
Life at 40: Barely Controlled Chaos (Jan 30, 2026)
From Secular Humanist to Christian Believer (Feb. 6 2025)
Looking Back at a Lifetime Together (Feb. 13, 2026)
To Ljubljana with Love (Feb. 20, 2026)
Forging a Separate Identity from My Father (Feb. 27, 2026)
“Better Living” Emerged from a Midnight Epiphany (March 6, 2026)
The Golden Years before Tragedy Struck (March 13, 2026)
Using Lit to Grapple with a Death (March 20, 2026)
Lit in the Year following Justin’s Death (March 27, 2026)
My Eldest Son, Named after a Keats Sonnet (April 3, 2026)
Sterne’s Uncle Toby and My Own Toby (April 10, 2026)
After the 2nd Death, a Book Project (April 17, 2026)
Making Lit Meaningful for Students (April 24, 2026)
Horizons Broadened (May 1, 2026)
Obama’s Election and a Blog Launched (May 8, 2026)
Expanding Outward at 60 (May 15, 2026)
On Losing My Father (May 22, 2026)
Cavorting through Literature’s Wonderland (May 29, 2026)
An Academic Life Sidetracked? (June 5, 2026)
Sports as a Spur to the Imagination (June 12, 2026)
Entering Retirement (June 26, 2026)
My Early Literary Civics Lessons (July 3, 2026)
My Friendships Grounded in Literature (July 17, 2026)
My Memoir Comes to an End (For Now) (July 24, 2026)
