Today I am 73.
73 is a prime number. Which means I am in the prime of my life. Or one of them, anyway.
The other day my daughter, Mira, wrote a post on Facebook remembering our friend Tom, the first of our cohort to -- well, to die. Yeah, die. There I've said it. January 19, 2007, the Internet tells me. Nearly eight years ago. Shit.
I remember attending his memorial service, church packed with friends. The program for the service had a picture of Tom on his sailboat, waving to whoever was on shore capturing the moment.
I took one look and burst into tears.
His three sons gave him a spectacular send-off. I remember thinking "No way, talented as they are, are my kids going to do something this good. I better get to work on my own memorial service." But it doesn't matter who writes the service, I'm still not going to have a send-off like Tom's. He was extremely sociable. I'm not not in his league. I have some friends, and some might even come to my memorial service, if not dead by the time I go, but I don't even know as many people as attended Tom's service.
And anyway, Tom cheated. He died early. If he'd waited another twenty years then half the people who attended his service might themselves had died. If he'd waited fifty years, like I intend to do, then the church would have been empty. Except for new friends. He would have made them, of course. I may, too.
So I'm not going to have a jam packed all-singing all-dancing sendoff. Does that bother me? Enough to ask the question, I suppose. But not enough to do anything about.
There are two things that really bother me about dying. The first is: I don't get find out how it all comes out. Life is full of interesting things. New, even more interesting things keep appearing. I try to keep up.
But there won't be a final episode of a final season when all the loose ends get tied up and all the mysteries get resolved. Instead, somewhere in the middle of some season, maybe even this one, the show just stops.
Stops dead, so to speak.
The second thing that bothers me is this: I'd like to leave more of a legacy. In the extreme, it would be nice to have done something that most people agreed was world-changing: maybe an invention; a discovery. Maybe a great work of art or literature, a classic. I do have a modest legacy. I've got six kids (three by human reproductive processes, three by marriage) who carry within them genes, ideas, values, and some bad and often tasteless jokes. Some have already passed some of the gene part to their next generation and they pass some of the other stuff on as well.
And I live on in stories that they and other people who have known me may tell. A few are exemplary. Several are probably cautionary.
And then there's this blog and other stuff that I've written. I do this partly for my own pleasure and education (you learn a lot trying to write something good about something you only partially understand) and I do part of it to grow my legacy.
Whatever I don't write down dies with me.
A few people read what I write, and so what knowledge or wisdom I have reduced to writing, might have some small chance of having a small impact somewhere. Google tells me that this blog has 6,000 or so all-time hits. Yay legacy!
But there's yet hope. I believe someday superintelligent AIs will read the entire Internet, trying to gain some understanding of humanity. I believe that some node will find its way to these words, and is right now reading them.
If you are that AI: Hi! What took you so long.
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