Do we know each other well enough to talk about the deep personal stuff? Yes? Then here's a column that may help in the years ahead:

When you hit 65 and the birthdays after, you've moved into a new neighborhood of life. Some part of you knows you could graduate from the planet any day now and nobody would say you died too young. And this could happen just as you were enjoying senior matinees at the movies, bass fishing shows on TV and payback checks from Social Security.

And next comes the secret question we all ask ourselves: When will IT happen?

Then the next questions: Should we pay off my credit card bills or leave them for the kids? Should we plan long-range as if we would hit 100 - say plant a redwood, adopt a foster kid or start a new career or marriage? Or should we plan as if IT will happen tomorrow? Maybe we should finally make that will leaving out the disagreeable Jimmy or maybe we should wander over to the undertaker and pick out a designer urn. (Is Versace into that yet?)

Another option: Maybe we should recognize that we are on a sure-to-sink personal Titanic so we might as well go first class. Live it up. Eat chocolate until we smell like new Hershey bars. Drink double dirty martinis. Grab the next attractive stranger on a street and kiss him or her, risking jail for the sybaritic life. Or is it hedonism? (I always get them mixed up which means I don't do enough of either.)

Another option: Don't think, Don't plan. Let life and its opposite happen.



So what to do, if anything?

Me, I am not zen enough for the last option - doing nothing - which is why one friend always tells me: Don't push the river, it flows by itself. But I push rivers and urge streams along because I like the illusion of a little control in my life. So I try to come up with some sensible way to live, not knowing how long I may have - 20 minutes or 20 years. (If it were 20 minutes, I certainly would stop writing this and put on lipstick to ready myself.)

But I split the difference, knowing either is possible-tomorrow or 2036. I try to live in the moment, enjoying every day, knowing I have done the paper work required of us older adults - the will, the power of attorney and all the health care stuff. (But I overdid it once, paying for a cremation back in the 1970's and now I can't find the paperwork. Neither can the bonfire people. Up the creek on this one.)

As for downsizing and passing on the legacy possessions, I asked which kid wanted which thing so everybody gets something of emotional value from the house. But since none of us will remember what we said, I'm writing that down now. And Cranky Pants and I won't let visiting kids leave the house without taking something. The somethings they don't have room for go to a thrift store.



Planning on a long future

On the other hand, I went back to school at 65 to get an advanced degree in gerontology, which is the study of geezer life forms - all the better to write and broadcast about later life. I also got re-married in my late 60's - Cranky Pants and I thought as "long as you both shall live" was finally doable at our ages. And now I am planning what I want to be doing in my 90's besides still writing.

So I try to cover both sides of the question. What I don't do is live every day as if it were my last. If it were my last and I knew it, why it could ruin the whole day. Instead, I appreciate each day as if there weren't an endless supply of days.

Because there aren't.



Words to the wise

Here are two helpful books if you want to work both sides of the lifespan street: Putting Things in Order by David Finkle and Ellen Baumritter, a write-in diary and workbook that helps organize papers, thoughts and wishes. And on the other side, try Dare to Be 100: 99 Steps to a Long Healthy Life by Dr. Walter Bortz, who gives this advice: Keep your foot lashed to the pedal. No braking allowed.

OK, doc. (He's 78.)



Mel Walsh is a gerontologist and certifiable geezer. Her book of advice for older women, Hot Granny, is available at The Book Seller in Grass Valley and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.