On Becoming A Grandfather Again

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Assuming all goes well I will become a grandfather for the 4th time later this year. By the time the baby is due, my wife will be 70 and I will be almost 70. The realization that I will be 80 when my new grandchild is 10 and 90 when s/he is 20 is a sobering thought. It brings your mortality to the forefront of your mind—the world will go on without you. I suppose I could say with Ms. Melanie in Gone With The Wind “Children are life renewing itself.”

I wish I could know all of my grandchildren as adults, but life doesn’t give you all you want.  But, as I’ve recently written, the past, present, and future are all equally real in relativity theory. So hopefully my grandchildren and their descendants will learn that the idea that my wife and I are out there in spacetime long after we’re gone is consistent with everything we know in modern physics.

Now while I’ve made my views about the undesirability of death clear on many occasions, I could very well be wrong about that. Perhaps we have to die for life to renew itself. One of my intellectual heroes, Will Durant certainly thought so. He describes this idea with one of the most poignant yet hopeful passages in world literature,

Here is an old man on the bed of death, harassed with helpless friends and wailing relatives. What a terrible sight it is – this thin frame with loosened and cracking flesh, this toothless mouth in a bloodless face, this tongue that cannot speak, these eyes that cannot see! To this pass youth has come, after all its hopes and trials; to this pass middle age, after all its torment and its toil. To this pass health and strength and joyous rivalry; this arm once struck great blows and fought for victory in virile games. To this pass knowledge, science, wisdom: for seventy years this man with pain and effort gathered knowledge; his brain became the storehouse of a varied experience, the center of a thousand subtleties of thought and deed; his heart through suffering learned gentleness as his mind learned understanding; seventy years he grew from an animal into a man capable of seeking truth and creating beauty. But death is upon him, poisoning him, choking him, congealing his blood, gripping his heart, bursting his brain, rattling in his throat. Death wins

Outside on the green boughs birds twitter, and Chantecler sings his hymn to the sun. Light streams across the fields; buds open and stalks confidently lift their heads; the sap mounts in the trees. Here are children: what is it that makes them so joyous, running madly over the dew-wet grass, laughing, calling, pursuing, eluding, panting for breath, inexhaustible? What energy, what spirit and happiness! What do they care about death? They will learn and grow and love and struggle and create, and lift life up one little notch, perhaps, before they die. And when they pass they will cheat death with children, with parental care that will make their offspring finer than themselves. There in the garden’s twilight lovers pass, thinking themselves unseen; their quiet words mingle with the murmur of insects calling to their mates; the ancient hunger speaks through eager and through lowered eyes, and a noble madness courses through clasped hands and touching lips. Life wins.[i]

Nonetheless, what’s wrong with loving life so much that you never want to let go? What’s wrong with loving others so much that you never want them to go? What’s wrong with loving others so much that you don’t want them to have let go either? Rage, rage against the dying of the light versus acceptance and resignation.

In the end, I’m heartily grateful for having had the chance to live and love and learn; to have had wonderful parents and children, great teachers, and a loving mate. I so wish everyone could say the same.

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[i] Will Durant, The Mansions of Philosophy: A Survey of Human Life and Destiny (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1929) 407-08.