[AT] No Left Turn Part #2

[jfgrant]

No Left Turn Part #2

No Left Turns  Part #2
After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever 
she drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going 
to the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, 
if it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the 
Cubs game on the radio. (In the evening, then, when
I'd stop by, he'd explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second 
base made a bad throw to the millionaire on first base, so the
multimillionaire on third base scored.") If she were going to the grocery 
store, he would go along to carry the bags out -- and to
 make sure she loaded up on ice cream.
 As I said, he was always the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she 
was 88 and still driving, he said to me, "Do you want to know the secret
 of a long life?" "I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be 
something bizarre.
 "No left turns," he said. "What?" I asked.
 "No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an 
article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when
 they turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your 
eyesight worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your
mother and I decided never again to make a left turn." "What?" I said again. 
"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three  rights are the same as a 
left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make  three rights."
 "You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she 
said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works."
 But then she added: "Except when your father loses count." I was driving at 
the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started laughing. "Loses 
count?" I asked. "Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But
it's not a problem. You just make seven rights,
 and you're okay again."
 I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked. "No," he said. "If we 
miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad day. Besides, nothing 
in life is so important it can't be put off
 another day or another week."
 My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car 
keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999,
 when she was 90. She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the 
next year, at 102. They both died in the bungalow they had
 moved into in 1937 and bought a few years later for $3,000. (Sixty years 
later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to have a shower put in the tiny
bathroom -- the house had never had one. My father would have died then and 
there if he knew the shower cost nearly three times what he paid for  the 
house.) He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he 
was 101 because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but  wanted to 
keep exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until
the moment he died.
 A happy life
 One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to 
give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all
 three of us that he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging 
conversation about politics and newspapers and things in the
 news. A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first 
hundred years are a lot easier than the second hundred." At one point in our 
drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably not going to live much
longer." "You're probably right," I said. "Why would you say that?" he 
countered, somewhat irritated. "Because you're 102 years old,"
I said. "Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. 
That night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him
through the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, 
apparently seeing us look gloomy, he said: "I would like to make an
announcement. No one in this room is dead yet." An hour or so later, he 
spoke his last words:
 "I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. 
I am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as
 anyone on this earth could ever have."
 A short time later, he died.
 I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot. I've wondered now and then 
how it was that my family and I were so lucky that he lived so long.
 I can't figure out if it was because he walked through life.
 Or because he quit taking left turns.