There comes a point in life, somewhere between buying stronger reading glasses and finding oneself inexplicably fascinated by garden centres, when mortality begins to knock at the door. Not in a grim, scythe-bearing fashion, but with a sort of wry persistence, like an insurance salesman who simply will not take the hint.
At first, we resist. We dye our hair, jog gamely around the park, and refuse to admit that our knees are negotiating a separate peace treaty with gravity. But sooner or later, we must face the truth: the body has a finite warranty, and the manufacturer, alas, is no longer taking returns.
The only sane response, it seems to me, is laughter. Not the cruel laughter of denial, but the gentle humour of acceptance. For if we cannot laugh at our own inevitable decline, then we are likely to spend our latter years in a sulk, and no one likes a sulking elder.
I recall my uncle, long gone now, who insisted on calling his hearing aids “conversation filters.” When accused of not listening, he would reply, “I was simply applying a filter to improve the sound quality.” Another friend, when asked about his increasingly bald pate, would sigh and say, “The Lord is simply enlarging my face for greater glory.” These were men who understood the importance of comedy in the face of mortality.
If I am to leave any inheritance to the next generation, I should like it to include the ability to laugh at themselves. Life is far too serious to be taken seriously. Our foibles, mistakes, and eventual decline are not tragedies but part of the great absurdity of existence. To laugh in the face of death is not to deny it but to rob it of its sting.
Perhaps, then, the real test of a life well lived is not whether we have achieved all our goals, but whether, at the end, we can look back and chuckle. If I can meet death with a twinkle in my eye and a joke on my lips, then I shall consider the whole business a rather good run.
