Who would say no to an extra year of life, especially if you could choose when to take it? Not at the end, please, when you might be too old or tired to enjoy it. You wouldn’t want it at the beginning either. We love babies for their potential, but no one wants to be one again. You’d probably ask for it to come in the middle, when extra time is likely to be rich and nourishing, like fresh-baked bread, spongy and soft. Yet in those rich, busy years of midlife, what need have you for more? You’d be like a person who has consumed an entire loaf of bread, and then tries to stuff more in. Why be greedy when you are well fed? Picture a snake that has swallowed a rabbit. How funny you would look, your life bulging in the middle, the rhythm of your days sluggish as you digest all you have taken in. No—the extra days must come where we need them, at the end, a dry morsel, but worth having.
If, on the other hand, you had to give up a day or two, or even a month? It would hardly matter if you lost them in the middle. With plenty on your plate, you could afford to sacrifice a little. My father savored a beer at lunch. He was a logical, thoughtful person, not given to impulse. If I sat down with a cold beer on a hot day, I might suck down a quarter of it in the first gulp. Not my father. He would calculate how long the beer must last—through the meal, for example—and space his sips accordingly. Ask for a taste of his beer at the start when he could still adjust and he’d push the glass toward you. Ask in the middle of the meal when the glass is down by half, and he’d still share. But when it came to the dregs, he was quite possessive. He’d explain he had the remaining amount portioned so it lasted to the end. Then, probably, he’d grudgingly allow you a taste. With his time, however, he was never reserved. Yes, take some that’s left, he’d have said. He’d have risen from his chair no matter how it hurt him to move. He’d have done so to study the matter and give advice or to collect the tools and fix the problem for you.
I wonder if he calculated, as he approached the end of his life, how much was left of it. He seemed to know the end was coming. After his glasses disappeared in the commotion of a fall in a parking lot, he protested the purchase of another pair of expensive progressive lenses. And he was right—the glasses arrived, but he got the use of them for no more than a handful of days. If I could choose for him, I would splice any extra time onto the end of his life. Keep him going. Just a little longer. It’s too late for that, obviously, though sometimes he returns in my dreams, neither the young, confident, capable father I knew nor the old, bent father I also knew, but the man sitting at the table on the back porch, where everything is in place. He wasn’t picky, but he was particular. The cheese board, the baguette, the proper knife, the right mustard, the leftovers to be eaten up, the plain flatware he preferred, the seat he liked. And his freezer-chilled beer and favorite glass. “Ah!” I can hear him say in quiet satisfaction. He is ready to savor it all in regulated sequence and to the fullest. If you want something, go ahead, ask already.
