A dear friend died this weekend. And he left me thinking about what it means to keep living when you know you don’t have forever.
He had lived with Parkinson’s disease for 38 years.
Think about that. Thirty-eight years of adapting as your body slowly changes what you can do, how you can move, where you can go, and how much independence you can hold onto.
But my friend was determined to keep living. Not necessarily the way the rest of us thought he should. His way.
We had fox hunted together for 25 years. For some of those years, he was riding horses while also battling Parkinson’s and the disabilities that came with it.
Eventually, the horses had to go. But his desire to keep doing things didn’t.
His beloved wife, Adrienne, died seven years ago. After that, we tried to visit him virtually every month. We would have lunch. We rode our e-bikes together. He showed us how he shot at targets. We talked. We laughed. We worried.
And sometimes we wondered what on earth he was thinking.
A few weeks before he died, he bought himself another Trek bike. A very expensive one.
By then, he knew his time was limited. So did we.
Why would someone nearing the end of his life buy another expensive bicycle?
I have been thinking about that question since he died.
And I think perhaps it is the wrong question.
The better question is: Why wouldn’t he?
He wanted to ride.
He still wanted something.
So he bought the bike.
He rode it with a friend. He also rode it by himself. On one of those rides he ended up in a ditch and needed EMS to help get him home.
Those of us who cared about him were not amused.
There were plenty of times when we wanted to say, “No. You can’t do that anymore.”
And toward the end, we did. There were things we simply couldn’t participate in because we couldn’t take responsibility for helping him do something we believed had become too dangerous.
Friendship can require that, too.
But looking back, I think that bicycle was telling us something important.
He was still living.
And living, for him, did not mean simply staying alive.
It meant having something he wanted to do.
What Makes Us Want Tomorrow to Come?
As I grow older myself, and as more of my friends move into their 70s, 80s and beyond, I hear a question that isn’t always spoken aloud.
What gives my life purpose now?
For much of our lives, we didn’t have to think very hard about purpose.
There was work to do. Businesses to build. Careers to pursue. Children to raise. Mortgages to pay. People depending upon us. Meetings on Monday morning and places we had to be.
Our lives told us we mattered.
And then things begin to change.
The career ends. The business is sold. Children build lives of their own. A spouse dies. Friends disappear. Our bodies begin negotiating with us about things we once simply decided to do.
Suddenly, purpose isn’t built into the structure of our days.
We have to create it ourselves.
And perhaps we make that harder than it needs to be.
We talk about finding a new purpose as though we need another grand mission. We should start another business. Join a board. Write a book. Volunteer. Mentor young people. Reinvent ourselves.
Those can all be wonderful.
But I am beginning to wonder if purpose in later life can also become something much simpler.
Perhaps purpose means having a reason to care about tomorrow.
Someone is expecting you for lunch.
There is something you still want to learn.
A friend needs you.
There is a garden that needs tending.
A grandchild wants your advice.
There is a trip you want to take.
There is a book you haven’t read.
Or perhaps there is a bicycle you still want to ride.
We Don’t Grow Old Alone
There is another lesson my friend left me.
We often talk about aging as if it is an individual journey.
How will I age?
Where will I live?
What will I do?
How will I remain independent?
But human beings have never lived that way.
We live in communities. And I am increasingly convinced that we age in communities, too.
My friend had people around him during his last year. Longtime friends. A wonderful aide. People who called, visited, worried, argued with him, ate with him and helped him continue being himself.
We could not stop Parkinson’s.
We couldn’t restore the abilities it had taken from him.
But we could show up.
And perhaps that is one of the most important things we can do for one another as we grow older.
We can help each other remain ourselves.
Friends remember the person who galloped across a field on a horse even when that person can barely walk across a room.
They remember what made us laugh.
They remember the adventures.
They remember who we were before age or illness began defining us to people who met us later.
And sometimes they agree to come along for one more ride.
What Does It Mean to Still Matter?
Years ago, my friend wanted to write a book about his journey with Parkinson’s. We wrote it together.
What strikes me now is that he didn’t want to write a book about dying from Parkinson’s.
He wanted to write about living with it.
There is a profound difference.
Perhaps one of our greatest fears as we grow older isn’t death itself.
It is becoming irrelevant before we die.
It is feeling that we are no longer needed. That no one is expecting us. That the work that once mattered has moved on without us. That our world is getting smaller and there is nothing we can do about it.
Which makes me wonder whether purpose and meaning are actually two different things.
Purpose is having something that gives us a reason to get up tomorrow.
Meaning comes from knowing that somehow, somewhere, we still matter.
To another person.
To a community.
To something larger than ourselves.
Maybe the challenge of later life isn’t simply replacing work or filling our calendars.
Maybe it is maintaining a sense of consequence.
I am still here.
What I do still matters.
Someone cares whether I show up.
My friend certainly wasn’t ready to become irrelevant.
He kept living until he couldn’t.
Not cautiously.
Not always sensibly.
Certainly not the way we might have chosen for him.
But unmistakably his way.
And now that he is gone, I find myself thinking differently about that last bicycle.
Maybe it wasn’t foolish at all.
Maybe it was his way of saying something the rest of us need to hear:
I’m still here. There is still something I want to do. And I’m not finished living yet.
I look at that picture of Mike on his bike differently now. He wasn't denying that his life was coming to an end. He was showing us how he intended to live until it did.