I listen to a lot of podcasts these days. Even shows that are shows meant for radio, such as most NPR podcasts, are podcast-ified radio shows. “This American Life,” “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” Alex Baldwin’s “Here’s the Thing” are all radio shows that also have a supporting podcast. But I don’t listen to the radio – ever. Sirius-XM is an exception, but even it is not technically radio, isn’t it? It’s satellite, and anyway it is better than radio in my mind because there are no commercials.
I have a set of twenty-seven podcasts I listen to on a regular basis. Twenty-seven! Needless to say there are only a few of those I listen to regularly, and I find that I binge on some for a while, and then move to another. A week’s worth of “This American Life,” followed by a week of “Radio Lab,” followed by, say, Planet Money’s “The Indicator” and “Planet Money” itself. My regulars include the amazing “Revisionist History” by Malcolm Gladwell, “WTF” by Marc Maron, and, since I love cigars, “The Cigar Authority.” I wouldn’t normally name-drop so many podcasts, but I have friends who have asked me which podcasts I listen to, so there’s a few.
I love podcasts. I do a lot of driving, and walking, and working around the ranch, and I am a very curious man, and I love the ideas and thoughts and the takes on life that my little subset of podcasts impart to me.
Pre-podcast, of course, there was really only radio, which I listened to back in the day. The problem with radio shows is that they are on a schedule, and there’s no information about the show when it is on. I’m not into setting my schedule based on when a show is airing, and if you happen to get in the car at, say, 10:15, and you enter a show mid-way, well, you miss the intro, and even what the show is that you are listening to. It just doesn’t work for me. And it leaves me with hearing some interesting facts and insights that I find amazing – but I have no clue who said them, or who the host is, or many times what the name of the show is. While I appreciate the insights, it is frustrating to not have the full picture or context of the conversation.
One such conversation was an interview with Sylvester Stallone that I listened to on the radio about ten years ago, on, what? NPR? Fresh Air? I have no idea. In the interview he was speaking about his career and his life, and he said something that stunned me: “The hardest thing about growing older is saying goodbye to your friends.”
That quote almost stopped my heart. I was not expecting that, especially in a celebrity interview, and not from Sly Stallone. Now Sly is smart and a thinker even though he is known for action movies like Rocky, First Blood, and Judge Dredd, but, I did not expect something as profound as this. When I heard it it rang so true to me that I had to stop listening and just ponder that statement.
“The hardest thing about growing older is saying goodbye to your friends.”
Oh, that is so true. I heard this show shortly after I lost my best friend to a bicycle accident and my step-father to melanoma within a month of each other. I lost two good friends to cancer and another to an enlarged heart a few years before. These were people I loved and laughed with, and who were no longer with us. The quote brought all that into focus, and it became very clear to me: that is indeed the hardest part of growing older.
Bill Cosby was one of my favorite comedians before his scandals ruined it all. But his comedy albums of the 1960s were pure gold, and even now circumstances of life will remind me of some of his great sketches. I remember a sketch where he talked about his grandfather reading the paper. He only read the obituaries: “I wonder who died today?” It was funny of course, but isn’t that true? My parents and my grandparents said the same thing. “Oh, I see Janet passed away. That’s such a shame.” When you are a kid you don’t have any context about this. You don’t know who these people are, and they are (or were) older than dirt anyway, and in youth, death is incredibly far away. In youth, life fills you so much that death is impossible. I think back to when I was a teenager in Los Angeles, and how I would ride my bike down Angeles Crest Highway or Topanga Canyon Boulevard, sans helmet, passing cars, and I think to myself, what the hell was I thinking? Yes. No death. No one dies.
When I was twenty, I was super strong and super healthy. I worked construction and since I had no actual construction skills, I would stock drywall by taking 4×12 sheets two at a time from the front of the job site to the various rooms where they were needed. All day long. I’m sure I could have lifted a Volkswagen if I needed to. At school, I would leap down staircases one flight at a time. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but looking back…
When the soul and the body are young, the soul is clueless and the body is strong. As we grow into adulthood, into middle age, and beyond, our souls get wiser and our bodies wear. Our friendships go from new and sparkly people we just met and love to hang around with to friends we have known for decades and with whom we have weathered storms. Even if we meet someone new (like, say, only five years ago instead of forty-five) these friendships become stronger than in youth because we have decades of common experience.
And then we lose one. We lose two. When a death happens when we’re in our thirties, it’s a fluke – a “Big Chill” moment. Fuck! People die? No! Our mortality becomes real. Then, we lose a good friend to cancer. Or to an accident. My best friend died riding his bicycle down Vermont Avenue just below the Greek Theater – riding helmetless, just as I rode back in the day. Oh, that was hard. I lost my wife, which was almost unendurable. Our lives develop voids. We grow older. We lose more friends. We lose more family. We lose more people. I climbed mountains with my friends. Shot the shit. Got into trouble with them. Worked with them. Went to their weddings. Welcomed their children. Grieved with them when they couldn’t have children. And said goodbye.
My mother is eighty-three. My father, eighty-five. Most of their friends are gone. When we talk, we talk of events that happened long ago. What does that tell us? I’ll tell you what it tells me: the goal is not to ignore the now and try to make it to eighty or one hundred. The goal is to live life now. To take the time to just be, and connect, and enjoy the world you are in and the people you are with now. In the snapshot of time we are in right now, we know and love people who are here right now and who may not be here tomorrow. And to whom we’ll have to say goodbye. Or, if we are first to go, will have to say goodbye to us. I think we should make it a point to say hello hundreds of more times before we have to finally say goodbye. Because saying goodbye is the hardest thing.
Indelible Mark 