by ELIZABETH BIRD
The 95-year-old man, clad in sweatpants and slippers, is found in a mudroom near his kitchen, a cane and sunglasses nearby. Dead from heart disease and dehydration aggravated by Alzheimer’s. Just another sad news story of someone who lived past his use-by date, alone, confused and abandoned. I don’t suppose anyone would have noticed if his name wasn’t Gene Hackman, one of the most celebrated actors of his generation.
The accounts are often accompanied by grainy, paparazzi photos of a shriveled, stooped old man, on the arm of his wife near their secluded Arizona home. The contrast with his commanding screen persona is unavoidably stark. His much younger wife, concert pianist Betsy Arakawa, had cared for him until being struck down by hantavirus, a rodent-borne respiratory disease that can kill with frightening speed. She died in their bathroom days before him. Hackman “might have wandered for some time,” it is reported. Later we learn she had left messages with their doctor, but by the time they were returned it was too late. Deep into dementia, Hackman could not use a phone.
I doubt I was the only aging boomer who felt a chill seeing this story. By now we’re all used to a daily litany of generational icons who’ve left us, striking unique chords in each of our memories. Last year it was Marianne Faithful for me – dead three years older than I am now. What 1960s English girl did not long for her beauty, her ethereal voice, and her rock star lifestyle? And what 70-something could not be in awe of her reinvention years later, voice destroyed by excess, but speaking the wisdom of those years with gravelly defiance?
Unlike others, Gene Hackman had no special place in my personal pantheon. But his death struck me in a different way. If someone like him – rich, famous, with access to concierge medical services most can only dream of – could end up helpless on the floor of his $4 million mansion, where does that leave the rest of us?
*
It’s a truism that grappling with mortality is just part of social interaction for my generation, most of whom did not die before we got old, despite our once rebellious affection for The Who. And for that we are grateful. Nevertheless, when my husband and I get together with friends old and new, at some point we inevitably move into the “organ recital,” as one former college buddy named it. Which undignified medical tests have we just endured or scheduled? Who’s had cataract surgery or a hip replacement? What medications do we take? Do we have long-term care insurance? It’s reassuring to compare, to know that we are not alone, even as we bemoan our crumbling bodies. There’s a ritualistic quality about these conversations, and even a touch of competitiveness – a gathering of my surviving siblings and our spouses revealed me as the only one of six not on statins, upon which I felt an absurd stab of triumph. Until I remembered a story about statins protecting against Alzheimer’s …
If that all sounds a bit morbid, it’s not all we talk about. We share travel plans, new restaurants, TV shows to binge, books to read. We go to movies and trivia nights and try new recipes together. We lament the insanity of the current political scene. We pass around our phones with photos of children and grandchildren. We laugh and play games. We understand the privilege of being able to retire comfortably, still beside the partners who have grown old alongside us.
Mostly, we float down the stream of retired life, knowing but not speaking of where it is flowing. We keep our balance, but there’s always that powerful undercurrent that reminds us of precarity. Did you hear about our old colleague who died recently? Only seventy-two – cancer, I heard. Never really knew him; we ran into each other in the hallway now and then. And sometimes the current roils to the surface and shatters our equilibrium. A beloved sibling snatched away without warning. An old friend admitted to memory care. Someone who left a void that will never be filled. Yet we move on, grappling with grief and guilt, and even a twinge of joy. We still have seats on the ride.
*
I definitely don’t want to die. I’m not terrified of death, but I want to stave it off as long as possible. I want to know where we’re going – will the planet avert catastrophe? Will democracy survive? I’d love to see my sons and their ladies grow older and even happier. The arrival of a first grandchild, representing the last generation of my family I will ever see, makes me yearn for a few extra decades to see her blossom.
So, I exercise and try to eat right. I vow to lose those 30 pounds packed on after menopause; the spry centenarians in my newsfeed are inevitably skinny. My spouse and I joke about what songs to play at our funerals; after all, one of us will go first, so we’d better be ready. And where are all the passwords for the bank accounts?
But amid all the jocular chat about aches, pains, remedies, and eventual departure, we and our friends rarely address the specter raised in the demise of Gene Hackman. That before our bodies call it quits, we will stop being who we are. It is this – the insidious unraveling of self – that instils unspoken dread.
Recently I re-read a novel I first enjoyed years ago – Carol Shields’ Pulitzer-Prize winning The Stone Diaries. Shields chronicles the deliberately mundane life of Daisy Goodwill, from traumatic birth in Canada to unnoticed death in Florida. When I first read it, I appreciated its lyricism and deft storytelling, as the author moved between multiple points of view to capture a life that often seems to slide out of focus. This time around, I found myself gripped by existential unease as Daisy’s life winds down, one small step at a time.
She comes to her end just a few miles from where I now sit. Like me, she was born far away; this is not her home. At first, she enjoys her life, while sometimes wondering how she got here. A widow, she plays bridge and laughs with her companions, surrounded by the comfort of familiar things. Her memory is not what it was, but she is coping, even with the loss of friends and the slide into assisted living. Then she has a heart attack, falls, and breaks her knees. The walls close in. It’s like a road map laid out before me, which I glimpse and then resolutely fold away.
Surrounded by the bustle of medical care, she fights to be heard. “I’m still in here,” she thinks, determined to stay conscious. “Still here.’ Her daughter visits from England and Daisy struggles to explain. “I’m not myself here.” You’ll adjust, says her daughter breezily. Daisy tries again. “I’m not myself.” But no-one hears her, and soon she will be lost. And finally, she will die.
As a teacher, writer, and researcher, I’ve lived a life of mind over body. And it is the decay of the mind that terrifies me more than the decrepitude of my physical self. I can live with stiff joints and the lingering damage from a broken femur. But how will I know when I am no longer me? One day, will someone touch my hand and ask. “Do you remember me?” Will I say, “Yes, of course,” though I see only a stranger. Moments of memory loss send shivers of fear – I’m talking, and the next word in my sentence is gone. Then it comes back, and I’ve only skipped a beat. “Verisimilitude,” – well, anyone might forget that! I should worry when I’m struggling for “potato.” Um, that roundish brown thing, you can mash it …
For the most part, we can identify the moment of death. But there’s nothing that marks when a person starts to vanish. If I do word puzzles every day, will that help? Should I take one of those supplements – you know, the ones originally discovered in jellyfish (which don’t even have a brain to speak of). Anything to slow the creep of time.
*
I suppose we’d all like to have what was once called a “good death.” Serenely tucked in our beds, “surrounded by friends and family,” as the obits like to say. We’d offer a few nuggets of wisdom, lie back, and expire with grace and dignity. Failing that, I guess I’d opt for a quick demise – something like Betsy Arakawa, though with a moment to say goodbye. And not on the bathroom floor. And not yet.
But the reality might be something altogether more undignified, lost in a twilight of drugs or our own impenetrable confusion, our loved ones itching for it to be over, like Daisy Goodwill. Or, like Gene Hackman, tumbling in bewilderment with no-one to see us fall.
And while I’m grateful for every year of lucid life, I’m stalked by the fear I’m on borrowed time. The women on my maternal line whisper, reminding me I have outlived them all. My only sister. My mother. Her only sister. Her mother. All years younger than I am now, their failed bodies taking crystal clear minds with them. Perhaps there’s a price for these extra years; will I be the one to fade ignominiously? Or did I just win the genetic lottery, bolstered by the longevity on my father’s side? Maybe that good death is actually possible?
Just too many questions, and nothing that gives useful answers. Will I hear music even when voices fade? Will I dream as I head out the door? I just want to know what happens; I want to control the unknowable. But, of course, I never will. Nor will anyone else. Not Carol Shields, herself dead at 68, whose chilling account of Daisy’s slide into twilight haunts me. Not the priests and mullahs and rabbis and shamans, and all the other peddlers of prophecy.
Like everyone else, I smile and hope for the best. For more time, for more love, for more memories. I try to channel the words of my mother, who never had the privilege of growing old: “Just get on with it – don’t spend your time whingeing when there’s nothing you can do …” I seek to set aside the rollcall of death and dying and celebrate those famous touchstones who defy the odds. Ringo Starr turns 85 and still bops behind those drums! I’m drawn to revisit places from long ago, with new memories overlaying the old. Watching the waves break on the Northumbrian coast, I relive the past while relishing it afresh with new companions. I accept the quirk of the aging brain that suddenly flashes tableaux from ancient days. Some I’d like to shove back into the shadows, but many bring tingles of delight. How could I have forgotten that moment?
So, I revel in all the light I have left, keeping my balance as best I can. What else can any of us do? And I hold onto the hope that if things turn dark, and I have forgotten all my questions forever, that those I leave behind will remember me as I was before. Before I stopped being me.
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A retired Anthropology Professor, Elizabeth Bird turned to creative writing in 2022. Her essays appear in Under the Sun, Consequence, Biostories, Cleaver, Summerset Review, Orange Blossom Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been recognized through three Pushcart nominations, one nomination for Best of the Net, and a Notable in Best American Essays 2023. Her website is: www.lizbirdwrites.com
© 2026, Elizabeth Bird
Halfway Down the Stairs 