There's just one way to live forever

"A hundred years from now? All new people."
-- ANNE LAMOTT

I have never wanted to live an extremely long life.

The thought of being around for 110 years or so, blinking through cataracts and unable to hear anything less than a jackhammer, has never appealed to me. When I read about the 115-year-old woman who died in Indiana just before Thanksgiving, several things about the story jumped out at me.

First, she had married the love of her life, but when he died of a heart attack, she was a widow for about 70 years.

Second, she had outlived her children and all of her grandchildren. There were plenty of great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren still alive, but the two generations following her were gone.

It reminded me of the saying that if you live long enough, you lose everyone you love.

That's why I always said I would be happy with 80 good years, free from dementia and still able to get around. If there's more, fine, but I certainly wouldn't want to live 30-35 more years with my 80-year-old mind and body.

I first saw the Lamott quote in a biography of the wonderful singer/songwriter Steve Goodman, an old favorite of mine who died at 36 after living nearly half his life with leukemia. Goodman wrote some wonderful songs for Jimmy Buffett ("California Promises," "Banana Republics"), one great song that a lot of people did ("City of New Orleans") and a couple of songs ("Go Cubs Go," "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request") that immortalized him on the north side of Chicago.



I think he knew he wasn't going to live very long, but I think he also realized that some of those "all new people" would still know him through his music.

I don't know if any of my work to date -- my newspaper columns, the stuff I've written for the Web -- will be that long-lasting. By its very nature, this sort of stuff is ephemeral, transitory.

But I certainly hope the part of me that has been imprinted on my children as I raised them will outlive me, and I hope some of the things they learned will be passed along to their own children.

You see, for most of us, there are only two things about our lives that matter -- the way we treat other people while we're here and the way we raise our children. How many insurance policies we sold, or how many loans we made or most of the other work-related stuff doesn't count for much. If we didn't do it, someone else probably would have.

That's why you hear folks say that while a lot of people at the end of their lives say they wish they had spent more time with their families, very few say they wish they had worked harder at their jobs.

People matter.

In fact, they're really all that matters.