Still Doin’ Time

I just got off the phone with my older (and only) sister, Natalie. She was born in 1931. At her next birthday, on March 4th, approximately five months from now, she’ll turn 95. After a relatively recent operation to mend her fall-induced broken hip, she had to give up her long-time apartment where she had been living independently and move into a nearby assisted-living facility in southeast Florida area. Unlike many of her age-mates, however, she’s still mentally sharp. I believe that came as reward for the fourteen years she’d lived with and took care of our mother who had recently entered dementia. That wasn’t an easy job, although Mother gratefully became docile and child-like, not given to fits of rebellion, paranoia, and violence. I wonder if the Universe has sent my sister a kind of thank-you note in the form of long-term protection against senior dementia...

The topic of aging has come up for me now since three days ago I turned 86. And that occasion reminded me of my time as a university dean at a state university in Chicago. In those days (1973-87) we had a program for incarcerated black women in the area called “Still Doin’ Time.” They were, of course, but in the context of their imprisonment, our faculty enabled them to gain college credit and, if the women were able, to complete their bachelor’s degrees before completing their sentences. The name of the program is how I think of what both my sister and I are doing. I hope and pray that the invisible faculty in our respective programs will help us to gain some credits in the extension program of life so we can go on to whatever comes next.

I’m a widower, although happily married since 2010 to a wonderful second wife, Cedar. My first wife, a German national, Simone, died in 2006, after we had been married for almost 43 years. She promised me shortly before she died that, “if it is permitted I’ll come to you somehow and tell you how I’m doing.” Well, approximately three months after she died, I had a dream. In it, I’m calling my home number and, at the same time, saying to myself that that was stupid. No one was home but the cat and I’d simply get myself on the answering machine. Then I heard someone with a familiar accent say hello. “Why are you answering, Simone,” I said. “You’re dead!” “Oh no,” came the answer. “Where I am here, it is very easy to get into the electrical system!” Then she proceeded, very enthusiastically, to tell me that she was with deceased people we both knew and that everyone “there” had jobs. Inn her case she was like a social worker. “But maybe this part, Papa, you do not like. You see, you are one of my cases!” Then she mentioned our kids and some other folks we knew as also being in her portfolio. She went on to provide further details about what it was like in her situation. I said to myself, “You’d better wake up and write all this down,” which I then did. But these further details had all been erased. I guess my security clearance wasn’t high enough, and I’ll just have to find those things out for myself.
​
So at this point, as an 86-year-old, I’m still doin’ time, as is my 94-year-old sister. For however long that may be, I can safely assume, will one day be determined. Thus when our life sentences are finally up and we shuffle off this mortal coil, I now have hope that we’ll then be doin’ not Time but Eternity.

A 1981 family photo: I’m on the left; my sister, Natalie, is second from the right.