Affront Page: From Here (and There) To Eternity

By Tracy Young

PAGE From Here-(~nd there) To Eternity I've been thinking about demo. graphics, which goes to show you what kind of work the devil finds for idle hands, and about what's happening to the babyboom generation. A huge bulk .of the population is getting old'er and older, moving through .• time like a pig in a python. By 2020, most of the. Woodstock .. n;Hlon be watching sixtysomething.-and not long after that, As the Wonn Turns. Given these statistics, the social problem of the twenty-first century may be spiritual homelessness. Millions of people who spent the first half of their lives in the suburbs and the second in renovated lofts, with weekends in the country, will be forced to contemplate a very long lease on a space that not even the slipperiest real-estate agent in Greenwich Village could pass off as a one-bedroom. And if you think the Hamptons are overcrowded, you should see some of the cemeteries on Long Island. Nixon's dog is buried on Long Island. Okay, maybe you did put 'your political convic-· tions on the back burner so you could m:l.ke enough money to afford the right kind of neighbors, but do you really deserve to end up buried nose to tail with Checkers? Ah, so little space: .. and so little time. Surely there is some comfort to be taken from all of this-after all, can death be any worse than FICA, especiilly in such august company? Bue clearly our feelings have not caught up· with the demographics. (Hey, remember when Time magazine a.sktd Is God Dead?) And denial still does PR for death. Which may explain how I ~ ended up with fo~r cats. The first two came more or... .less together (I got the seconl

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cat bec:l.use I didn't want an only child), and it probably would have been sensible to stop right there, considering the cubic footage we share. But no. By the time they were six or seven, w~ich is' the feline equivalent of middle age, I was already worried about how I would handle their golden years (the feline equivalent of senility is not pretty) and began monitoring them for signs of geriatric distress: cataracts, hearing loss, enfeebled taste buds. (All I noticed was that neither predicted the San Francisco earthquake, so veterinary manuals are wrong: the first t.o go is the sixth sense.) Then I got another cat. By and by, cat number three turned seven and ... I don't

know what possessed me .. _was it my biological clock-or theirs? _.. I felt this overwhelming need to ... well ... you know ... 1 can't explain why I do this stuff... For God's sake have a little compassion ... I just had to go out :md get another cal.

Imagine living in an 'apart'ment that might comfortably house one human and fouf amoebas, with four cats ranging in age from one to fourteen! I was reduced to hanging my chairs from the wall, a decorating tip that may have worked for the Shakers but only encourages the cats' worst behaviors. From their perch, one practices projectile vomiting; another simply hurls insults. Worse, I realize

that I had planned my family

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mimic exactly my mOlher's-l'd

just substituted cats for kids. This kind of insight is the middle-aged equivalent of an acid flash: disconcerting and, well, shameful in a way. Now. I know that people used to have a lot of children because: A. some of the litter didn't survive; and, B. once upon a time child rearing theory was sensibly based on the cost-effective management of chores. But CillS? I suppose if I had a very small farm on modest acreage I could hitch them up to a miniature plow. On the other hand, it has become increasingly obvious that I do cats the way addicts do coke: because intimations of mortality give me the creeps and I don't [ike the smell of eternity. But with 4 cats ~ 9 lives, I can feel pretty much on top of it all.

"rhe Yuppie Way of Knowledge THE

WORLD Ie; COMING 1'0

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Second only to worries about real estate-or surreal estate, as the case may be-our main quibble with death Is that It represents the unknown, and for accepted, though not entirely obvious, reasons poses all sorts of Interesting Questions about the hereafter: viz. Is It wired for cable? What Is Interesting, however, Is that In spite of perfectly natural fears, our attitude toward death Is becoming more, well, tolerant. Curious, even. Shortly after the San FrancIsco earthquake, whIch came.as a big surprise to my household, a young man was reported as saying that It was the best "near-death experIence" he'd ever had. Now, my Idea of a near-death experlEince Is living In Southern California (can health-food fanatics be considered legally bran dead?), but enough about me-there's a whole generation of people for whom death could be repositioned as a kInd of terminal high. As more and more of the population approaches old age and, until further notice death, the language will slowly change to reflect the sensibilities of the. about-lo-dle, the newly dead ("Urn Potatoes"?) and the grateful dead. Old euphemisms like "passing on" or "meeting your Maker" wi" become archaic, with the possible exception of "buying the farm," which may stili appeal to those dying to get oul of Jhe ~ city. But most septuagenarian hipsters will begin referrIng to death by such expressions as: Going Out for Soli Food Investing In the Hereafter . Tax Evasion .. / UnkJng Up w1th)"e Food ChaIn Style over Substance Ufe Ute /