I admit I was somewhat rattled when I read the latest government report on life expectancy for men and women. I’m supposed to be dead, thank you.

On average, our government says American men live to be 76.3 years. I paid attention to that report because I just turned 79. My knees remind me daily. The report also said women, on average, live to be 81.4 years. They finally get a break.

I don’t dwell on my life expectancy (only once in a while), but the stats got me thinking. I have noticed that almost all of the men I knew as friends or colleagues are gone or have “passed,” as we say in the country. Americans will use any word in the encyclopedia rather than say the word “die.”

We are drowning in research that usually tells me nothing on NPR stations.

Our official word in the country is that, outside of war, Americans do not die, period. It is just never mentioned in movies, websites, podcasts, or outside of obituaries that few people can stand to read. I gave that up years ago.

I remember the morning 15 years ago when my knee first informed me of my aging, and bless it, I am still walking and hardly ever use my cane. I stumble a lot but only fell once, after taking some medicine that freaked out my body.

The numbers confuse me all the more when I think that I have diabetes and heart disease; an insurance company informed me that their specialists said I wouldn’t live past 75, a policy (I had hoped to leave something to Maria other than bills) was not in this life, as it turns out.

I have managed to get my blog makers to promise to fuse my blog with hers when I’ve “passed,” a kind word for dying. In the new world, we never really disappear.

_________

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I am seeing my doctor next month to sign a detailed do-not-resuscitate form. I’ve voluntarily given up driving outside of my town. Otherwise, I go on with my life, happier and busier than ever. I don’t need to read about life expectancy much in the future; I get the point.

Sometimes, though, it gets lonely up there; it isn’t the best club to join.

I am the oldest person in most of the places we end up going. People do open doors for me, get out of my way, and sometimes smile warmly. It’s strange, but not disturbing.

Otherwise, nobody in the outer world spends much time talking to me—their loss, and actually something I like. In my whole life, I’ve never once gone to another man’s house to watch a football game and eat buffalo wings. That may be my greatest achievement.

No wonder I have few friends. I intend to keep it that way.

One stat I do like: In 2005, researchers found that only seven percent of Americans between seventy-five and eighty-four need help with personal care. Mental clarity, the researchers say, is much more likely than not to remain to the end—another myth exposed.

Life, they say, does not end until it ends.

My own take on all this: I have a lot of life left to live. Shut up and live it. Rather than counting the dead, I prefer to count the living and life itself. That is a lot of responsibility. I’m working on it.

Demographers and statisticians at the National Center for Health Statistics write the CDC’s life expectancy reports. Those are the ones I read.

I have a message for the statisticians:

 Nuts to you.