The Honorable Joseph Robinette Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 20500
Dear Joe, er I mean Mr President:
Pardon the familiarity, but I was motivated by the fact that we are contemporaries (age-wise that is). In fact you are about 10 months older than I am. I believe that you will be blowing out 80 candles on your cake this week. The other similarities we share are that we’ve been pretty busy fellows for our entire lives. Getting an education, raising a family, and jobs that pretty much took all our time. The only difference I see is that I spent a few years in Uncle Sam’s Army, while you seemed to have slid by that one. I don’t know how you did it, but I must say it was a pretty good experience for me. I think you were in congress while I was in the 1st Armored Division. Go figure. It wasn’t until fairly recently that our life trajectories diverged. I retired to raise horses and grow hay on our farm while you became Vice-president and then President of the United States. And now you’re trying to decide whether to keep on doing it. In fact, that’s the real reason for this letter.
I know you’ve got pretty good bones and good medical care and advice to boot, and as a matter of fact, I just reread your latest medical report which was done last year. It looked pretty good, although it did show you had a number of, to put it nicely, a few age related issues…as do we all at this time of our lives. I completely understand. It’s that time. And there’s probably more to come. Here I speak with some personal knowledge.
Out of curiosity I just looked at the life expectancy tables for those of us born in 1942, as were you. And it’s good news for us as we were expected to only live to age 71.4. We’ve already beat the odds and are playing with house money. Even better, those of us who have made it this far are now expected to live another 7 years. Wow! Proof for sure that the longer you live, the longer you’re going to live. We will have more time to do what ever it is that we want to do. For me it’s a pretty clear choice. I’m going to be puttering in my garden, reading and writing, figuring out how to pass on some of my good fortune, loving my kids and grandchildren, staying close to friends of a lifetime, taking afternoon naps, and taking care of my darling wife who is living with Alzheimer’s. As you can see, I’ve got a pretty clear path for my remaining time on this earth.
I know it’s not so clear for you as you’ve got some difficult choices in front of you. But let me bring you up to date on what we will likely face as we begin our 9th decade of life. We get tired. We need to go to bed early and we can’t sleep past 5:00 or so. We need to recharge our batteries with an afternoon snooze. And we will have a different ache or pain when we wake up every morning. BTW, you should be aware that over 90% of us at this age suffer from BHP (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia) which is a long way of saying you will need to pee a lot. No more uninterrupted long meetings and no more solid eight hours of sleep. and of course your hearing and eyesight will deteriorate. You will be saying “huh” a lot. Hearing aids and an unlimited supply of spectacles of all types will most likely be a part of your life. If you are lucky, the aches and pains in various part of your body won’t limit your mobility too much, but your time on the treadmill will be certainly be curtailed. If you’re like me, you will be beset by the ‘itises”. Arthritis, sinusitis, prostatitis, tendonitis. None of which are necessarily limiting and certainly not fatal, but taken together, they present difficulties that our younger colleagues don’t have to deal with . I notice from your latest medical report that you have had a colonoscopy (I’ve had 4) and yours came out with only a a single polyp. Good on ya. But unfortunately, there likely will be more to come. Again not a critical issue, but it does require going under while they pass some gas and probe your innards. Probably not a problem, but having to drink a gallon of that distasteful stuff to prepare is punishment enough. The foregoing is but a partial list of “age related” maladies. Proof enough that getting old is not for sissies.
I don’t want to make too much of these unfortunate age related realities, but there you are…there’s no getting around it. And, yes, I understand that you will face many, if not all, of these issues whether or not you decide whether to try to become the leader of the free world again. I understand your urge. But I have found sitting in front of the fire with my wife of a lifetime, the TV on and a good book in my lap is a reward worth aspiring to, and that you’re probably going to have to forego if you are continuously worried about this or that world crisis. I must say also that it’s a delicious feeling to sit with my morning coffee thinking to myself… I have nothing I must do today. Our happiness and well being is now my only objective.
I suspect, but don’t know, that the Trump thing worries you a bit too. I wouldn’t let that bother me too much because I think more and more people are like me and would rather vote for Alfred E. Newman or an old yeller dog than to vote for the Trumpster. Plus, I think there are a lot more folks (men and women alike) out there who would make perfectly good free world leaders and would beat Trump going away to boot.
My final bit of advice to you is based on a conversation I had with a retired Catholic priest who during his career had sat at hundreds if not thousands of bedsides while giving last rites. I asked if he had any takeaways from these experiences, and he said, I never, ever heard anyone say, at the point of their death “my only regret is that I didn’t work longer”.
I’m glad I won’t have that regret, and I hope you won’t either.
Your friend (and fellow octogenarian),
Gary
NB…I was surprised to see this morning that the Washington Post also published a letter to Joe about his age. Headlined, Mr. President, as an Octogenarian, I Welcome you to the lub by Colbert I King. And then, no surprise, in the NYT, Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote President Biden is turning 80. Experts say Age is More than a Number. So while some say that age is not an issue for old Joe, it’s sure getting a lot of attention.
