From where I rise, at 69 (almost 70) years of age, I often feel like the new kid on the block at my “senior” residence. My closest friend, Sergei, died on Jan. 4 at 99. He had a perpetual gleam in his gray, faraway eyes and from his mouth always an elfi n chuckle.
No, Sergei did not appear to act or feel his age very often. My own outlook, I must confess, is that way – at 17, I was a runaway teen traveling freely from war protests to open-air rock forts to crumbling, forgotten downtowns of Eastern cities, ripe for the click-capture of my Instamatic… All was sheer wonderment.
And today, nothing bores me. All is fascination. Much the same as my Aunt Louise, who hung on in the earthly realm until the tender age of 103. She, a proper Connecticut matriarch (and anti-nuke activist), sang in her church choir in New Canaan until right shy of the century mark.
One could almost envy Good Queen “Bess,” the recently departed Elizabeth II, for the sturdy and loyal escort that clung to her nobly-draped casket between Balmoral and Buckingham. And no internment until Monday the 19th! Now that’s a marathon celebration.
Fact is, regardless of one’s position on the British Royalty’s role in the grand scheme of things, the Lady lived 96 years. Seventy of them as an “absolute monarch.” And you know what? She did not wear the crown heavily.
Au contraire, from the Beatles’ ditty, “Your Majesty,” to some tabloid quibbling in view of her “distancing” from Princess Diana, to the Queen’s ever-present fl ock of little Corgi dogs: the Queen was indefatigable. She held her own counsel, even when Mr. Trump ran past her to the dinner table on his visit.
And besides, she loved the horses, whether at the home grounds of Ascot Races or Keeneland back in Kentucky (which her family co-owns). Always with the pastels, tasteful brooch, and those blessed hats! Our most senior resident of all at my spread, Miss Mary J., took the thoroughbreds out at Charlestown, West Virginia, all the way to her 102nd!
Perhaps a love of equestrian strengthens the genes. I needn’t remind the reader that I served as homeless Count Tolstoy’s trackside guide for nearly five years, and Sergei could pick ‘em even when he wasn’t able to see the horse itself!
