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# 2016-12-30 - A Healthy Sense Of Urgency by Abigail Trafford | |
Cosmic flower of life | |
For geologist Allen Throop, the aha! moment came on a trip across | |
glaciers in Alaska. "I love land forms," says Throop, whose career | |
had taken him and his family from Pennsylvania to Australia and then | |
to Oregon, where he worked for the state government for nearly 20 | |
years. "It was just awesome," he says. There was one particular | |
place in this endless, untouched black-and-white landscape of snow | |
and rock. "My favorite spot," he says. He'd brought his recorder to | |
play some music on the trip. "I sat there for a while. I played the | |
recorder." | |
That was the summer of 2001. Throop was 57. Like many people inching | |
toward My Time, he had begun to get restless. "I was healthy. I | |
wanted to do other things. Not that I disliked what I was doing. It | |
was time for a change," he recalls. "So I quit. . . . I didn't have | |
definite plans." | |
He happily entered a period of second adolescence, a time of letting | |
go and trying new things. He taught some geology classes. He worked | |
on environmental projects in his community. He went on a marine | |
geology expedition. He visited friends. The invitation from a skiing | |
buddy to make the 110-mile trek across the glaciers came out of the | |
blue. At first he thought: "That's preposterous!" A man of his age to | |
take on such a feat of endurance? His next thought: "Of course I want | |
to go." | |
Throop, an athlete who jogged, swam, hiked and biked, trained for | |
months. The trip took 15 days. The four men -- Throop and his buddy | |
and two thirty- somethings -- carried 80-pound packs as they charted | |
their course. | |
If he hadn't retired from his government job, he wouldn't have made | |
the trip. In retrospect, he says, the decision to make the break "was | |
brilliant." | |
Today Throop is in hospice care. A year and a half after the Alaska | |
trip, he was diagnosed with ALS (amytrophic lateral sclerosis), or | |
Lou Gehrig's disease, a vicious killer that slowly destroys the nerve | |
cells that control muscle movement. Arms, legs and even the throat | |
eventually stop working. There is no cure. | |
"Life is short for all of us. I've always felt sorry for people who | |
hate what they are doing," says Throop. "Since I retired, I have | |
thoroughly enjoyed all the stuff I've done. And now I'm really glad I | |
did it. If you want to do something else, do it. . . . Don't assume | |
you're going to be healthy forever." | |
This is the paradox of My Time. Statistically, men and women who are | |
healthy and fit in their fifties can expect to live well for several | |
more decades. But you may not. Diseases such as ALS or Parkinson's | |
can strike no matter how many miles you have jogged, how many | |
vegetables you have eaten. | |
Throop's story sends a wake-up call to his generation. A sense of | |
urgency dominates this period of life -- or it should. "That's what | |
we have and adolescents lack," explains Lisa Berkman, head of the | |
Department of Society, Human Development and Health at the Harvard | |
School of Public Health. "Young people can't see their way to the | |
future. We know what the future holds. Postponement is not a viable | |
option." | |
Jolts large and small start to accumulate, each one sending a message | |
that time is a finite commodity. They are easy to ignore. Throop | |
missed the first symptom. He was backpacking and woke up one morning | |
to find he couldn't move his hand. The numbness went away as the day | |
grew warmer. A couple of months later, his daughter noticed he was | |
holding his coffee mug with two hands. He recalls her words: "Dad, | |
most people can drink coffee with one hand. You better get someone to | |
look at it." | |
His disease is aggressive. He has lost the ability to walk. He can do | |
water exercises; a mechanical lift raises him out of the water. With | |
voice recognition software, he uses a computer to communicate. He | |
can't play the recorder anymore because his fingers aren't able to | |
cover the holes. | |
But his life has been extraordinary since the diagnosis. "This year | |
has been a good year for me," he says. | |
It boils down to love. The My Time imperative is twofold: Whatever | |
you want to do, do it now. And whomever you love, show that love -- | |
now. Throop is surrounded by his wife and family, by friends who | |
make special visits, by neighbors who come by to fix the bird feeder | |
in the yard, by former students and colleagues. "I've had two weeks | |
of wakes," he says. "I've had the opportunity to hear people say a | |
lot of nice things about me." | |
Without the urgency of dying, that "doesn't happen," he says. "We | |
assume that we could say it tomorrow. We're reticent to use the word | |
love. I've been kissed more this year, and it's okay. The same people | |
would not do it a year before, when I was healthy." | |
That's why a sense of urgency is the agent of transformation. But why | |
wait until death cannot be denied? | |
Throop knows his time is being cut short. Still, he has accomplished | |
the tasks of this new life stage by redefining himself in the twin | |
arenas of work and love. He found new purpose in his activities, | |
culminating in the trip to Alaska. He found new meaning in | |
relationships and in the giving and receiving of love. | |
His health has been stable since Christmas. He is glad that he lives | |
in Oregon and has the option of physician-assisted suicide. "I have | |
started that process," he says. "It is reassuring to know that I can | |
call the doctor and he would help." But he probably won't use it. The | |
hospice care he has been receiving is excellent, he says. Once it | |
becomes too hard to swallow and he can't eat, he will be given | |
morphine to make him comfortable until the end. "That sounds like a | |
better option at this time," he says. | |
Meanwhile, he is enjoying a full life. "I have no regrets," he says. | |
He's left his mark on the glaciers of Alaska and made a difference in | |
people's lives. He is rejoicing in the intensified closeness with his | |
wife and family. | |
Throop calls out to those who have not yet awakened in the bonus | |
years: Whatever it is in love and work -- "Don't put it off." | |
Copyright 2004 The Washington Post Company | |
tags: article,biography,self-help,spirit | |
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