Death

As I move further and further into old age, I find my thoughts returning more often to the inevitable end: death. That is the ultimate fate of every living creature.

We Americans, unlike other nationalities I’ve lived among, avoid the issue, almost as if it didn’t exist. Like bodily functions and sex, death is something we simply don’t talk about. It’s what we call a “taboo subject.”

I’m less paranoid about death than most Americans simply because I have seen so much of it on the battlefield, first in Vietnam and later elsewhere (still classified). So my focus is less on the horror of death and more on extending my life to the maximum and making the most of the time I have left.

That almost certainly means one or more books still to be written. It also means writing posts (like this one) and doing public readings of my books and presentations, especially the one on the fall of Saigon which I survived and escaped under fire. These are stories I want to tell. I want people to know what really happened.

I am determined to live well past a hundred years old, and the evidence so far is that I’ll make it. I live an extremely healthy life with a diet of almost entirely fruits and vegetables, plenty of sleep, lots of water, and regular exercise. I’m almost the only person I know of my age who is not overweight. And I look much younger than my years.

Looks like I’m going to make it to past a hundred.