How near is your End?

For several days in November, after he turned seventy, Stew grew glum and picked up the annoying habit of starting sentences with "I've been thinking..." without ever getting to the predicate.

Thinking about what exactly?

Apparently Stew was bothered by visions of a Piper Cub flying overhead pulling a banner that said "The End is Near. Do Something!"

Watch for this guy flying overhead

The End, as in a guy wearing a hoodie, carrying a scythe slung over his left shoulder—and hanging around outside the kitchen door.
A friend cleverly mapped out the three stages of The End: The "go-go years," the "slow-go years" and finally the "no-go years."

During the first period, roughly during your sixties, you pretend you're not aging even as wrinkles resolutely march across your face and your hair, if you have any left, turns gray.

Nevertheless, you stay in youth hostels and carry a backpack when you travel, as if you had graduated from college three weeks before.

After your seventieth, the clues are harder to ignore. Youngsters at the hostels grumble about your getting up to pee three times a night and holding up the foxtrot to Machu Picchu's Gate of the Sun, complaining your knees are killing you.

For their part, women at this stage might resort to age-inappropriate clothing that provokes more giggles than desire.

Other signs of the second stage are that friends do nothing but talk, talk, talk about their latest visit to the doctor. Exotic and sometimes ridiculous treatments come into play—ayurvedic herb potions, ozone shots, and acupuncture in odd parts of the body.
Anything to try shoo away the guy with the hoodie.

At this point, people who've never traveled beyond Guadalajara unexpectedly sign up for yak caravans along the Silk Route or month-long cruises in the Caspian Sea.

Others, known for obsessively counting their pennies and revising their wills, now say: "Screw my relatives! They're not getting my money!"

When the third stage arrives, maybe on your eightieth or eighty-fifth birthday if you're lucky, you keep track of Costco sales of bulk quantities of Depends. Travel is reduced to ordering new batteries for your scooter so you can cruise around Wal-Mart for hours, buying nothing in particular.

Here in San Miguel, people sign up for the Twenty Four Hour Association, a group that indeed will haul away your carcass within hours, cremate it and FedEx the ashes back home—as if anyone there cared.

Probably not. Remember, you cut everyone off your will before taking off on your yak adventure.

I'm not worried about any of this stuff.

I don't turn seventy until December 30. I still have two-hundred thirty-six days left before the second stage kicks in.

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