A lot of things happen to us as we age. I was in the 2nd grade and under the tutorage of my older brother Gerald and fellow classmate Letha Mae before I really started to worry about life. And death.

It was about then that my closest friend and advisor (Letha) would inform me there was a funeral up at the Centrahoma Methodist Church and we should be scouting it out. There was stuff we needed to know. These deep philosophical questions about death meant we had to ask Gerald. He was in the 5th grade and Gerald was the smartest person in the world.

“Why are there so many flowers at funerals?” The answer, “you know that dead animals stink? Well so do dead humans.” Thus, the flowers. Made sense. Other things that Letha and I liked about those funerals were the cars used to haul the families and the hearse used to haul the caskets around. Letha noticed the keys were often left in the limos and we thought it was cool to seat ourselves in the big Cadillac and play the radio. Of course, those radios back then drew a lot of juice and dead batteries would result if the radio and key was left on.

I heard the pall bearers remark down at my dad’s store that those big old cars were sure heavy to push after a funeral when the battery was dead. We were, of course, finally nabbed. That was bad. But our philosophical thoughts about death were far from settled. Even Gerald couldn’t answer all our questions about death or when it would be our turn to die.

The Friday night movies up at the Centrahoma School helped some. We saw that death happened often and casually as the cowboys shot each other. But then there was the Ray Miland movie, “Buried Alive.” It seemed to us a serious thing to be buried alive.

We gave studious thought about how long we might live. What age do people die? What’s it like to be old and facing death. Well, I don’t live in Centrahoma anymore and don’t have Letha Mae or Gerald to give me data and advice about all these things. But I do know that when I was young it seemed people were living longer all the time. It was said by experts that by the time I got old most people would live to be 100. All those miracle drugs and smart doctors and new medicines. To a 12-year-old 100 years old sounded like infinity.

So here I am. Old. Live to 100? No, that’s out the window. Life expectancy has suddenly shortened. A lot. Let’s look at this. For some reason people live 3.5 years longer in Utah and in continued Page 11 Washington, DC it’s 7.0 years longer. The state of Mississippi is worst with people dying off at 71.9 years but Hawaii averages out at 80.7. But I’m not in Hawaii. Not to skip anyone here but folks in Japan live to an average of 84.4 while our neighbors in Canada coast in at 82.3. But dare I ask— how about Oklahoma. Only 74.1 and dropping all the time.

So, why? Are doctors dumber these days? What about all our miracle drugs? Sorry, it seems the only drugs making the desired lists of our present population are marijuana, meth, and oxycodone. People now like to sit around on a stool in a casino sucking on deadly cigarettes and gambling away their money, harming the good fat body that God gave them. The life clock shrinks again and here I am. Living on borrowed time. Wondering what went wrong.

I think we all need to realize that the length and quality of our lives has a lot to do with how well we live it. Take care of yourselves and be sure and go to church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard, DPh

cwaynebullard@ gmail.com